New Years of Water

(draft — to be rewritten from the ledger) The old new year of Southeast Asia — Songkran in Thailand, Thingyan in Myanmar — began as pouring water over Buddha images and the hands of elders in blessing. It grew into citywide water battles that now draw the world. Timkat, the Ethiopian epiphany, renews the year with water in the same shape — a reading this map holds as its own, to be tested in the ledger.