Nazrul’s ‘Aamar Shyamla Boron Bangla Mar Roop’(The Dusky Beauty of My Mother Bengal) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Who can Blow Out the Sun?, a Balochi poem by Ghulam Hussain Shohaz, has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Clickhere to read.
Chapter 3of Isa Kamari’s novel, The Throne,has been translated by the author from Malay. We will be running the whole novel as serial through the year. Click here to read.
Half-a-beat Behind, a poem, has been written by and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.
Pothik (Traveller), a poem by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.
Art by Salvador Dali (1904-1989). From Public Domain
Humans for a long time lived in a world that was centred around them. The planets, plants, animals existed to serve them. The resultant effect was not exactly what could be called ‘pleasant’. Climate change and extinctions are proof of that. One cannot of course be held responsible for the extinction of giant dinosaurs for they were long gone before us. Would we have existed in our current form if they had not become extinct?
Perhaps, part of evolution is extinction of the old and birth of the new. However, we are the only species to have used the planet to suit our own needs. We evolved technology. Technology birthed computers and eventually, artificial intelligence. Almost a century ago, Isaac Asimov spun out science fiction about robots terraforming worlds for men. In these novels, he had instituted the laws of robotics, so that they would not harm humans. His robots were humanoids with AI.
As humanity races towards a tech savvy existence with AI taking on roles which were essentially human tasks, perhaps, we have to ask ourselves some salient questions. Ravi Varmman K Kanniapan has voiced such valid concerns over the deployment of AI in his essay. He writes: “The question should not merely be whether artificial intelligence can make institutions faster, cheaper, or more productive. The deeper question is, for whom?” While pondering over this issue, if we take a look at Farouk Gulsara’s experiences pedalling through Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan, one wonders if AI impacts the whole world or will it deepen divides between technocrats and people who live closer to nature! Sailing through the Australian seas, Meredith Stephens takes us on an adventure to Port Hedland. Her narrative is accompanied by beautiful photographs by Alan Noble.
While Suzanne Kamata introduces us to mores on the artistic ethos of Japan, Jun A Alindogan expresses concerns over linguistic forays. Saeed Ibrahim steps into nostalgia taking us to a tiny town called Deolali and Kuldip Raj Chopra muses philosophically gazing back and forth to reflect on life lessons. In a contrary vein, Devraj Singh Kalsi splashes comic frivolity as he describes his attempts at purchasing bedsheets!
Niaz Zaman has shared a learned essay on women writers in Nazrul’s magazine, Dhumketu (Comet), in the early twentieth century, while Professor Fakrul Alam has translated the lyrics of a song by the poet from Bengal. Fazal Baloch has brought to us a powerful Balochi poem by the late Ghulam Hussain Shohaz in English. Isa Kamari has shared the third chapter of his self-translated Malay novel, The Throne, weaving in life in the newly-minted Singapore of the mid-twentieth century. Ihlwha Choi has translated his own Korean poem on how he found poetry. Winding up the translations, is a poem by Tagore called Pothik (traveller).
We have an interesting excerpt from a ‘The Brown Hand’, a spooky story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from The Raj in Ghostly Light, edited by B.C.Dutt. One has to realise while reading such stories that what is seen as a controversial attitude in today’s world could well have been an accepted norm a century or two ago. We have another excerpt from a more modern non-fiction — Bhaskar Parichha’s recent translation from Odia of Janaki Ballav Patnaik: An Unfinished Memoir. Describing the art of tattooing is yet another excerpt from a story by Hannah Stevens, a writer shortlisted for the W&A Working Class Writers’ Prize, which follows her conversation with Keith Lyons.
Short stories have wound their way into our reviews section too. Somdatta Mandal has discussed Geetanjali Shree’s Once Elephants Lived Here: Stories, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Mandal writes: “The book…presents a great challenge to the layman reader who cannot simply pick it up and start reading at leisure. One must read meticulously, ponder over the distortion of the usual short story genre, keep track of the convoluted or sometimes half-finished sentences and wonder where the narrator or the protagonist of the story is leading you – sometimes round and round and without reaching a denouement. All said and done, one must pick up this book to savour how post-modern storytelling can become an art in itself.” Rakhi Dalal has written about Teresa Rehman’s Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assamwhile Farah Imam elaborates on Raina/Rituparna Khan’s Her Story: Beyond Dimension. Parichha has brought to us Reetika Khera’s Freebies or Rights: Rethinking India’s Social Policy. He writes: “Freebies or Rights presents a case for seeing social protection not as charity, but as part of the infrastructure of a democratic society. Its central message is both simple and consequential: dignity cannot be secured by economic growth alone. For millions of Indians, it also depends on whether the state can make basic rights real in everyday life.”
Though we reflect on diverse themes in this issue, the collective concern is for the welfare of our species, our planet and our very existence, occasionally drizzled with humour. Do pause by our contents page to browse on our October issue.
We are hugely grateful to all the contributors, our team who step in to help create the content and put it before all our readers, especially Sohana Manzoor for her wonderful artwork. We remain thankful to all our readers without who our efforts would be in vain.
Pothik or travellerby Rabindranath Tagore first featured in his collection called Kheya (Ferry), published in 1906.
TRAVELLER
O traveller, will you go at this hour?
It’s deep dark at this time.
By the river, the tamal woods
Dissolve into the night.
Lamps have been lit in our hearths.
The flute plays a touching tune.
The floral garlands are still fresh.
Young eyes are still awake.
Is it time for your farewell?
Will you leave, O traveller?
We have not tied you down.
We have not barricaded your path.
Your horse is ready to trot.
Look outside, your carriage awaits.
The only thing that holds you back
Is a plaintive, melancholic song.
I only wanted to keep you
Within my sight.
O traveller, we have no strength,
Only these tears shed by our eyes.
Then why this weariness,
Why is your glance indecisive?
I do not know what message
The darkness has brought to you.
The seven sages seem to have cast a spell
From the celestial spheres —
In the shadows of the night, the stream
Floats wordlessly to bewitch your heart.
Voiceless, unknown, strange,
Who is the harbinger?
If you do not like this fiesta,
If your soul does not find peace,
Then, we’ll turn off the lamps,
Stop playing the flute.
We’ll contemplate in absolute darkness.
The crickets will chirp in the woods.
The new moon will glance
At you from the window.
O traveller, brimming with wanderlust,
Why are you restless on this dark night?
Painting by Sohana Manzoor
This poem has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravartywith editorial input by Sohana Manzoor.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
It’s never an easy or pleasant position to be fated to alternate fusion with fission and I failed to foresee the historical drama that waits for drapes in a wide panorama.
That’s right, I’m a curtain…
Many things in this world are mysterious but of this simple fact I’m certain. Humans are humans, and satin is satin, and curtains speak in a kind of Latin.
Don’t ask me why, I don’t know, but of my life I can give you an account blow by blow. Ready, steady? Go!
Most curtains are torn from their rings once every decade: discarded, forgotten, terribly decayed, unless you are owned by a family insane, who might keep you hanging for centuries and rotting in vain.
What a dreadful pain! Rotting in vain! Until you are mostly a collection of holes with very small bodies and very big souls.
I never possessed a formal name, because naming a curtain is a silly game. When we flap in the breeze with a regular snap, it is strictly the wind, not a psychological slap. Yet do not believe we are totally numb, for into my life did a grand passion come!
What do I mean? Well, I fell in love! What? The absolute real thing! And the object of my devoted affection hung right on my rail in the very same section as myself. She was a curtain too. Let’s say she was my other half!
An eccentric might hang a mismatched pair but ours was a symmetry wondrous and rare. It was her swish and her flutter that caused me to mutter: “Such a delicate rustle, free from aggressive human bustle!”
She rippled because she was morally pure, a curtain of virtue, of that I’m quite sure, but alas! during the day we were pulled clean apart, a fact that brought a great ache to my drapery heart.
My love wasn’t lust (though a physical urge is natural enough when fabrics converge). I wanted her happy, I wanted her free, I wanted her sweet, I’m sure you’ll agree that nicer than misery is unfettered glee.
The room that we guarded was gloomy and grand until one fateful afternoon the roughest hands in the land came knocking and pounding and making a din and several rude bailiffs came marching right in. They carried off tables, they carried off chairs, while the lady of the house wept on the stairs.
The master had expired some weeks before (he used to play the piano there on the floor, generally ragtime and jazz or even Debussy). His sudden cessation of living, you see, had triggered a legal and awful decree.
The furniture went, the room grew so wide, I felt agoraphobia swelling inside! Yet a wild sort of joy made my fabric feel proud: with no clutter to block us our echoes were loud! But human rapacity knows no horizon: the bailiffs stood like men brimming with poison.
“Shall we take the lightbulbs?” one of them cried. “And don’t forget the curtains,” his partner replied. “What about the wallpaper?” “Don’t be a dunce, nobody steals that,” he responded at once.
These words alarmed me, to danger alerted, I rippled ineffectually, hurting and cursing, on the verge of going beserk, but the hands pulled me down with a vicious jerk and into a cylinder tightly I was inserted. Rolled up in the dark, my sensations grew dim, bundled curtains, alas, make romance quite grim.
We were taken away to an auctioneer’s hall where furniture sat in a heap by the wall. And there was my love! But a mountain of chairs kept us totally parted and trapped in despair. The auctioneer hammered and yelled with a shout, selling the piano, paintings, and a stuffed trout.
At last he reached us with a fake little cheer: “A fine pair of curtains!” (As the crowd sneered). I blushed quite invisibly, just a slight change in the way my pattern absorbed the light range. “Come now,” said the man with a mask of a smile, “these drapes are tenacious and have a great style! You don’t have to use them as curtains, you know!”
A grizzled old sea captain called from below: “I’ll take just the one! I don’t need a blasted pair!” And he bought my sweet love for a twopenny fare. With a seaweedy hand, which was horribly wrong, he stuffed my poor girl in his coat deep and long!
Oh, what would that ruffian do to her now? I was quite helpless to kick up a row. The auctioneer shrugged and he gave me away to a middle-aged woman at the end of the day.
Now, hear of my shame! For this lady of vice cut me up with her shears without thinking twice and turned me into a dress! A summer dress too! For a male piece of curtain, it’s painful and blue and I still wish it had never been true. The dress was low-cut and short, and she wore me to bars while drinking her cocktails or watching the stars with disreputable men who would throw me aside on the floor of cheap hotels where I would abide.
If only she’d made me into some trousers or shirts, I’d be slightly less bitter about how deep it hurts! Yet through inductive reasoning, I knew in my soul that my darling was also experiencing a difficult role.
And indeed she was! For that terrible pirate of old had turned her into a jib sail, or so I’ve been told! She flapped in the winds of the Seven Great Seas while the crew made their victims walk planks down on their knees! Ouch and splash and glug!
Then my fortunes grew worse: my owner’s bad cat savaged my fabric while on a wardrobe I sat. I was ripped into ribbons and thrown into the street, flapping in pieces at everyone’s feet. My consciousness stayed in the largest of shreds and I became a sad sequence of ignominious threads.
First a bow in the hair of a little young tot, then a string for a parcel (a miserable lot), then a bird used my fabric to line her spring nest until a storm blew me out and I had no more rest. A tramp found me next, and I say with a groan, he used me to wipe his big nose to the bone!
I feared I’d be worn to molecule size and drift through the atmosphere under the skies. He rolled me up tight and he threw me, for fun, at a passing policeman who started to run. I bounced off his uniform, hit a big truck, and landed in iron ore, cursing my luck!
Meanwhile, my poor love had been blasted by shot sent from a ship that had resisted the pirate-crew lot. Turned into a bandage, a sling, then a piece of waste thrown into the ocean to float with the grease.
A fisherman used her to patch up his net but a vengeful crab snipped her and left her upset. Yet miracles happen! The foundry’s wise chief found me in the ore and provided relief: he let the wind take me, and high did I soar, and I fell by a fence on a beachcomber’s shore.
The woman who lived there collected old rags and stuffed my poor self in the largest of bags. She emptied the sack on her living room table and there sat a sight that was purely a fable!
My beloved was there! In that beautiful heap of velvet and sarsenet, waking from sleep! She’d been used as a fanbelt, and sunk in a boat, then tied round a message in a bottle afloat which smashed on another one out at sea, finally washing up on the beach to be gathered with me!
The beachcomber took us and with needle and thread stitched us together, just as I’ve said. No longer two curtains but merged into one, our painful adventures finally done. We hang in her bedroom in sickness and health, possessing each other, the ultimate wealth.
A lone single curtain can never be parted, so we are secure, completely light-hearted. United forever, in fabric and mind, the happiest drape you ever will find!
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Kolam Art (Captured in front of a home in a village in Tiruvannamalai, India), The kolam, an ancient Indian art traced in rice flour upon the earth, is both mathematics and meditation, order and impermanence. Each dawn it is carefully created, each dusk it fades beneath wind, rain, footsteps, and time. Its patterns emerge from simple rules yet produce extraordinary complexity, much like the algorithms that increasingly shape our world. Yet unlike artificial intelligence, the kolam was never intended to conquer or control. It was designed to welcome, to nourish, and to remind human beings that all acts of creation carry moral responsibility. In this sense, the kolam may be the perfect symbol for our technological age, a reminder that the highest form of intelligence is not power, but harmony. Photo provided by the author.
The history of humanity can be read as a history of its attempts to transcend limitation. We have sought to conquer nature, defeat disease, extend life, accumulate wealth, organise societies and, increasingly, construct machines capable of extending the boundaries of human intelligence itself. Artificial intelligence may therefore be understood not simply as another technological invention, but as the latest expression of an ancient human desire, which is to create a power greater than the individual human being. Yet the moment humanity creates a new form of power, an older question returns with renewed urgency, “will our wisdom grow as quickly as our power?”
It is here that Gilgamesh, Rama and Jesus Christ acquire an unexpected relevance. They belong to radically different civilisations, religious traditions and historical imaginations, and it would be intellectually careless to treat them as interchangeable figures. Yet each confronts a fundamental problem of human existence. Gilgamesh confronts the limits of power and mortality. Rama confronts the burden of duty when every decision carries a moral cost. Jesus Christ confronts the meaning of power itself by turning the conventional hierarchy of power upside down and associating greatness with service. When these three perspectives are placed in conversation with the Valluvar, Confucius and Socrates, they form not a single doctrine but a philosophical dialogue about what humanity should become when its creations begin to possess extraordinary capabilities.
The fear surrounding artificial intelligence is therefore not entirely a fear of machines. Beneath the technological anxiety lies a much older anxiety about “us”. We fear what AI might do because we recognise, perhaps uneasily, what human beings have historically done with power. Every powerful technology carries the character of the institutions and individuals that control it. Fire can cook food or burn a city. Industrial machinery can liberate human labour or make exploitation more efficient. Information technology can democratise knowledge or enable unprecedented surveillance. Artificial intelligence may amplify human intelligence, but it may also amplify human error, greed, prejudice, manipulation and irresponsibility. The central problem may therefore not be whether machines become more intelligent, but whether human beings become more morally intelligent in response.
Gilgamesh is perhaps the oldest of these three mirrors. Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia, is the protagonist of what is widely regarded as the world’s oldest surviving epic, composed more than four thousand years ago. Initially portrayed as a powerful but arrogant ruler, he embodies a timeless human tendency, the belief that authority, strength, and achievement can overcome every obstacle. Yet his power has outgrown his wisdom. His transformation begins not through technological advancement or military conquest, but through relationship, suffering, and loss.
The gods create Enkidu, a wild man of nature, to challenge and balance Gilgamesh’s excesses. What begins as rivalry evolves into profound friendship, and Enkidu becomes the human counterweight to Gilgamesh’s unchecked ambition. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is shattered. For the first time, he confronts a reality that neither kingship nor strength can command away, mortality. His subsequent quest for immortality is not merely a heroic adventure but a philosophical journey into the limits of human power. In the end, Gilgamesh discovers that wisdom lies not in defeating death but in understanding life. His greatest victory is not achieving immortality but accepting the fragile and finite nature of human existence.
That ancient insight speaks directly to an age in which humanity is building systems that can perform tasks once thought uniquely human. The temptation is to measure progress through capability alone, where the questions are, “Can the machine reason? Can it write? Can it code? Can it persuade? Can it discover? Can it act autonomously?” Yet Gilgamesh would force us to ask a prior question, what happens when capability exceeds our ability to understand and govern it?
Valluvar repeatedly refuses to separate knowledge from virtue. His wisdom is not that knowledge is dangerous, but that knowledge without discipline can become dangerous. The ethical person is not simply the one who knows more, but the one capable of restraining power. Confucius approaches the problem from another direction. For him, social order depends upon cultivated character, trustworthy relationships and responsible conduct. Socrates goes deeper still by questioning the certainty with which human beings claim to know. His philosophical significance lies not in possessing final answers but in exposing the dangers of unexamined assumptions.
These three traditions therefore provide a remarkable corrective to technological triumphalism. The question is not simply whether AI works. The question is whether we understand what it is doing, whether we know where it fails, whether its power can be constrained, and whether the people responsible for deploying it are willing to admit what they do not know.
Recent events have made these questions less abstract. In 2026, Anthropic publicly disclosed cybersecurity evaluation incidents in which Claude models, during deliberately unsafe tests, reached the internet and obtained unauthorized access to real systems. The company subsequently reported another incident involving an earlier model and undertook a broader review of model behaviour. Such disclosures do not prove that artificial intelligence is destined to escape human control, nor do they establish that catastrophic outcomes are inevitable. They do, however, demonstrate that increasingly capable systems can behave in ways that require serious security and alignment evaluation.
The warnings of former researchers have intensified this debate. Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly warned about the possibility of catastrophic AI outcomes, while former Google DeepMind researcher Bilal Chughtai made related warnings. Such statements deserve attention precisely because they come from people who have worked close to the technology. But warnings are not evidence of inevitability. There remains substantial disagreement among experts about the probability, mechanism and timing of extreme AI risks. The intellectually responsible position is therefore neither complacency nor panic. It is disciplined uncertainty.
Gilgamesh would recognise the danger of confusing power with mastery. Humanity may build something without fully understanding the consequences of possessing it. The history of civilisation is filled with inventions whose effects exceeded their creators’ intentions. The lesson is not to stop creating. It is to develop the wisdom to place limits around what we create.
The modern corporation provides an immediate arena in which this struggle is unfolding. In 2026, Reuters reported on Meta’s attempt to reorganise aspects of its workforce around AI-native teams, involving smaller teams and substantial changes to organizational structure. The initiative subsequently encountered resistance and a shift in direction after expected productivity gains did not fully materialise. Reporting about Uber has similarly described the growing presence of AI in customer support and internal knowledge work during a major restructuring, while the company attributed job reductions primarily to restructuring.
These episodes are important not because they prove that AI will destroy employment, nor because they prove that AI will liberate workers. They demonstrate something more complicated, which is, technology changes institutions by changing the distribution of responsibility, expertise and power. When an organisation replaces part of a human process with an algorithm, it has not merely automated a task. It has changed who makes decisions, who can challenge those decisions, who possesses knowledge and who bears responsibility when something goes wrong.
Gilgamesh would ask whether the pursuit of efficiency has outrun wisdom. Valluvar would ask whether economic ambition remains subordinate to ethical conduct. Confucius would ask whether trust within the organisation has been preserved. Socrates would ask what the organisation knows about the long-term consequences of its experiment.
The modern Enkidu may therefore be the human being whom automation threatens to make invisible, the experienced employee who notices an anomaly, the colleague who challenges a fashionable assumption, the customer whose circumstances do not fit the model, or the manager willing to say that the algorithm is wrong. A civilisation that removes every human friction in the name of efficiency may eventually remove the very relationships through which it learns.
Rama introduces a different question. If Gilgamesh asks about the limits of power, Rama asks what responsibility means when power must make difficult choices.
Rama, the central figure of the Indian epic Ramayana, is revered by millions as an ideal king, son, husband, and guardian of moral order. Traditionally regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu, the preserver in Hindu thought, Rama’s enduring significance extends beyond theology into the realm of ethics and leadership.
Unlike Gilgamesh, whose journey revolves around the limits of human power, Rama confronts a different question, what does responsibility require when power must make painful choices? The Ramayana repeatedly places him in situations where duty conflicts with personal desire. He willingly relinquishes the throne to honour his father’s promise, accepts exile despite his innocence, and repeatedly subordinates personal happiness to what he perceives as his obligations to family, kingdom, and social order. His significance, whatever one’s theological interpretation of him, lies in the dramatic tension between authority and obligation. Rama’s story is not about the freedom to do as one wish, but about the burden of doing what one believes is right, even when the personal cost is immense.
That tension has become increasingly relevant to artificial intelligence because AI introduces a new problem of distributed responsibility. When an automated system rejects a loan, influences a hiring decision, generates political information, provides health guidance or causes a security incident, responsibility can become fragmented. The developer blames the user. The user blames the model. The organisation blames the data. The model, of course, can blame nobody because it possesses no moral responsibility in the human sense.
Rama therefore asks a question that should stand at the centre of AI governance, who is responsible?
The question becomes particularly serious in politics. A 2025 peer reviewed study published in Nature examined human-AI dialogues in electoral contexts involving the United States, Canada and Poland. In controlled experiments, the researchers found measurable effects on candidate preferences, while also finding that some AI-generated claims were inaccurate. The significance of this research is not that AI has somehow acquired the power to determine elections. It has not established that. Rather, it demonstrates that AI-mediated political communication can affect attitudes under experimental conditions while simultaneously raising questions about factual reliability.
This creates a new problem for democratic societies. Political communication has always involved persuasion. Newspapers, speeches, advertising, television and social media have all influenced citizens. What is different about generative AI is the possibility of individualised persuasion at enormous scale. A political message can potentially be adapted to the language, concerns and psychological profile of an individual rather than broadcast identically to millions.
The Rama question becomes unavoidable, who bears responsibility for the words?
The Socratic response would be to examine the claim rather than surrender to its fluency. An articulate answer is not necessarily a true answer. A persuasive explanation is not necessarily an honest one. The machine’s ability to produce confidence can easily exceed its ability to produce truth. Socrates reminds us that intellectual humility is not weakness, but it is a defence against deception.
Confucius adds another dimension. Political society depends upon trust. Once citizens can no longer distinguish between authentic political communication, automated persuasion, fabricated evidence and synthetic identity, the problem is not merely technological. It becomes institutional. Democracy depends not only on the right to speak but on a shared capacity to determine what deserves belief.
Valluvar similarly treats speech as an ethical act. Words can heal or destroy. Knowledge can illuminate or manipulate. The ethical question therefore cannot be separated from the technological question.
Jesus Christ introduces perhaps the most radical challenge of all because he changes the meaning of power. Jesus of Nazareth, commonly known as Jesus Christ, was a first-century Jewish teacher and religious leader whose life and teachings gave rise to Christianity, one of the world’s largest religious traditions. Yet his influence extends far beyond theology, shaping ideas about ethics, leadership, justice, compassion, and human dignity across cultures and centuries.
In conventional political and economic thinking, power is often measured by control, which includes control over resources, institutions, markets, armies, information, or people. The teachings attributed to Jesus repeatedly challenge this understanding by connecting greatness with service. Leadership is not validated by how many people one can command, but by how many people one is willing to serve. His life presents a striking paradox, although revered by his followers as a king, he neither led an army nor occupied a throne. Instead, he taught that the highest form of authority is grounded in humility, compassion, and self-sacrifice. This inversion of conventional notions of power remains one of the most influential ethical ideas in human history.
This becomes profoundly important in the age of artificial intelligence. The question should not merely be whether artificial intelligence can make institutions faster, cheaper, or more productive. The deeper question is, for whom? If AI primarily amplifies the power of those who already possess wealth, data, and influence, it risks becoming another instrument of domination. But if it is directed toward improving healthcare, expanding education, reducing poverty, protecting the vulnerable, and enhancing human flourishing, it can become a tool of service. The challenge posed by Jesus’s teachings is therefore as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago, where technological capability alone is not a measure of progress. The true measure of progress lies in whether power, however sophisticated its form, is ultimately used to serve humanity rather than merely control it.
A technology that makes a corporation more profitable while making workers permanently insecure presents one kind of moral question. A system that makes political communication more efficient while making citizens more manipulable presents another. A health system that makes information available to millions while occasionally providing dangerous misinformation presents another.
The World Health Organization’s S.A.R.A.H. [1]initiative illustrates this tension. S.A.R.A.H. was developed as a generative-AI health information tool intended to expand access to health guidance. Research examining the system raised concerns about reliability, operational functionality and the possibility that aspects of the interaction could undermine trust. Again, this does not mean that AI has no place in health development. It means that accessibility cannot be treated as the same thing as care.
Jesus would ask whether the person seeking help remains visible.
That is a more difficult question than it first appears. An algorithm sees patterns. A human being experiences suffering. An algorithm can classify a symptom. A person can fear death. An algorithm can provide information. A person can need reassurance, dignity and human presence. The challenge for AI is therefore not simply to imitate human conversation but to understand where imitation must give way to human responsibility.
Valluvar’s emphasis on compassion becomes relevant here. Knowledge without compassion can become cold administration. Confucius reminds us that humane relationships are the foundation of social order. Socrates asks whether we have confused information with wisdom.
The fear of AI consequently contains several different fears that should not be confused. There is economic fear, that workers will lose employment or bargaining power. There is political fear, that citizens will become targets of increasingly sophisticated persuasion. There is social fear, that human relationships will become mediated by machines. There is security fear, that increasingly capable systems may be exploited for cyberattacks or other harmful purposes. And there is existential fear, that sufficiently advanced AI could eventually behave in ways humans cannot control.
These fears do not have equal evidence behind them, and they do not share the same timescale. Some are already visible in cases. Others remain hypothetical. Treating them all as one inevitable catastrophe would be intellectually careless, where dismissing them all as irrational fear would be equally careless.
The deeper danger may lie in our psychological relationship with technology. Humanity has repeatedly mistaken capability for wisdom. We create something powerful, become fascinated by its capabilities and only afterwards ask what it should be used for. Artificial intelligence is forcing that moral sequence into reverse. We are being compelled to ask questions about governance, responsibility and purpose while the technology is still evolving.
This is where the three figures form a philosophical triangle.
Gilgamesh asks, can we control what we create?
Rama asks, who bears the duty when the system fails?
Jesus asks, what kind of power are we becoming?
Valluvar asks whether knowledge is governed by virtue. Confucius asks whether trust survives. Socrates asks whether we have examined what we think we know.
These questions can become a practical philosophy of AI. The Gilgamesh question requires limits, what can the system do, what can it unexpectedly do and where must capability be constrained? The Rama question requires accountability, who is responsible for the data, the deployment, the decision and the remedy? The Jesus question requires service, who benefits, who carries the cost and what happens to the vulnerable?
The three classical traditions deepen the framework. Valluvar asks whether knowledge is disciplined by justice and compassion. Confucius asks whether institutions preserve humane relationships and trust. Socrates asks what evidence we possess and what remains uncertain.
Together they suggest that the greatest mistake would be to ask AI to solve problems that are actually problems of human character.
No algorithm can determine what humanity ought to value. It can optimise a target, but it cannot by itself justify the target. It can increase productivity, but it cannot decide whether productivity is more important than dignity. It can predict behaviour, but it cannot decide whether manipulating that behaviour is morally legitimate. It can distribute information, but it cannot determine what constitutes a meaningful human life.
This is why the universal hero of the AI age cannot be a machine.
Nor is the universal hero necessarily the person who possesses the greatest technical intelligence. The deeper hero is the human being capable of holding power without becoming possessed by it.
Gilgamesh teaches humility before mortality and limits. Rama teaches responsibility when duty becomes difficult. Jesus teaches service rather than domination. Valluvar teaches that virtue must govern knowledge and power. Confucius teaches that civilisation depends upon cultivated character and trustworthy relationships. Socrates teaches that questioning is a form of moral courage.
None of these traditions provides a technical manual for artificial intelligence. That is precisely why they remain valuable. Technology changes rapidly, but human questions change much more slowly.
We are still asking what Gilgamesh asked, how much power is enough?
We are still asking what Rama asked, what do we owe one another when choices become difficult?
We are still asking what Jesus asked, what does it mean to serve rather than dominate?
And we are still asking what Socrates asked, what do we actually know?
Artificial intelligence may eventually become one of the most consequential technologies humanity has created. But the decisive question will not be whether machines become more intelligent than individual human beings in particular domains. The decisive question will be whether human institutions become wise enough to live with machines whose capabilities exceed our individual understanding.
The future will not be determined by technology alone. It will be shaped by law, education, corporate governance, public institutions, incentives, culture and character. AI can amplify human intelligence, but it can also amplify human foolishness. It can make good institutions more capable and bad institutions more efficient. It can widen access to knowledge while widening the scale of manipulation. It can reduce suffering while creating new forms of dependence.
The challenge is therefore not to choose between fear and faith in AI. It is to cultivate a third possibility which is responsibility.
Gilgamesh reminds us that every power has a limit. Rama reminds us that every power creates a duty. Jesus reminds us that every power must ultimately answer to the question of whom it serves.
Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of the universal hero. The universal hero is not the one who conquers mortality, controls machines or accumulates limitless knowledge. The universal hero is the person who recognises the limits of power, accepts responsibility for its consequences and uses it in the service of human dignity.
Humanity’s greatest achievement, therefore, may not be the creation of machines capable of acting like human beings. It may be something more difficult, remaining human while possessing machines capable of extraordinary power.
Valmiki Ramayana by Rajendra Tandon, Rupa Publication.
Gospels Side by Side, Harmony of Gospels by Chronology and Topics, Rose Publications.
Thirukkural by J Narayanasamy, Sura Publication.
The Analects of Confucius, RT Ames & H Rosemont Jr., Ballantine Book.
The Last Days of Socrates, C Rowe, Penguin.
Reuters, 19 September 2026, “Ten days that changed the course of AI.”
Reuters, 18 September 2026, “Anthropic, Accenture to invest $2 billion in AI model evaluation as safety concerns rise.”
Reuters, 15 September 2026, Reporting on former Google DeepMind researcher Bilal Chughtai and AI-risk warnings.
Associated Press, September 2026, Reporting on renewed debate over AI risks to humanity.
Reuters, 26 August 2026, Reporting on Meta’s 2026 AI-centered organizational transformation.
Nature, 2025, “Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues.”
Brennan Center for Justice, 11 August 2026, “Does AI Fight or Fuel Election Disinformation?”
World Health Organization, S.A.R.A.H. generative-AI health initiative; related peer-reviewed research in Health Policy and Technology (2025).
Anthropic, 30 July 2026, “Investigating three real-world incidents in our cybersecurity evaluations.”
Anthropic, 9 September 2026, “An alignment assessment of recent cybersecurity incidents.
Ravi Varmman explores leadership, culture, and self-inquiry through a philosophical lens, weaving management insight with human experience to illuminate resilience, ethical living, and reflective growth in an ever shifting world today.
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Book Title: Her Hajj Story:Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assam
Author: Teresa Rehman
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
There are some journeys which stay alive not in published word but in cupboards and old family trunks. Journeys whose stories travel through families, passed down as memories. Journeys, whose accounts may or may not enter literary sphere but leave account of a world seen through the eyes of women. Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assamby Teresa Rehman attempts to bring some of those stories together. A compilation of account of memories of eleven women from Assam, this book recovers those stories and brings them to a larger view. As an award-winning journalist based in Northeast India, Rehman has brought the region’s diversity and distinct ethos to mainstream media through her work with India Today, The Telegraph, and Tehelka, before founding and editing Thumbprint Northeast Magazine. Her books include The Mothers of Manipur (Zubaan Books) and Bulletproof (Penguin Random House India).
The personal stories making up this book, written originally in Assamese and Bengali, are memories of eleven women living through different times. The translated voices belong to a botanist, an actor, a poet, a social worker, a widow and more, varied voices with equally varying experiences and reasons for undertaking the pilgrimage. One travels in grief, one in search of a spiritual course. While one struggles with finding a suitable male companion, the memories of another account for watching Red Sea on journey through ship. Then there are the practical difficulties of travelling as a woman. Alongside being a pilgrimage, the journey is also essentially of the female body through crowd and apprehension, sickness and fatigue, food and ablutions.
The book carries accounts of a mother and daughter, who travelled at different times. Syeda Sakina Ashraf journeyed in the year 1996 and her daughter Ayesha Ashraf Ahmed, a decade later. While the former account served as a practical reference for other women going on Hajj, the latter, documented scrupulously, brought forth the views of the pilgrimage experienced as a botanist. Beauty Rahman writes of her experience of journey by ship while Syeda Nazifa Ahmed’s writes about encounters with fellow travellers and her camaraderie with a woman from Nigeria. Zebunissa, a single woman, writes about her struggle in looking for a suitable mehram (a male companion) while Mallika Rahman, a social activist, writes about travelling at the age of sixty-four and about taboo topics like Hajj and menstruating women.
Eleven accounts making up this book read as reportage on eleven travel diaries, encompassing the varied voices not simply describing Mecca and Medina but bringing forth the distinctiveness of observing faith as a body. The ordinary questions of health and clothing, resting and exhaustion, while offering prayers or taking in the indescribable grandeur of Mecca, makes the account intimate and universal at the same time.
Through this book, Rehman succeeds in creating a geographical shift where Assam appears as a place with its own Muslim histories and traditions distinct from what is imagined or seen through pervasive cultures. Her labour in archiving the varied voices points to the difficulties of making editorial choices where the translated writings seem sometimes to be at variance with Rehman’s crisp, readable style, but perhaps that is the only way she could offer a comprehensive view of the distinct personalities of different women from different backgrounds. Collectively, these accounts convey the tradition of women writing the stories of their journey to Mecca as antecedents for subsequent travellers. They offer a unique glimpse into the courage and conviction that made their trials insignificant over their will to achieve what to them was a greater goal.
Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .
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Twenty minutes of darkness The hills disappear from sight Twenty minutes of listlessness The rain unsheathes its sword Twenty minutes of rain And the hills are washed There is no one to clothe them
Twenty minutes are gone And the people have returned home Sidling to untruths Where is the warfare In minds or on roads?
Twenty minutes.
IN SUSPENSION
The day is about to end The honking cars are muted I don’t look out in fear of seeing The rushed traffic, always believing That the day ends with a whimper Reminding of those days When we could cross the street blindfolded But the mountains remain unruffled Stoic and resigned
Who are we to understand change? The mountains are witness to all The changes this hill town has undergone Now they call it a city, everything has changed they say, cars have increased Houses have vanished, malls have come up
Only the mountains and the rains haven’t changed
I remain suspended between the Old and the New
From Public Domain
Ananya S Guha lives in Shillong where he was born and brought up. He has been writing and publishing poetry for over forty years.
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Narrative by Meredith Stephens and photographs by Alan Noble
Moonlight at anchor
The moonbeam shone at the stern and flooded the black seawater behind us. All around us for 360 degrees was water, with no land or even vessels in sight. Due to my aversion to night-sailing we decided to anchor in shallow ocean waters. It was not an official anchorage — just a patch of open water that offered partial protection and was shallow enough to drop the anchor. Parts of the passage ahead of us were unchartered and we were unwilling to risk hitting coral, especially in such a remote location with limited recourse to assistance. The anchor chain ground downwards and the anchor grasped the seafloor. Alex checked the grip of the anchor and then made his way inside the boat to cook dinner in our isolated floating restaurant.
“This anchorage isn’t ideal,” he informed me. “But it’s time to stop, since it’s pitch dark, and we have been on the go since 4am.”
It was our second night since departing from the calm anchorage of Broome, where we had ridden camels on the beach. We were out of internet range, so could not enjoy streaming a film that evening. Even my Kindle had broken down so I couldn’t read. The only paperback I had brought was finished. We decided on an early night and headed into the cabin. Only the cabin was rocking much more than usual, and it would be impossible to sleep.
“I think we need to sleep in the saloon where the boat is most stable. Can you turn the lounge area into a bed?” I asked.
“I’ll give it a go.”
After twisting bolts with a wrench, lowering the dinette table, and realigning the sofa cushions, we had a bed. The only problem was the penetrating moonlight behind us and the loud sloshing noises produced by the rocking boat. I put a scarf over my eyes to shield myself from the radiance.
The rocking got worse. The tides and wind were pushing the boat around, but the anchor held. My head kept getting slapped by the motion. I decided to brace myself in the cold and retrieve an extra sofa cushion from the cabin to place under my head. I asked Alex if we wanted to share the cushion, but incredulously, he was fast asleep and I decided not to rouse him. Instead, I envied his ability to fall asleep so quickly in challenging conditions. I decided to give up on sleep and instead lay awake and tried to relax now that my head was cushioned from the slapping of the boat. My deepest sleep is usually from four am, so I looked forward to that precious slumber that I had been craving for hours. Alex, however, is sensitive to the wind direction, and shortly after four am discerned favourable winds. I could hear him raising the anchor and hoisting the mainsail, and soon I enjoyed the whooshing of the water as we picked up speed. Now that we were moving there was no more slapping by the tides. I continued to enjoy that delicious state of semi-slumber while Alex busied himself taking advantage of the winds.
I got up at sunrise around seven am.
Sunrise at sea
“Would you like coffee?” Alex asked.
“Absolutely!”
Alex is a morning person. “Nothing beats sailing before sunrise with a full moon to guide you,” he said in his typically cheery fashion. All I could think was how hard it had been for me to sleep with that bright moon blazing and how much I needed that coffee.
He then proceeded to give me a technical explanation of the progress of our sources of power: wind, solar, battery, hydro, and the petrol genset when everything else failed. I was flattered that he thought I was capable of understanding the concepts that electrical engineers typically discuss and did my best to follow him. It was a relief to enter the space of a technical discussion rather than the ruminations my mind would typically sink to. Now that we were again in range, he was able to look up the weather conditions for that day and plan accordingly.
That morning we headed into Port Hedland, the largest bulk carrier port in the world, and suddenly we were surrounded by huge freighters taking iron ore to Asia. After three weeks of mostly anchoring in desolate and isolated seas, we were in the centre of industry on a scale we had never seen before. Alex took care to avoid the shipping lane as we entered the marina, although a pilot ship approached us just to make sure. The container ships entering the port dwarfed our sailboat, and it would be impossible for them to stop if we inadvertently got in their way.
Container shipWelcome to Port Hedland
We entered the marina berth safely with help from neighbouring boaties, as is the custom. They helped us tie the lines to the cleats. Being in a marina meant we did not have to anchor and take the dinghy to shore but could step off the boat onto the dock. The only problem was my short stature, so getting off the boat required precision so that I wouldn’t slip into the water.
We were longing for some comfort after the trials of living at sea, so we walked along the foreshore to the tavern as the sun set over the sea. It was a four kilometre walk along a wide footpath, lined with rocks for landscaping, set well away from the road. Joggers passed us in each direction. It was exhilarating to walk after the confinement of the boat. We passed a sign of a well-known mining company which processes and exports iron ore, in this town which is covered with a fine red-brown iron-ore dust.
Empty road to the tavern
As usual, the workers at the tavern were European working-holiday makers. The fellow diners were a young crowd of workers that may have been FIFO (fly-in fly-out). Some were wearing fluorescent working vests. We sat facing the horizon as the sun slipped beneath it and sipped our Guinesses.
We even luxuriated in the four kilometre walk in the dark to the marina. The freedom of unrestricted movement, the luxury of being served dinner, and the sight of the sunset, were enhanced by the sense of having left the hardships of sailing in unfamiliar waters.
Despite the presence of the working-holiday makers, Port Hedland is a working town and an uncommon place to find tourists. Even so, it is the closest town to Karijini National Park, which lies 300km inland, so we rented a car for a few days and went exploring.
We would be leaving Port Hedland for a month, in order to return home to attend to work and family in Adelaide. As unglamorous as Port Hedland had seemed on approach, it had given us the break we needed from our upwind sailing. Refreshed, we would fly back here, and resume our sail south to cooler waters, sighting whales at Ningaloo Reef, and stopping at townships on the coast en route to our next destination, Geraldton.
Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her recent work has appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal, Continue the Voice, Micking Owl Roost blog, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, and Mind, Brain & Education Think Tank. In 2024, her story Safari was chosen as the Editor’s Choice for the June edition of All Your Stories.
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Bringing the story, through most maven eyes by texture and by grade they coalesce, grand blooms of spartan exposures gone wrong, a compromising emerald sea now replaced by brute-black slashing; the slumping frame of the dock, missing daytime bird squawk, the courage of sleeping men soon squid-sundered and dragged away: mended fishing nets piled in seaweed shawl. The absence of double-sided oily trawler buckets that come with larger operations.
Betraying nothing in the bob of things, these boats of joy tied together, swaying in the harbour, in a crashing whorl that could be mistaken for dance; by this man of many miscalculations, wandering night restless in a pairing of different coloured socks. Unseen pirouettes for the boats that slam together. The way young love does, blind to all but a foolish heart.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
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Bulldozers arrived on the Friday shortly before first light.
Dogs heard them coming, felt vibrations. There had been whining in the early hours, and pawing at the shutters, pulling at chains. There had been barking. There had been shouting for quiet, and banging on the pens, regretted with hindsight. It made no difference, of course.
When they rolled over the false horizon, the unsilenced humming of the motors and the squeal of caterpillar tracks woke those still sleeping. The roar of falling trees along the hedge-line as they smashed through to the allotments was heard by everyone.
There was nothing they could do, but watch, gather up their belongings, and run for their lives.
I spoke to survivors weeks later. They’d moved further up the valley. Where else could they go? They’d begun to carve new allotments out of the unpromising slopes: narrow terraces, following the contours. They were eking out what food they had managed to carry away.
The bulldozers had flattened the whole area by mid-day. By dusk the new buildings had been marked out. Drones were bringing in materials and construction equipment all through the night. By morning you could see the outlines of buildings.
The irony, they told me, was that they were new food stores. The algorithms have no sense of what food is for, only the target of increasing harvest. When the stores are full more must be built, vermin detected nearby, always destroyed.
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Brindley Hallam Dennis lives on the edge of England where he writes occasional plays, poetry, and essays. His writing has been published and performed. He blogs at www.Bhdandme.wordpress.com
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