This story is part of the Himal Fiction Fest 2025, a showcase of original Southasian speculative fiction.
Also read: Himal Fiction Fest 2025: 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.