The Last Village

We all knew that this day would come.

I was an ordinary little girl living in a small fishing village in Chennai. I remember whenever my papa turned on the TV, I would see some old white-haired man talking about the danger that was coming. We should do something, they said. This problem can be prevented as if saying it enough times would make it true. And then came the blame: you use too much oil. As though they hadn’t spent the past centuries doing exactly that. But no one cared. No one did anything.

Years later, it wasn’t just the men on TV anymore. Everyone around us started saying it too. We are all going to be destroyed. But still, nothing changed. Because those of us who wanted to act couldn’t. And those who could, didn’t care.

Some people began to leave the village. The poorest among us had nowhere to go. So we stayed and watched, day by day, as the sea swallowed our village a little more. First the floors disappeared under water. People got used to it, the way water eventually finds its level. They learned to live with their feet submerged, walking through their own homes as though wading through a shallow river.

Then the water reached their chests.

Mothers, terrified of losing their children, tied them to plastic bottles and old rubber tires to keep them from sinking. Those who remained tried to carry on with their old lives, pretending nothing had changed. Everyone believed their days were numbered.

And then something happened that no one had expected.

The children noticed it first. Their skin seemed to be changing , scales were appearing on their feet, small and pale at first, then bright, then vivid. The whole village was terrified the first time old Uma gave birth to a child that was more fish than human. They accused her of consorting with the devil. But not long after, strange formations began appearing on everyone’s hands and feet, and slowly they accepted this too.

No one outside the village ever knew. When the world began to drown us, it turned its back. No one likes to watch people suffer. If a single person sees someone in pain and does nothing, the guilt is unbearable. But the more that shame is shared among a crowd, the lighter it becomes, until no one feels it at all.

And then, finally, the day came. The rising waters reached two meters. But we were no longer afraid.

We had all made it through the transformation. Where our legs used to be, there were now tails that are magnificent, shimmering, covered in scales of every color. Gills had opened along both sides of our faces, and we found we could breathe just as easily beneath the surface as above it. When everyone fell silent, all the old grievances were forgotten too. Now there was only the quiet joy of existing alongside one another.

We lined up, side by side, and waited for the last building in the village to slip beneath the waves.

And when it did, we dove. And for the first time, we were free.