Shon Mehta

The Governor of Trishala was by all accounts a decent man. Though he never visited the poor, they were always in his thoughts and prayers. When the poor's plight was read aloud to him, he often sighed and tapped his forehead, for their suffering genuinely touched him. The people of the Lower Town, where these poor resided, called him the first caring governor. The Lower Town had a network of canals, which had become blocked due to poor upkeep. Every rainy season, when these blocked canals flooded, fever swept amid the poor who lived beside these canals. "To fight this," the caring governor declared, "we must record and compensate for every suffering. No victim, however small, shall go unnoticed." And so, he established a Grand Archive of Suffering. The Grand Archive employed a thousand scribes, each assigned to a poor family in the Lower Town. For months, these scribes documented every cough, every sleepless night, every life lost to fever. Vast ledgers ranked s...

They say that if you are born in Sonira, you won't be jealous of heaven -- and if you are born in Igati, you won't be afraid of hell.  But for the people of Trishala, their city was their glorious heaven, and it was their living hell. ―   Shon Mehta, The Timingila