Narrative series

Across the Bay

Kalinga's maritime world — civilizational transfer to Southeast Asia, modern eastern opportunities.

8 chapters · 54,651 words

Read the series introduction →

Chapters

  1. 01 Chapter 1: The Evidence in the Ground In 1989, a team from the Odishan Institute of Maritime and Southeast Asian Studies began digging at Manikapatna, a village on the coast of Chilika Lake, in Puri district. The site had been identified as a potential ancient port — the geography was right, with the lake providing a 7,083 words
  2. 02 Chapter 2: The Goods and the Routes On the full moon of Kartik — sometime in late October or November, depending on the year — the banks of the Mahanadi in Cuttack fill with people. Families gather at the ghats before dawn. Children carry miniature boats fashioned from banana stems, sholapith, colored paper, and co 6,472 words
  3. 03 Chapter 3: The Civilization They Carried In a village in southern Odisha's Ganjam district, a puppeteer stretches a piece of deer leather behind a white cotton screen. An oil lamp flickers behind the screen, casting a warm glow. The puppeteer — the Dalai Guru, the master artist — begins to manipulate the flat leather fi 8,212 words
  4. 04 Chapter 4: How the Connection Died In 1989, archaeologists from the Odishan Institute of Maritime and Southeast Asian Studies began trial excavations at Manikapatna, a village on the coast of Chilika Lake in Puri district. They were digging through what they suspected was the remains of an ancient port. What they 6,144 words
  5. 05 Chapter 5: The Forgetting and the Remembering On the night of 21 July 1947, a twin-engine Dakota lifted off from Jakarta with a cargo that no manifest could properly describe. At the controls was Biju Patnaik — thirty-one years old, Odia, a pilot who had trained at the Delhi Flying Club at seventeen and joined the Royal Indi 6,094 words
  6. 06 Chapter 6: What Odisha Has Done On January 28, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked onto the stage at Janata Maidan in Bhubaneswar to inaugurate Utkarsh Odisha -- the fourth iteration of the Make in Odisha conclave. Behind him, a digital screen displayed the number that would dominate the next day's headli 6,028 words
  7. 07 Chapter 7: Where the Boita Could Sail In January 2025, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stood at the 18th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Bhubaneswar and declared: "The Look East policy has its historical roots in this state. The Bali Yatra, which linked India to South East Asia, actually originated in Odisha." The 6,917 words
  8. 08 Chapter 8: The Return Voyage In November 2024, a cargo ship departed Paradip Port loaded with iron ore pellets bound for a steel mill in Vietnam. The cargo was worth roughly forty dollars a tonne. A thousand years earlier, a sadhaba's boita departing from the same stretch of coastline — probably from Manikap 7,701 words

Source Research

The raw research that informs this series.