Helsinki's Story

I met Helsinki, and her sister Cairo, entirely by accident, on the 12th of May, 2026.

That afternoon I was driving through the mountain roads of Nagaland, on my way to Dzüleke — Dzuluki, as it's sometimes written. It was close to two in the afternoon, and I was moving slowly, maybe forty kilometers an hour, along a narrow road where vehicles passed often and without much warning. Out of nowhere, I caught sight of two tiny kittens standing at the roadside.

There was nowhere to stop right there, so I parked about thirty meters ahead and hurried back on foot. By the time I reached the spot, they were gone.

I spent nearly half an hour searching — the roadside, the bushes, the slope of the nearby hillside. Nothing. Eventually I told myself they'd gone back into the forest with their mother, and I got back in the car and kept driving.

But I couldn't stop thinking about them.

The road ahead was narrow too, often lost in fog, and vehicles moved through those hills faster than they should. There was no food or water anywhere near where I'd seen them, and just below the road the mountainside dropped almost two hundred meters to a river. The place was about as isolated as it gets — Khonoma, the nearest village behind me, was some ten kilometers back; Dzüleke was still twenty ahead. If those kittens really were out there alone, their odds were not good.

I cancelled my plans to stay in Dzüleke, turned the car around, and drove back to the same place. It was almost five by the time I got there. In the Nagaland hills, light fades fast once the afternoon turns — and it was already turning.

I searched more carefully this time.

And finally, I found them.

They'd wedged themselves inside an old tar drum, left behind from some earlier road construction — full of dust, more of it stirred up every time a vehicle passed. Both kittens were frightened, worn out, filthy with it.

I looked for their mother and found no sign of her. There were more drums further down the slope, but reaching them safely before dark wasn't possible. She may have been down there. She may never have come back at all. I'll never know which.

The kittens were barely a month and ten days old — old enough to walk, but only in small, uncertain steps.

I picked up Cairo first.

Then I reached for Helsinki.

She was the more frightened of the two. She tried to burrow deeper into the drum, then tried to climb down the hillside itself — toward that same two-hundred-meter drop. It took time, and gentleness, and a lot of quiet reassurance before I could finally hold her safely.