This story is part of the Himal Fiction Fest 2025, a showcase of original Southasian speculative fiction.
In the year 2087, New Dhaka rose 400 metres above the waters that had claimed Old Dhaka 60 years earlier. From my apartment in the middle tier, I could see both worlds: above, the gleaming spires where the directors lived, their homes fed by water pumped from below; and beneath, the sprawling network of floating villages where the water-workers lived, harvesting algae and operating the massive desalination engines that kept the city alive.
I belonged to neither world. As an archivist, I catalogued what remained of the drowned cities of Southasia – Mumbai, Chennai, Karachi, Colombo – all now existing only in digital memory and in the salvage brought up by the divers.