bhaskar saikia

(a fiction story)

The old man sat by the frozen cliffs of Antarctica, staring at the endless horizon. Twenty years had passed since the Great War, though no one really counted time anymore. Time had died with the cities, the skyscrapers, the stock exchanges, and the buzzing clocks that once ruled men’s lives.

Beside him stood his granddaughter, Aaria, her face pale but her eyes burning with purpose. She was all he had left. His wife, his sons, his daughters—all vanished in the firestorms that consumed Eurasia and North America.

Now, humanity numbered no more than a hundred and fifty thousand souls, scattered across three continents: the icy refuge of Antarctica, the hunting grounds of South America, and the forests of mid-southern Africa.

But Antarctica was home. Its cold winds had shielded them from the radiation. Its long days and endless nights had taught them to live without calendars. People worked when their bodies asked them to, and rested when their spirits gave in. No deadlines. No alarms. No rush.

Yet the old man feared for Aaria.

She had volunteered for the first spaceflight test crew—a desperate attempt to search for another planet before this one perished. “We cannot hide in ice forever, Grandfather,” she often told him. “We must look beyond the stars.”

He admired her courage, but his heart trembled. The last civilization had built rockets, yes—but those minds, those books, that technology had all burned in the war. Now, they had only fragments, scattered pages salvaged from the rubble. To him, her dream felt like walking into the dark with nothing but a dying flame.

Still, Aaria was unshaken.

In their village of five hundred souls, governed by the oldest elder, food was distributed by need, not greed. Marriage was celebrated, but childbirth was tightly controlled—every new life required the village’s consent. “Love must not die again,” the elders often said. “It was the death of love that gave birth to war.”

The old man agreed. He remembered a world once divided by money, fear, and power. Perhaps, in some strange way, this shattered Earth was better—stripped of greed, rich with peace. But for how long? The rivers were drying, fresh water dwindling, and the radiation creeping closer each year.

One evening, Aaria stood by the warehouse where food was stored, her voice steady:
“Grandfather, I know you wish for me to marry, to have a family. But my heart belongs to the future. If we fail to look beyond, there will be no one left to love, no world to marry into.”

He looked at her, the last branch of his family tree, and for the first time, he felt the weight of both despair and pride. Perhaps love, true love, was not in keeping her safe by his side—but in letting her walk into danger, carrying humanity’s fragile hope in her hands.

That night, as the polar winds howled and the auroras danced across the torn skies, he whispered to himself:

“The world after death is not the end. It is a beginning.
Not for me, but for her. For them. For the love that refused to die.”

And as Aaria prepared for the uncertain voyage beyond the Earth, the old man closed his eyes, unsure if he would ever wake to see her return. But he smiled. For in her courage, he saw the first dawn after the longest night.