Alfred first learned of power when he was a small child standing in the Governor’s office in Port Blair. A massive map covered the wall behind the Governor’s seat. Its borders were drawn in thick black strokes that cut across different land masses, continents, and islands. The lines ignored rivers, villages, and the paths people had walked for generations. To his father, a mid‑level colonial official, the map was ‘order.’ To Alfred, even then, it felt strangely hollow, as though something essential had been scrapped away.
   As he grew older and later on became a translator for the British Indian administration, he slowly began to understand what kept the empire together. As he travelled through the Empire’s territories from the Malay peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, he often heard officials confidently talking about the “survival of the fittest,” insisting that the most “advanced” nations were naturally meant to rule. Others claimed they were civilizing the colonial subjects, completely disregarding cultures and societies that had existed for millennia. Some even carried charts of skulls, arguing that intelligence could be measured by the bones of individuals. All it took were a few frank conversations with the colonial subjects for Alfred to understand that these talks were nothing but stories those with power told themselves to justify taking what was not theirs.
   The Empire’s hunger grew quick. Steamships arrived at ports across territories, their iron hulls swallowing spices, rubber, palm oil, ivory, anything that could be sold, traded, or transformed into profit. Alfred watched as local markets were reorganized to serve distant factories in Manchester and Birmingham. Villages that once grew food for themselves now harvested cash crops they could never consume, produced for ships they would never board.
   Everywhere he went, Alfred saw the same pattern. The lands and people filled with riches, and the Empire seeking everything it held. Forests were cleared, replaced with mines. The people who live on the land were left with nothing but meager wages and a sense of patriotism for a country that never accepted them as their own.
   As Alfred travelled deeper into different territories of the Empire, he began to notice the borders drawn by noblemen sitting in their palaces had far more consequences no map could capture. In Africa, he met families whose tribes had been split by straight linear lines by men sitting all the way in Berlin, Europe during the Berlin Conference, lines that ignored languages, cultures, and rivalries. 
   In British Malaya, he saw bustling ports where the Union Jack fluttered over warehouses and customs offices. Local merchants were pushed aside by British companies that claimed monopolies over spices and textiles. 
   He traveled to Egypt and stood at the edge of the Suez Canal, watching ships pass through the narrow waterway. British officers spoke proudly of strategic importance, of how it shortened the route to India and strengthened the crown’s reach. But Alfred also met Arab laborers who had been forced to dig the canal under brutal conditions, many of whom had died long before the first ship even passed through.
   In Hong Kong, Alfred witnessed the uneasy calm after the Opium Wars. European powers had carved the country into “spheres of influence,” each claiming the right to trade, govern, or intervene.
   The more Alfred saw, the more he understood that imperialism did not always look like conquest. Sometimes it looked like a school where young children were taught to admire the Empire more than their own ancestors.  Sometimes it looked like a ledger book that reduced entire communities to numbers and statistics.
   Yet, Alfred also saw resistance. He met elders who continued to tell their tales in their own languages. He saw artisans who preserved traditional crafts despite the influx of cheaper European cloth. These were small acts, but powerful ones in meaning.
   Years later, Alfred returned to Port Blair, and the Governor’s office, which was now abandoned. The map still hung on the wall, though its colors had faded and its edges curled. The map he used to see as enormous and a symbol of power now seemed different. It seemed a symbol of ambition instead, ambition of men who believed they had the right to draw the world according to their desires.