Nondon Kanon

 Nondon Kanon (Garden of Eden) was as much an enigma as it was a wonder. Surrounded by walls which were four-men high and canals which were a man deep, it looked like a vast and mighty fortress. Fortified it was; the walls were several yards thick, and though they were made of earth they were sturdy beyond imagination. The reinforced mud was embedded with bamboo and timber casings while the mud itself was mixed with straws. Baked by the scorching Sun, the walls hardened into a petrified mass. But these weren't mere boundary walls and neither were they as thick as they appeared to be. True, at the base, the walls were as thick as the heights of two full-grown men combined, but they were only half as thick on the upper-half. Crowned with battlements which could accommodate thousands of soldiers, the walls posed a grim deterrence for any invaders. But inside their thick, hard outer shell the walls were actually hollow; housing numerous rooms, corridors, and stairways. In effect, the walls were actually four interlocked fortresses; five thousand soldiers and a year's supply for them the fortresses could house. But Nondon Kanon barely had a thousand soldiers, just about the number necessary to guard it and patrol its surroundings.

But more than the inadequate number of soldiers, more surprising was what the walls guarded inside them. It wasn't any garrison, or a city, or even some palace that they had in their womb. The sprawling inside was an immaculately laid patchwork of fields, canals, ponds, and four huge towers with domed roofs, and walls as thick as the upper-layer of the boundary walls. Though the towers were as high as the walls, they were totally hidden from the outside. Their bottom segments were used as stables and toolsheds, the middle segments as granaries and storages, and the top segments as watch-towers and guard-posts. The two-storied walls (or the fortresses) also had spaces for stables, storages, workshops, and, accommodations for thousands of inhabitants of Nondon Kanon. With its own governor and commander, and their treasury and armoury, Nondon Kanon wasn't a walled city, it was a city living in the walls.

Situated on the bank of Chadni, it stood like a lonely sentinel guarding the frontier. Out in the middle of nowhere, it stood like defiance to the wilderness. Very few travellers and traders came that way, trading and travelling were far more convenient and safe down the Ruposi further south. Only the daring and the desperate would come that way and bandits and wild animals would be the frequent visitors. Most people were puzzled when it all began. 'Why not build it at the confluence of Osru and Voboghure, it would be easier to defend and manage from Nisorgo' most said. 'At least, build it at the confluence of Ruposi and Chadni; transportation would be easier by Ruposi and the riverside lands won't need irrigation' others pointed. The northern lands were barely inhabited; beyond Nisorgo, the vast expanse between Matonggini and Chadni had very few settlements. Though it was a fertile land, it was a wild country and water ran off quickly in this hard and high land. Building settlements here not only meant fighting the beasts and the bandits but it also required building a network of reservoirs and canals to store the water. The country had so far prospered on the bounty of soft and wet southern lands. It was the desolate north that now held the key to future prosperity.

Profullo (Joyous), the sordar from Nokkhottro, loved an adventure. Barely into his youth, he ran away from home and hid in a ship, hoping to go on a voyage to the unknown. Unfortunately, he fell asleep and was caught during the routine inspection before the voyage. Fortunately, his daring was deemed adequate to be enlisted in the army. The life of a soldier wasn't exactly full of adventures, but it had its excitement. He was living his dreams during the expeditions to Jongol Mohol, although he was terribly disappointed when he was left at Nokkhottro while commander Mitro spent a year in the forest realm. Moloy (wind) worked at the port of Nisorgo. He had a shocking few weeks when he first started; with each warehouse, a jumble of an assortment of goods, loading and unloading was a nightmare. People carrying sacks of rice tripping over baskets of fish or oil from broken jars ruining bales of cloth were acceptable phenomenon. 'This is madness, and I know how to sort this' he told his superior after some weeks. He would have been dismissed off-hand if his superior wasn't shaken by the loud crashing noise that came from one of the warehouses. Soon, warehouses were designated with specific goods. This, however, created some discontent among the cart drivers as they now had to move from warehouse to warehouse to collect different goods. This was solved easily as the drivers were instructed either to carry a single product or to wait behind the queue.

Though the governor and the commander of Nisorgo would visit them regularly, it soon became obvious that the building of Nondon Kanon was in able hands. But it was a humongous project and it would take years to complete even with the abundance of sweat and wit. The first year was the worst, there was barely much water around and not just the numerous workers, but the construction itself also needed lots of water. The encampment was set near the river so the people would have easy access to water, while wells were dug in the worksite for water for the construction. While a team of workers started digging a reservoir, another team started to build the fortress with the earth dug from the reservoir. But even with many wells, there wasn't enough water to continue the building for long. The construction workers then switched to clearing the nearby forest and making lumber. Once, a team of woodcutters noticed a bad smell and after some searching, they discovered a half-eaten deer carcass hidden in the undergrowth. A tiger is never far from his kill and the woodcutters returned without delay. Bathing too was perilous as the crocodiles would wait on the shoals for the workers to get in the water. And although the bandits didn't dare attack such a big camp, every patrol found traces of them lurking around.

The water became less of a headache with the reservoir and the wells filled by rains during the preceding monsoon. The completed part of the fortress could now be used for storage and accommodation, lessening the need to ferry goods and people from the river-side encampment. All these meant the work picked up the pace in the second year. There were setbacks too, rains had weakened parts of the fortress and they needed to be reinforced. Even the water from the brimming reservoir and wells wasn't enough to complete the first layer of the fortified perimeter. More reservoirs were dug, as was a network of canals to channel water all across the area. The canals would also channel out the excess water and prevent flooding and waterlogging. By the end of the third year, Nondon Kanon was a vast space with three huge reservoirs connected with a network of canals and all these secured within four fortified walls. The number of construction workers fell dramatically as their major work was completed. But the city population swelled with the arrival of farmers, craftsmen, and tradesmen. Lands were tilled, markets sprung up, and workshops started ringing with the clangs of hammers and swirls of wheels.

As the next dry season came, Nondon Kanon with its lush fields and pristine lakes glowed like an emerald in its dry desolate surroundings.