The Market of Hunger
The sun was still rising when Ganesh stepped into the open market outside a small Southern town. The place was noisy—people shouting over the price of rice, bread, and potatoes. Everything cost more than it did last week. Rumor had it prices would rise again. The warehouses were full, the fields had yielded well, but the middlemen had kept the stock locked up.
“Rice is too high,” Ganesh muttered. “Even potatoes cost like gold.”
A stranger beside him replied softly, “Not everything is expensive. Some things are cheap.”
Ganesh looked at him. The man was tall, quiet, dressed in a wrinkled jacket. “Cheap? What’s cheap these days?”
The stranger leaned closer. “Guns.”
Ganesh blinked. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not,” the man said with a grin. “Come with me. You’ll see.”
The crowd’s noise swelled like a storm. They moved through the market, past the vegetable stalls and into an open field. There, under a tent, loudspeakers blared pop songs while a crowd jostled for space. A salesman shouted over the noise, “Rifles on installment! Ten bullets for a dollar! Freedom, my friends—freedom!”
Ganesh stared in disbelief.
“Why would I buy a gun?” he asked.
The stranger’s tone turned hard. “To take what’s yours. You can’t afford food—but with this, you can make others share.”
Ganesh stepped back. “And when everyone has guns?”
The man laughed. “Then the world begins again.”
The Hunger Game
By noon, the market roared. The poor were being pushed out by guards with batons, shouting, “No beggars allowed! No vagrants!”
Ganesh saw an old man—homeless, hungry—get kicked into the dust. “Go to the riverbank!” they yelled. “The market’s for buyers, not beggars!”
Ganesh whispered, “Then what’s left for people like him?”
The stranger didn’t answer. His eyes gleamed. “You can’t eat rice if you have no money. But you can change the rules if you hold power.”
He held up a gleaming revolver. “The company wants every home armed. Chaos keeps the market alive.”
Ganesh shook his head. “You mean war.”
“War,” the man said quietly, “is business.”
Ganesh walked away through the crowd. His voice trembled, “I only came here to find my stolen bicycle… not to start a war.”
The man called after him, “When hunger comes, everyone starts one.”
The Man of Appetite
Far away, in a sleek limousine driving along a forest road, another man spoke about hunger—but from the opposite side of the world.
He was a wealthy industrialist named Mr. Harlan Pierce, a man whose companies owned half the state’s farmland and much of its water rights. Sitting beside him was his assistant, a dark-skinned immigrant named Sam.
“I believe,” Pierce said, sipping his mineral water, “that hunger is exaggerated. People eat too much. Moderation keeps the body fit.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam replied softly.
“I eat two eggs, toast, and milk for breakfast,” Pierce continued. “Lunch—light salad, maybe fish. Dinner—only chicken or fruit. Perfectly enough. So where’s the hunger crisis?”
Sam didn’t answer.
Pierce went on, “They say people in rural areas starve. But they don’t need much. They’re used to eating less.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pierce turned to him. “You grew up poor, didn’t you? What did you eat back then?”
Sam hesitated. “A lot of things, sir.”
“Like what?”
He swallowed. How could he say it? That as a child in a far-off forest village, he’d eaten roots, berries, and once—mud that tasted sweet after rain.
He said instead, “I don’t remember, sir.”
Pierce chuckled. “Selective memory. You’ve adapted well to civilization.”
The Forgotten Taste of Earth
The car passed through the pine woods. Pierce stared out at the wilderness. “You know, they say your people make liquor from forest herbs. You know how that’s done?”
Sam shook his head. “I’ve forgotten, sir.”
“What do you remember?”
Sam looked out the window. “The soil.”
“The soil?”
“Yes, sir. Where I come from, when we had nothing to eat, my mother took me to a hill—she called it Sweet Mountain. The dirt there… tasted like honey. Just a pinch and your stomach stopped hurting.”
Pierce frowned. “A mountain that gives food? That’s superstition.”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “But it saved lives.”
Pierce’s eyes lit up. “Where is this mountain?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve forgotten.”
He hadn’t forgotten. He simply refused to tell. He knew what would happen if the rich ever found the mountain again.
The Call to the Authorities
When they reached the city bungalow that night, Pierce called the local sheriff.
“There’s a man with me,” he said. “I think he’s hiding something. Maybe a terrorist. He spoke about a ‘Sweet Mountain.’ Check it out. Might be a code name for a base.”
“Yes, sir,” came the answer.
By midnight, officers burst into Sam’s quarters. They dragged him to interrogation.
“Where’s Sweet Mountain?” they demanded.
He said nothing. They beat him, questioned him, burned his palms with cigarettes. He vomited blood—and with it, fragments of his past: the taste of clay, the smell of rain, the songs his mother sang while digging up edible roots.
He whispered one last time, “Sweet Mountain… feeds the poor. Don’t let them find it.”
The Mountain They’ll Never Find
Days later, reports came in. The “Sweet Mountain” didn’t exist on any map. Still, companies began digging near the forests, turning over the land, mining the soil to sell as “nutrient clay.”
Pierce’s corporation bought the rights. “If the mountain feeds,” he said, “then we’ll package it.”
But Sam was gone. His body was buried quietly behind the detention center.
And deep in some unknown forest, beyond the reach of roads or greed, Sweet Mountain waited. The soil slept beneath wildflowers, untouched, unbought.
Perhaps the earth itself had hidden it away—knowing that if humans found it again, they’d sell even hunger.
