Literature
The purple sea
It is the strangest thing. I stand in Nagapattinam. The beautiful town hailed as the pearl of the coast. Fishermen, merchants, and shipping agents drawing their lineage back to before the Moguls have ventured forth to the fish banks and the ports beyond the horizon. I welcomed a hundred rulers and barred a hundred conquerors. For a while, at least. My temples are older than most countries, and my marketplace has seen traders who did business with Alexander the Great and the Roman empire. Yet, here I stand. And has since the year of their lord 1782. Stacks of carved rocks tied with mortar. A monument over the defeat of my own town. Kingdoms come and go. Rulers rise and fall. The gods themselves merely borrow their time.
Do not pity me. I remember the elephants rubbing their trunks against my pillars. The hundreds of spices. Perfumes. Fermented fish. Silk, cotton, linen, and wool drying in the evening breeze. Waves gently rolling in or breaking against the shore like raging gods. A
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