by Anushka G., 17
“You bet on horses, don’t you? It’s the same here. You’re our horses.”
There’s a town on the other side of the hill. Mr. Malrick lives there. He watches through his tinted window glasses and bets on the peasants who plough his fields.
He laughs.
The peasants can’t see through the towering walls painted delicately with blood.
He sips on his cup of tea, tucks his children in and goes to sleep knowing that while the city burns, his windows stay soundproof. The next morning, he wakes up and gets an idea. He picks up a duster and erases the borders he had drawn on the map, on his crystal studded wall. The world obeys.
So it happens, the vibrant colours on the world’s gigantic palette begin to mix. At first, the world blends into a magnificent kaleidoscope of cultures, customs, and beliefs. Languages tumble into each other like rivers meeting at the delta. Spices cross oceans, stories leap across time zones. Children learn lullabies in five tongues and dream in colours no one can name.
It’s beautiful, until it’s not.
As the mixing continues, what was once vibrant becomes muddled. The palette turns murky, every shade swallowed into a dull, lifeless grey-brown—a color with no identity, no soul. What began as beauty ends in chaos. The lines once drawn to divide begin to haunt the world in their absence. Where borders once constrained, now chaos breathes free. But Mr. Malrick’s garden remains the same. He has stopped betting on peasants now. Instead, he bets on who can survive the longest in a world where nothing belongs to anyone and everything is up for sale.
Mr. Malrick is doing just fine. He has built invisible fences around his house. He is safe, safe from the loud, fighting, screaming peasants. He sips tea in his bathrobe and watches on his expensive television screen, people holding paper kites in a hurricane. “They’re so stupid,” his children say. At a tiny corner of the living room, the duster still lies. Nationalism dies. With no flag to protect, no identity to hold on to, the peasants compete to survive. Life is now a game. The best performer gets to live.
Mr. Malrick doesn’t believe in God. But he told the peasants that their God needs to be protected. He hands them a butcher’s knife, leans back on his couch and watches as they stain his garden red. “The rain will wash it away,” he says.
Mr. Malrick was woken up today by a noise—a shrill, terrifying voice slicing through the air, penetrating his soundproof windows. A woman sings an old folk tune to a crying child. The muffled cries, screams, and helpless chants seem to become louder every second. He sees a fire. It seems to emerge from the other side of the hill. The fire grows. It might reach him any moment now. What should he do? Who should he call for? No matter how high he builds his fortress, when the world burns, so will his home.
As the flames kiss his abode, he hears a cry from the peasants—“We are not horses. We are humans. And humans are …”
West Bengal, India
Bridge Ink 