In this version of the universe, at the beginning of time, there were no maps, no lights or street signs to guide us. There were only three friends. They had a little piece of land that they called home, and they would go to the outskirts every day to look at the sea and wonder if there would be more to call home and more to see beyond their mini-island. One day, one of them said begrudgingly, I wish we had a cottage right next to the southern edge. The other two shook their heads and the youngest of them said, I believe the cottage is already there, isn’t it? He was playing make-believe. For some reason the first two nodded grinning. All we need to do now is to make a signboard that says so. So they made a signboard of their make-believe cottage, put it up at the southern edge. Other people on the island saw this sign but they were in too much of a hurry to check it out, they just believed what it said and moved on. A few days later, the three friends were surprised to find that there was now a real cottage behind their signboard. They did not know how it happened or who was responsible, but they had a theory. That if enough people believed something existed, it became true.
So they hatched a plan to slowly keep expanding the island, with new shops, hotels, residential areas, all through new signboards. They saw new people popping up with new places they named. Then the three friends first made a map of the world as they called it, and started putting it out there in schools. The children would believe anything they were taught, so this world became stronger and more true as the days went by. Mapmakers and storytellers were the most skillful in sewing a cohesive narrative. Unbeknownst to the children, they were infact the gods of many island and coastal nations. When the first time a child travels to a land that her faith helped conjure, the creation is finally complete.
But there were other people who caught onto the trick of expanding the world, they started going on expeditions, announcing new land to be found and sometimes succeeding in finding whole new continents, thanks to the belief behind them. Thus the map had to be updated every once in a while. This is how we ended up with the map today. Even today, there are people who conjure up new places in place of rivers, we call them land-grabbers, but maybe they are also just practicing what the three friends began the world by doing, conjuring up new places.
Dhaka
February 2021
