It's April 2036. Heavy glacier melts in the Himalayas have created a massive floodplain around the Yamuna, displacing over 12 million people. The river has flooded almost all of the low lying areas around, causing civil unrest, breakout of looting and plunder, widespread disease, leading to mass disbursement of rations. The chaos has resulted in large fortifications around all the higher areas, including one of the seven wonders of the world, the heritage monument Taj Mahal. Soon, fortifications enter the monument itself, and the defence force teams begin to construct armoured scaffoldings over its white marble contours. The massive deployment of armed forces and the now, almost floating monument resulted in it being commissioned as India’s second indigenous warship—the INS Taj is  assembled in under two years, at a complete cost of just Rs 8,500 crore.”

This story reads like a page out of a dystopian novel. But on Ayaz Basrai’s Instagram page @thebusride, this hellish tale of how a paradise is lost to a calamity, comes alive in illustrated, speculative renderings.