Author: borderlesssg1

Categories
Musings

No Longer Smug in South Australia

Meredith Stephens gives a first person account of how the pandemic free South Australia is faring balancing fears

Not only does Australia feel geographically isolated, South Australia feels isolated within Australia. Thanks to this isolation we somehow feel immune to the pandemic and enjoy months of zero cases. We look at the evening news aghast as cases soar in Europe and America. Finally, our neighbouring state Victoria gets the numbers under control, and travel between the states becomes possible. Alex has been looking forward to the borders with Tasmania opening so he can sail there from Adelaide and circumnavigate the island. First, he will sail to the historic town of Robe in the south-east of the state, and from there he will sail to Tasmania, weather permitting. He enjoys the extensive preparation, ordering a new inflatable life raft, a new dinghy, a new chart plotter, and installing a wind turbine. He has the standing rigging replaced too.

I want to sail with Alex but can’t because I’m teaching online. I wouldn’t be able to readily access the internet at sea due to the slow satellite connection. I ask Alex to prepare one of his T-shirts for me to take to bed in his absence. He wears the same T-shirt for several days in order to permeate it with his scent.

Suddenly there is news of a six-day lockdown. We have been spared lockdowns to date as we have smugly watched television news of excruciating lockdowns elsewhere. We have until midnight to attend to immediate business. The Chief Medical Officer appears on television and tells us we must decide where we will stay for the next six days. I opt to stay with my ailing mother and take Alex’s T-shirt with me to comfort myself.

I part from Alex and dutifully head to my mother’s home. After making her dinner and cups of tea, I accompany her to her bed, and make sure she takes her medicines. I heat her wheat bags to place behind her neck and on her toes. I watch some television to distract myself, and then exchange texts with Alex. Next, I have to face the night away from him. I don his T-shirt and hope his scent will soothe me to sleep, but it’s no substitute. I wake up with pain throbbing in my right temple and shooting up the right side of my neck. I touch my temple and feel the familiar dilated vein.

I must teach two classes online. I want to cancel because of my migraine, but if I do so I must make up the classes, so I persist with the lessons. The bright light of the screen pierces my eyes, but I find relief when I usher the students into breakout rooms and lie down for five minutes each time they interact with one another.

I search the house for pain relief. I beg Mum for some of her prescribed opiate tablets. She only has two left and permits me to have a quarter of one which she has cut out with the tablet cutter. Then the pain intensifies. I cannot find any aspirin but manage to find some Panadol from an expired blister pack. This gives me no relief. I am not sure I could get a doctor’s appointment at such short notice. Going to the emergency room would be counterproductive during a pandemic. I resolve to go to my daughter’s house. I know that she has two left-over prescribed opiate tablets. I determine to make the long drive despite the injunction not to leave the house. I go into Mum’s room to explain, but she is sleeping. So I leave a note on her bedside table. I leave my laptop there because I will be back in the evening.

I venture onto the deserted main roads. Will I be stopped and questioned by the police? After twenty minutes of driving, I see ten police cars on the opposite side of the main road, stopping drivers. I resolve not to take that route when I return to Mum’s. When I arrive at my daughter’s house, there is a text from Mum:

“Where are you? Are you okay? I am worried about you. I heard you leave.”

“I left a note by your bedside table. Didn’t you see it?”

“No. I missed it.”

“I’ll come back tonight.”

“No, Darling. I’ll be okay for the night. It’s too dangerous for you to drive in your condition.”

“Okay then. I’ll pop back tomorrow morning in time to Zoom my classes.”

Then my sister Rebecca texts me and asks after Mum. I explain that I have had to leave her in search of pain relief. I continue that I am worried about having left the house, but then my other sister Jemima forwards me a government message from social media saying that you may leave the house to care for an infirm relative or friend. Now I can consider my daughter’s house to be my base, and my trip to Mum’s to be legitimate. Rebecca and Jemima offer to take turns to stay with Mum until I recover.

I retrieve one of the prescribed opiate tablets at my daughter’s house, but the pain persists until the morning. I telephone the local clinic and make a telehealth appointment. The doctor calls me back at the appointed time and texts me a script.

Alex texts me asking how I am, and I send him the government message indicating that movement to care for someone who is unwell is legitimate. He offers to visit me and pick up the medicine on the way. My daughter shows me how to forward the script to him on my phone. Alex receives it and promises to come. I absorb his resonant voice, gentle tone, and the calm in his measured and carefully articulated speech. The tension eases and somehow, I find myself explaining to him that I am finally without pain.

Alex arrives at my door with my prescription tablets, but by now the pain has subsided. Knowing that I have left my laptop at Mum’s, he has brought me one of his. Not only that, he has brought South Australian yellowfish tuna which we can eat as sashimi, oysters, and some salmon. We sit down together while he explains to me how to use the Chromebook laptop, but rather than fixing my eyes on the screen I fix them on him, and once again imbibe his scent. We enjoy each other’s company for an hour before Alex has to return home.

Then my daughter informs us that the lockdown has been shortened. It appears that there was a misunderstanding during one of the contact tracing interviews and that the lockdown period will be reduced to three days. Travel within the state will be permitted.

Alex is relieved that at least he will not have to forego sailing, even though the circumnavigation of Tasmania will have to wait. Instead, he will sail into Spencer Gulf, within the state. The ocean is beckoning him, and he is grateful that he can now heed her call. The months of planning equipment, meals, and reading material will have paid off; he can resume his position at the helm, catch fish and squid for his meals, make use of his instinctive sense of wind direction, and be free to move or to stay according to whim, without a single care for COVID.

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist in Japan. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Blue Nib, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies entitled What’s Cooking Mom? Narratives about Food and Family, The Migrant Maternal: “Birthing” New Lives Abroad, and Twenty-First Century Friendship, all published by Demeter Press, Canada.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Categories
Poetry

Blessing the Cup

By Tom Merrill 

      
 
 While morning yet was rose,
 not thorn,
 earth glistening
 as if newly born,
 I came across
 a romance here:
 he hadn't seen
 the shadows clear,
 nor seemed
 to be at all aware;
 she watched,
 and was content to stare.
  
 I thought of how a love began,
 of Eden, too,
 the dawn of man
 and how that garden
 turned to grief;
 of sorrow
 borne without relief;
 and yet,
 I did not fail to bless
 the tainted cup of happiness,
 nor reverently to tiptoe by
 this sleeper in the flower's eye.
  

Poems by Tom Merrill have recently appeared in two novels as epigraphs.He is Poet in Residuum at The Hypertexts and Advisory Editor at Better Than Starbucks.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Categories
Young Persons' Section

Sara’s Selection, January 2021

Hello folks!

A very Happy New Year to all of you, and especially to Ms Sara. We always hope for a better future — let it be filled with magic, stars and rainbows! And may we all be able to interact with all our families and friends… This time Ms Sara has a cheerful collection giving hope in the New Year — 2021! Presenting Ms Sara in 2021–

Thank you! Ms Sara is back again. Hey there everyone, wish you a fabulous New Year on this page, both on behalf of Bookosmia and Borderless.

Poetry

We start with poetry welcoming the New Year. Here is a jolly poem talking of a jolly time, by 9 year old Noah Batolar from Gurgaon.

A Jolly Time of the Year

By Noah Batolar

Christmas is a jolly time of the year

Where everyone opens up to good times and cheer.

Nothing can stop this holiday

Almost everyone celebrates this day.

All negative thoughts are thrown into a pit —

Christmassssssssssssss, what a jolly time.

Put up the decorations,

Light up the fireplace,

Sing the carols and

All of that is just the beginning for a cheerful new year!

7 year old Anvi Sankhyan from Gurgaon now gives us a fun poem about Aliens!

Green Blue No Clue

By Avni Sankhayan

In the black space

Two Aliens in their UFO’s

were having a race.

They stopped

As their view was blocked

By a ball which was blue

But they had no clue

It was green which nobody had seen.

What is this beautiful place

Which has stopped their race?

Mountains, rivers, beautiful humans, desert, snow —

They wanted to know.

They went into a little girl’s dream

So that she would not scream.

The little girl said this:

 My mother Earth full of trees, life which makes it green 

Which you haven’t seen.

The water makes it blue. 

Now you got the clue!!

Next, we have a little mischievous take by 10 year old Shreyash Bajaj from Singapore. Warning: Please do not try it out!

How To Bunk School– A Poetic Recipe

By Shreyash Bajaj

Ingredients:

A cup of sleeping
A jar of excuses
A tablespoon of lateness
A teaspoon of secrecy
A bowl of willingness
2 cups of plans
A pinch of cleverness
A spoon of hiding.

Directions:
Wake up late,
You’re doing great!

Go over the plan again,
How and when.

Don’t brush your teeth
Don’t make your bed.
Go over the excuses in your head.

Go and make a fuss.
Try to miss the bus.

When you arrive at school,
Keep your cool.

Find a place,
To hide your face.

And lastly,
Have secrecy.

So now don’t be a fool,
Start bunking school!

Stories

We move on to stories now. Here is 9 year old Prakalya Krishnamurthi from Erode, Tamil Nadu taking us on an exciting marine adventure.

Julia and Dolphi

By Prakalya Krishnamurti

One pleasant day,  I, Dolphi , the dolphin and my friend, Walrus were playing at the seashore. We met a girl, her name was Sarah. She used to come walking with her dad. Sarah loved to play with me and Walrus so we became best-friends and buddies. A week later, Sarah came walking, her face down and smile missing. Walrus and I asked her, “Why are you sad? Come let’s play.”

Sarah said, “Hmmm….There’s a pet contest at my school, Oakland Elementary and I have no pets at home. I don’t know what I’m going to do on that day in school.”

We got an idea!

“Aren’t we your lovable pets and your best-friends and buddies too?”

Sarah was so happy and said, “You guys are so kind! Ok, now let’s get on with the contest. The contest is in a couple of months. So you both prepare the   tricks. I will prepare the props and costumes, sounds good?”

“Yay! Wonderful, I am so happy to be with you Sarah,” I said.

We practiced for the contest everyday at the sea shore.

“Ok, you both are performing very well and I am sure we’ll win the prize tomorrow,” said Sarah. “I will come tomorrow at 8 o’clock to pick you up for the contest.”

“Ok, Sarah, we will wait by the sea shore,” I said.

We were playing happily at the shore without knowing that we were about to be captured. Suddenly, two hunters saw us playing. They came quietly and captured us and sold us to a ‘Sea School’.

The next morning, Sarah went to pick us up but we were not there. She searched the whole seashore. Sarah started to worry and went to the contest  alone. The contest started at the open auditorium, which had a big pool in the center. Everybody performed. At last Sarah’s name was called out.  She went next to the pool with a sad face. Suddenly, she heard voices calling her, “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah! ”

It was us! She was astonished to see us but without another word we started  our performance. We gave a mind blowing performance and won the first  prize. Sarah was really happy but she wanted to know what had  happened. We understood her and answered her question, “Ok, we will tell you,” I said. “That day, when were practicing the tricks, suddenly we were  captured in a net by hunters. They left us at a Sea School. There, two caretakers came to see if we were valuable animals for the school. Luckily,  they were very kind. After we told them our story, they immediately said we will help  you get to your contest.”

Sarah hugged us tightly and said, “You both are the best friends in the world!” Suddenly a big wave of snow fell over us.

I opened my eyes and was looked around. I realized that it was only my dream and I was a dolphin in the dream. Slowly, I, Julia realized that after I went to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago with my family to see a dolphin show, I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. In my dreams, I had imagined my adventure as a Dolphin.  

My whole family laughed and my little brother rolled on the floor when he heard my story.

Here is an adventurous story by 8 year old Kiyan Jal Bulsara from Kolkata that will spur you into action. Aliens, monsters and a young hero….get ready!

Run for your life

By Kiyan Jal Bulsara

One day Mike got up and quickly readied himself for school because he was late. When he reached school, it started to rain very heavily. It just wasn’t his day. Somehow he was able to dash into school in the nick of time.

Mike saw something form in the sky, he was curious. It was a massive portal. After five minutes, thousands of monsters started to fall out of the portal and everyone started to panic except for Mike.

He went out of school and asked one of the monsters why they had come to planet Earth? The monster, whose name was Gigi, told Mike that the most  powerful villain Choba had escaped and was on a killing spree. Choba had  killed the king of all monsters, Nachi, so he could take over the throne and be the next king.

Therefore, they had come to ask for help. Mike called the Monster Busters and told them what had happened. They formed teams and were ready for the  battle. The Monster Busters used special weapons like a lightsaber to battle  Choba. The battle started the next day and finished after ten days and the  humans won but thousands of innocent busters died.

The monsters went back to their planet and promised to live in peace and harmony.

Watch out! 7 year old Aadya G from Chennai has her own Frozen sequel written out and this one is in India!

Anna and Elsa’s Visit to Taj Mahal

By Aadya G

Once upon a time there lived two sisters Anna and Elsa. They lived in Arendale. Christoph, Olaf and Sven were their friends.

One day they were gazing at Arendale’s palace and wondering if there could be a more amazing building. They wondered if there were more such beautiful monuments  across the world.

Christoph said, “I know a beautiful palace in India called  Taj Mahal. It is located in Agra and is one of the seven wonders of the world.”

Everyone got excited and said they wanted to visit the Taj Mahal. They started their trip to Taj Mahal by flying to India.They looked for a taxi ride and finally got one to drive to Taj Mahal. On their  way,  they saw a big giant monster. Anna quickly put a fireball on the monster.

The monster ran away. Finally, they reached Taj Mahal. They were surprised to see the Taj Mahal. They saw that it was very large and   made of white marble. They were excited to see the beautiful  carvings on Taj Mahal. They sang and danced and had lots of fun at the Taj Mahal.

Essays

If you were a bird in a zoo, how would you feel? Would you love it? Or, would you  rather be free?

9 year old Atreyo Bhattacharyya from Kolkata shares his perspective, in this epistolary (letter writing) piece.

Exciting Egret

By Atreyo Bhattacharya

Dear Grandpa,
I am very sad as I have been locked up in this cage. I am in an enclosure named ‘The Egrets’. But people still admire me for my beautiful snow white plumage.

We have cages that restrain a bird from flying away. I was brought to this zoo by a man named Kalan. He first dug a big hole and then covered it with leaves. Without seeing properly, I stepped on that and fell into it. I miss my freedom and how I used to roam around and jump from one tree to the other.

But the advantages of this zoo are that I regularly get good food to eat and big bowls of water everyday. My life in this zoo is comfortable because the people give me food and water at the right time and take care of me properly.

But I feel lonely here because I can’t talk to my friends. Slowly, I am forgetting  how to fly as this is a small cage, nor do they allow us to fly much. My flight feathers are becoming of no use. I miss my freedom and abhor this life of a prisoner.

Hope I could fly back to you whenever I wish as I used to do….

Miss you Grandpa
Yours lovingly,
Jack

This thoughtful essay by 9 year old Sia Patel from Ranchi is one that unites the whole Earth under a single rainbow.

The Seven Colours of the Rainbow

By Sia Patel

When I was small, my dad always told me how important it was to love and  respect every individual, be it our own family members or strangers.

He always gave me the example of a rainbow.

How people looked forward to see the rainbow after the rains. The colours, when united look, so beautiful and have a unique identity, just like our  country. Unity in diversity.

The seven colours of rainbow always lived happily together.

One day the colours started to fight among themselves on how important and powerful they are individually.  They forgot how beautiful they looked united.  Each colour wanted to show off their own importance. Because of their differences, they started living separately.

Children were disappointed as they could no longer spot the rainbow when the sun shone after it rained.

Rainbows were only in stories and pictures now. Soon people stopped looking for a rainbow in the sky. The colours were so busy fighting that they never realised that slowly they were losing their significance.

The colours, who had started living separately, felt sad and lonely.

They lost their charm.

One day a little girl heard stories about rainbow from her grandmother. She  was upset to hear about their fights and decided to help the seven colours become friends again.

Slowly the colours realised how powerful and beautiful they looked when  united. Together they brought smiles and happiness into so many people’s life. They  never fought again and promised to stay together.

If every individual realises their role and importance in staying together, there will be no hatred in the world.

Hey friends, Sara here. 10-year-old Khushyati Sachwani from Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh shares her heartfelt experience on how her dad and her family faced the Corona virus.

My Father is a Corona Warrior

By Khushyati Sachwani

I was disturbed from the moment I heard that my father has tested positive for coronavirus. I immediately Googled and tried to find out the ways to help him get rid of it but it was not as easy. 

For a few days, we had to separate from him. He had to be admitted to a hospital. Initially his condition was not too good. It was difficult to stay with other patients who were also suffering from the same but he did not lose courage. He was deprived of love, family and home food but he kept our spirits up by assuring us that this would last only a few days then he would meet us soon, hale and hearty. 

His optimism felt heroic to me and I realised that my father is certainly a warrior who, with his positive bent of mind, defeated this disease and came back home safely. 

Here is the last essay, hoping 2021 will a year full of hope, hope embodied by the young writers who write here. We hope for a future which can only get better. Sia Patel from Ranchi gives as another lovely piece — a wonderful welcome to the new year, even after a very tough 2020.

It’s Time to Leave 2020 Behind

By Sia Patel

2020 wasn’t as exciting as I thought. It was more like a prison but it was good spending quality time with my parents, my sister and my pet dog. In this pandemic I hardly bothered about day, date, and month because everyday seemed the same to me.

Soon online classes started. Initially, it was boring as no one understood the instructions given by the teachers. They did not mute themselves and time was wasted. We could not talk to our friends which was the worst part. If it  would have been school I could have played with them at lunch break but there was no school so no playing and mostly no talking.

Soon we made a friends group on mobile and we started doing zoom meetings but that also did not happen often as our parents restricted our screen time. Because of this pandemic, I wasn’t able to meet my new class teacher or my  new friends in the class.

I did get to learn many new things while staying at home like  doodling from a  book by Liz Pichon known as Tom Gates. I read lots of books, yes, a total of 31 books! Few things were really fun doing while staying at home.

What I missed most was celebrating festivals like we did earlier and vacations to a new place. Everything was restricted with a limited number of friends and relatives. I even lost my grandfather in September this year due to his illness. I miss him so much. He loved and pampered my sister and me a lot.

The only thing that was good this year was I got my first pet dog, Bingo.  He is very cute and mostly a good friend of mine. I had so many plans for 2020 with my friends. We had already discussed our ideas for celebrating our birthday parties with different themes but nothing could be executed because of  coronavirus. We did most of the celebrations virtually this year.

Now that it’s time for the year end of 2020 so let’s welcome 2021 and say goodbye to 2020. Let’s  stay strong for facing all the problems in future and  hope that 2021 brings lots of good time and positivity to everyone.

And now this is Sara wishing you hope for the new year and a fantastic future.

( This section is hosted by Bookosmia)

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.

Categories
Contents

Borderless, December 2020

Festive Greetings!

Interviews

In Conversation with Aruna Chakravarti

Sahitya Akademi Award winning translator and writer, Dr Aruna Chakravarti reflects on her journey as a writer. Click here to read.

‘He made History stand still on his Pages’

An interview about an eminent screenwriter and author who has had yet another anthology of translated stories, Mistress of Melodies, just been published, Nabendu Ghosh. His daughter, senior journalist Ratnottama Sengupta unfolds stories about her father. Click here to read.

Stories

The Literary Fictionist

Monalisa No Longer Smiles Here by Sunil Sharma is a poignant story of child labour in India. Click here to read.

I Grew into a Flute

Balochi Folktale involving magic retold by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Ghumi Stories: The Tower of Babble

Nabanita Sengupta delves into relocation and its impacts. Click here to read.

The Initiation

Gauri Mishra explores the unusual desires of a young girl. Click here to read.

Flash Fiction: Happily Ever After

Sohana Manzoor explores the myth of happily ever after with three short & gripping narratives set in modern urban Bangladesh. Click here to read.

Musings

Musings of a Copywriter

In Pray to Win, Devraj Singh Kalsi gives an entertaining account of Tumpji pujas across India during the US elections. Click here to read

Time and Us

Anasuya Bhar takes us through 2020 — what kind of a year has it been? Click here to read.

Happy Hanukkah!

Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca tells us about the ancient Jewish festival of Hanukkah with its origins in the early BCEs and the Seleucid Empire. Click here to read.

There’s an Eternal Summer in a Grateful Heart

Sangeetha Amarnath Kamath brings a Singaporean School to our doorstep with a sentimental recount of her experience at relief teaching. Click here to read.

Essays

US Polls: What should We Celebrate?

Candice Louisa Daquin, a senior editor by profession, reflects on the US Poll results. Click here to read.

Hold the roast turkey please Santa !

Celebrating the festive season off-season with Keith Lyons from New Zealand, where summer solstice and Christmas fall around the same time. Click here to read.

The Lost Art of Doing Nothing or the Pursuit of Wasting Time

Anwesha Paul explores the pace of our lives and the concept of FOMO in context of today’s race towards ‘doing’. Click here to read.

Cinema Viewing: Zooming In & Zooming Out

Gita Viswanath and Nikhila H explore the how the world of moviegoers has changed with time and with COVID19. Click here to read

Cyber Nationalism: Can that be a reality?

Pratyusha Pramanik explores the impact of social media. Click here to read.

Role of Editors in News Media

Bhaskar Parichha explores how news is chosen selectively to sway public opinion. Click here to read.

Remembering Rokeya: Patriarchy, Politics, and Praxis

In this tribute, Azfar Hussain takes us on a journey into the world of Madam Rokeya who wrote more than a century ago in English, Urdu and Bengali. Her books talk of women, climate and issues related to patriarchy. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Michael R Burch, Anita Nahal, Sekhar Banerjee, Megha Sood, Jessie Michael, Y. Deepika, Ashok Suri, Anjali V Raj, Netra Hirani, Md Musharraf, Soma Debray, Jenny Middleton, Ihlwha Choi, Sangeeta Sharma, Sonya J Nair, Tom Merrill, Shakti Pada Mukhopadhyay

Humour

Vatsala Radhakeesoon, Sekhar Banerjee, Rhys Hughes

Translations

The Library by Tagore

A part of Bichitro Probondho (Strange Essays) byRabindranath Tagore, translated by Chaitali Sengupta from Netherlands. Click here to read.

Lesya Bakun translates three of her own poems from Ukranian and Russian to English. Click here to read.

Ten Islands has been written and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

A Nepali poem for a nuclear war victim by Manjul Miteri, who is currently helping sculpt a Buddha in Japan, has been translated to English by Hem Bishwakarma. Click here to read

Poetry from Nepal by Nabin Pyassi, translated by Haris C Adhikari. Click here to read.

Poems from Armenia by Eduard Harents translated from Armenian by Harout Vartanian. Click here to read

Book Excerpt

No strings Attached: Writings on Odisha by Bhaskar Parichha. Click here to read.

Reviews

The Brass Notebook: A Memoir is a recently penned autobiography by eminent economist Devaki Jain, written based on a suggestion made by Doris Lessings in 1958, with a forward by Amartya Sen and reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha. Click here to read.

Nitoo Das’s Crowbite  has been reviewed by Basudhara Roy. Click here to read.

On the first anniversary of a movement that seems to be a reaffirmation of democratic processes in a nation torn with angst, Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Mistress of Melodies by Nabendu Ghosh, translated stories edited by Ratnottama Sengupta, which not only bring to life history as cited in his Bangiya Sahitya Parishad Lifetime Achievement award but also highlights his ‘love for humanity’. Click here to read.

Sara’s Selections

December, 2020

A vivacious oeuvre presented by writers from Bookosmia. Click here to read.

Editorial

Festive Roundup

Mitali Chakravarty gives up a rounding up of 2020 on Borderless and a quick view of some of the content. Click here to read.

Categories
Editorial

Festive Roundup

Season’s Greetings from Borderless Journal!

Borderless has completed three-quarters of a year or nine months of its virtual existence and bonded us all together in a shared web of ideas — ideas that generate the concept of a world beyond borders. We have all travelled together with words as our tools, gathering thoughts that can create links among all humans despite our perceived differences. During our journey towards the future, we have made alterations or additions where necessary. This month, we have a new addition to our editorial board, Michael R Burch, a poet from USA with 6000 publications under his belt. He brings in new writers and fresh splendour with his own poetry. This time we carry his poems on Gaza — poems of empathy and harmony, one of which has featured in an Amnesty International publication which is used as a resource for training human rights’ activists.

We have plenty of poetry with translations from Armenia, Ukraine and two from Nepal. We also have one of Tagore’s lesser-known essays translated by Chaitali Sengupta. We have interviews with translators too this time: Sahitya Akademi award winning translator of Saratchandra’s Srikanta, Dr Aruna Chakravarti, and senior journalist and writer, Ratnottama Sengupta, who not only translates her father, Nabendu Ghosh, but also compiles anthologies with multiple translators bringing his works to those who cannot read Bengali. We have one of Ghosh’s new collections of short stories, hosting multiple translators, Mistress of Melodies, reviewed by Rakhi Dalal. Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed economist and feminist Devaki Jain’s memoir and Meenakshi Malhotra has done a review of a book on Shaheen Bagh, observing that the spot has become commemorative of democratic values devoid of violence and angst. An interesting concept.

In her essay, Candice Louisa Daquin has commented on how the election results are affecting Americans. On a lighter note, our columnist, Devraj Singh Kalsi, has spoken of the ‘Tump pujas’ (worship of Trump) that coloured India during the recent US elections. An essay I found immensely relevant by Bhaskar Parichha has been included in our journal, an essay to demystify news media for all of us. The other essay I would like to mention republished from Daily Star, Bangladesh, thanks to their literary page editor, Sohana Manzoor, is on Begum Rokeya, a woman who lived nearly a century ago but thought and wrote of climate and the equality of genders in those days. And she wrote in three languages —English, Bengali and Urdu — impressive! This time we have seven essays.  Do check them out.

Rounding up the year is Anasuya Bhar’s musings. We have the festivals Hannukah and Christmas covered in musings, essay, poetry and a lovely write up by a young girl in Sara’s Selection — a vivacious, happy set of poems, stories and essays, brought to us by Bookosmia — thanks to Nidhi Mishra and Archana Mohan. Keith Lyons from New Zealand has added to the variety of festivities — Santas in shorts— by telling us how Christmas is celebrated together with summer solstice ‘down under’! More on a lighter tone can be found in verses by Vatsala Radhakeesoon and Rhys Hughes and in an essay that talks of ‘the lost art of doing nothing’. I will leave the book excerpt as a surprise for you to uncover. Let it be said it is a book by a writer whose voice is much respected for its candidness and largeness of vision.

We have a number of stories. Our regular columnist, Sunil Sharma has given a poignant exploration of child labour — one of the most touching stories by him. Sohana Manzoor has given us a flash fiction — three short tales of modern life. This time we also have a Balochi folklore retold by Fazal Baloch — magic and a happily ever after fairy tale scenario — I really liked it.

We have a bumper issue of more than 50 posts this time — unravel them and enjoy during your Christmas holidays. Thank you dear readers for being there to make writing a pleasurable activity for us practitioners.

We wish you all a fantastic festive season full of reading and happy thoughts.

Best wishes from all of us at Borderless Journal.

Mitali Chakravarty

Categories
Interview

In Conversation with Aruna Chakravarti

Sahitya Akademi winner Aruna Chakravarti

A woman who weaves stories from the past, from history, from what has been and makes them so real that they become a part of ones’ own existence – this has been my experience of Dr Aruna Chakravarti and her writing. A winner of the Sahitya Akademi award for her translation of Sarat Chandra’s Srikanta, Vaitalik award and Sarat Puraskar, Chakravarti was the principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with fifteen published books. Her novels Jorasanko, Daughters of Jorasanko, The Inheritors have sold widely and received rave reviews. Jorasanko and its sequel are based on the women in the household of Rabindranath Tagore. Jorasanko is one of the best and most impactful books I have read in my life and with a flavour of realism that transports you into that era. The focus on the strength that resided in women trapped with a set of patriarchal values in colonial India is amazing and attractive. Suralakshmi Villa, her latest novel which was released at the start of 2020, is also modelled on a woman from the past as she will reveal in this exclusive interview.

You are a multiple national award- winning writer. At a point you stopped writing. Why?

I had started writing during my childhood and had continued to do so through my school days happily and unselfconsciously. I wrote poems, short stories and even tried my hand at a novel. But when I joined the English Honours course in college and was introduced to the academics of literature; when I learned the principles of criticism and picked up the ability to distinguish good writing from mediocre, a change came over me. I suffered from a loss of self-worth. I felt I was not and could never be a good writer. Self-criticism is good but unfortunately it worked adversely for me. I convinced myself that my work was imitative and lacking in merit. From that time onwards I stopped writing.

When did you take up writing again? Did your translations come first?

It happened nearly twenty- five years later. Yes, my translations came first. The cycle of negative feelings about my writing, to which I had strapped myself, broke in a miraculous way. The year was 1982.  At a chamber concert of Rabindra sangeet, in which I was taking part, a Gujarati gentleman from the audience made a request. He asked if one of the participants could translate the songs that were being sung so that non-Bengalis, many of whom were present, could understand the words. Since I was teaching English in a Delhi University college at the time, all eyes turned to me. I was horrified. To be called upon to translate a literary giant like Rabindranath Tagore, that too his lyrics, without any preparation whatsoever, would have daunted anyone leave alone me with my record of diffidence and self-doubt. But to my own shock and bewilderment, I agreed. The rest is history. There was a publisher in the audience who offered to bring out a collection of Tagore songs in translation. That was my first publication. Tagore: Songs rendered into English came out in 1984. Though the publisher was practically unknown, the book created waves in literary circles. Other translations followed. Srikanta by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and later Those days and First Light by Sunil Gangopadhyaywere published by Penguin India. I also picked up a number of awards.

It was Sunil Gangopadhyay who advised me to try my hand at creative writing. After some hesitation I did so. My first novel The Inheritors was accepted by Penguin India and published in 2004. After it was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, I found the courage to write more.

You were the Principal of a Delhi University college. Did your work impact your writing?

No strangely enough it didn’t. My creative inspiration never drew from my experience as a Principal. I was dealing with women from a younger generation. I was privy to their concerns, their joys and sorrows, their fears and aspirations.  I understood their psychology. Yet I never wanted to write about them except in a tangential way. As part of a larger context. For me the present failed to provide the spark that kindled my creative imagination. That came invariably from some past memory. In a strange way the past seems more meaningful to me than the present.

But my role as an administrator helped me in another way. Office work is dry and prosaic. But it is worthwhile work. And, much as I felt good doing it, I looked forward intensely to the end of the day when I could doff my Principal’s hat and don my writer’s one. And, having indulged myself by writing till late into the night, I was ready to take up my work schedule the next morning. The two interests sustained each other and created a balance.

Why did you translate the writers? What did you learn by translating them? Did it impact your own story telling or knowledge base?

My first translation, as I’ve just explained, was commissioned. But I would not have taken up the offer if I didn’t consider the original work a significant contribution to Bengali literature. My other books were self-chosen. For me the most important consideration when taking up a translation project has been the literary value of the piece. I had to enjoy the process of translation and could only do so if I thought the subject worthwhile. And, yes, I learned a lot. I learned how lyricism could be infused into prose from Rabindranath. I learned how to write with brevity and precision from Saratchandra and the art of simple, direct, almost colloquial communication with the reader from Sunil Gangopadhyay. The process also intensified my interest in Bengal and the evolution of its society, literature and culture. I was enthused to read and learn more.

Some awards nowadays ask for applications from authors. Did you apply for your awards? Did you work towards getting an award?

No. This is the first time I’m hearing that authors can apply for awards. I thought that was the publisher’s job. As for working towards getting an award — no, I’ve never even thought of it.  Networking is a totally alien term for me. I admire people who can do it perhaps because I, myself, have very little skill at it. Whatever recognition has come my way has come as a surprise. I feel some of the books that have brought me awards didn’t deserve them. On the other hand, the ones that I think should have attracted them, didn’t do so. However, I suppose writers aren’t always the best judges of their work. Assessment of quality should be left to critics.

How long does it take you to churn out a book?

In the case of novels, it depends on the amount of research that has to go into it. For example, Jorasanko took nearly three years. But Daughters of Jorasanko was completed in a year and a half. That’s because most of the research had been done already. Translations take less time depending on the length. Srikanta, Those Days and First Light, took about two years each. The shorter ones The Way Home, Primal Woman and On the Wings of Music were done in less than a year.

Were your novels Jorasanko and Daughters of Jorasanko impacted by your translation of Tagore? Did having done the translations help?

I suppose it did… at some level. Some of the lyricism and emotionally charged quality of Rabindranath’s language must have seeped into my consciousness while doing the translation. But its manifestation is present not only in the Jorasanko series. It is there in all my writing. The Inheritors is suffused with a Tagorean kind of heightened sensibility. So is Suralakshmi Villa.

In your latest novel Suralakshmi Villa you have drawn a very independent woman in the last century — so independent that it would be difficult to find people similar to her in today’s world. Is she modelled on a real person?

I had heard of such a woman from a colleague of mine. The lady, a relation of my friend’s, belonged to a conservative South Indian Brahmin family of Chennai. A few years after her marriage she abandoned her husband and infant son, for no apparent reason, left Chennai and started teaching in an obscure village school. This was way back in the twenties when such an action was unheard of. She never came back. But that was all I knew. I had never met her or heard anything more about her. My imagination provided the rest. So, the answer to your question is both Yes and No. Suralakshmi has been modelled on someone I have heard of. That too only in partial context.

The Inheritors was based on your own family’s past if I’m not mistaken. What kind of research went into it? How long did it take you to write the book?

You are right. The Inheritors is a semi-fictional reconstruction of life as lived by previous generations of my paternal ancestors. Though names have been changed, many of the characters are drawn from real people. Most of the events, too, are located in family history. Not all though. Some are purely fictional. Since everything I wished to describe happened before I was born, it has all been seen through the light of the imagination.

To answer your query about research–there was a lot of primary reading involved. But I had been doing that for years before I took up the project. The ambience was provided by my reading of the classics. Rabindranath, Saratchandra, Bankimchandra, Bibhutibhushan, Tarashanker and many other writers provided sketches of rural life in the 19th and early 20th centuries, all of which were invaluable to my understanding of how life was lived in a Bengal village at the time.

I had very little real material to rely on barring faint memories. Anecdotes heard from my parents, uncles and aunts. Family legends passed down the generations. But I did visit my ancestral village a couple of times. I was shown the house in which my forefathers lived, the location of the Adi Ganga — now extinct, and the temple, Vaidyanath Mandir, which bore the name of the village in an inscription on a terracotta tablet above the door. I also managed to get hold of a family tree, dating from our earliest known ancestor Srikrishna Tarkapanchanan, and an ancient map of the area.

It took me about a year and a half to do the actual writing.

Both in Jorasanko and Suralakshmi Villa, you have strong heroines. Can you tell us if you are doing so with an intent?

Well, I do believe that women of the past had a lot of inherent strength. Most of them kept it hidden because that is how patriarchal society liked its women. Silence and obedience were highly rated qualities and most women abided by family and societal expectations. Some, of course, were exceptionally ahead of their times and displayed courage and independence even at the risk of upsetting the applecart. But even those who were apparently meek and subservient were seen to display enormous inner reserves of strength at a time of crisis. I have shown both kinds in my novels.

What are your future plans? When can we expect a new novel?

I am working on something but it is still in the initial stages. The pandemic has made travelling impossible so field work has had to be postponed. It is too early to share details and impossible to tell when the work will see the light of day.

This has been an online interview conducted by Mitali Chakravarty.

Click here to read more by Aruna Chakravarty.

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Categories
Musings

Time and Us

Anasuya Bhar takes us through 2020 — what kind of a year has it been?

We take Time for granted; we take our years for granted, dividing them into months and days of work and schedules of various kinds. We get lost in the maze of the small measures of time, the days, hours etcetera being our only counters of the great Hands. We forget the larger cosmic Time, which veers forward, with its own plan. In our break neck haste we, perhaps, only inch forwards to the inevitable end. The year 2020 began with the usual fanfare, banality, uncertainty and some trepidation for what it might bring. Some of my life’s uncertainties, incidences and vagaries usually keep me anxious and restless in an effort to secure some peace of mind. The first month brought in distress due to the misfortunes of a loved one. There were some other losses too, but what really put the fear of death among us, was Death itself, with the looming shadows of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Although I have not lived through any of the political or military wars, I felt I was going through some kind of a war in 2020 – a struggle for survival. I was unable to give a comprehensive shape to any of my thoughts. I could hardly account for anything that was happening and gazed at the rising pile of corpses in Europe and the other parts of the world. Poverty is a greater source of ailment where I live. Many succumb to it. As more of those who have less are out of work, poverty seems to be even more powerful an epidemic in this part of the world. There were many deaths, initially not from COVID19, but other instances of carelessness. But these too were passé for us who live in a country with an overflowing population. Things still happened to others in the remoteness of newspaper print.

That changed, however, and soon there were friends, cousins, and relatives getting infected. Doubt played hide and seek with a possible asymptomatic variety as well. There was always fear — fear that shook even the deepest layers of the consciousness and even allayed the strongest faith. There were children and aged parents. Death came stealthily and claimed its victim leaving no scope of any fuss or fanfare. The personal gave way to the public with invincible heroes succumbing to the virus. The list included many from our former President to actors, performers, sportspersons, poets, artists, and to academics. Even an icon as distinguished as Amitabh Bacchan was infected with virus, but he emerged triumphant. Many others were not as fortunate. We lost legends like Sean Connery and our own Soumitra Chatterjee in this year. In the case of the latter, it was a prolonged fight that the aged actor fought against the pandemic. With him, passed an entire era of Bengali culture that was more or less continuous in the spirit of the Tagores or the Rays.

The loss of both ‘Bond’ and ‘Feluda’ marked too much of a co-incidence in our lives. The lacuna that is left after the going of these stalwarts is not only felt particularly in their trade, but also to the entire global cultural scenario. We had just begun commemorating Satyajit Ray’s birth centenary, and Soumitra, the largest living icon of the former’s films and, perhaps, one of the greatest translators of his intellection, succumbed to the banal virus of Corona. The tiers in the uppermost rung of artistry and professionalism are being vacated; and perhaps, one may say, gradually making way, albeit reluctantly, for a new generation.

The year also had us think much about the dystopic and the apocalyptic in civilization, at large. There were also familiar prognostications of the ‘end of the world’ myth. The year, most definitely, marks the beginning of a whole new consciousness. We had stepped into a new millennium two decades ago, but one really did not feel any change overnight or even within a few days or years. Paradigm shifts happen over a period of time. The fault-lines take time to emerge and there needs to be enough distance, aesthetically and culturally, to perceive the changes with sufficient detachment.

For a particular century to emerge as the past, and the next to emerge as the present, one needs perspective. One also needs a new world view. People also succumb naturally to their deaths, especially those having seen most of the last century. A preliminary survey of each century usually shows drastic changes in the first two, three or four decades. The twentieth century saw most of its global events in the first four decades, after which there was reasonable calm and quietness. Equally interesting is the pattern of pandemics in the last few centuries. There is an uncanny similarity with them all dating in the 20s of each century.

The year 2020 seems to mark a new kind of beginning in various ways. While there is a most dystopic flavour to the times, one must acknowledge and also appreciate the spirit of resilience among humans. Newer modes of educating, connecting globally in the most unique and ingenious manners seems to be in vogue. The world of arts and letters has also perfected newer ways of expressions. The pandemic has, in many ways, proved to be a great leveller – the European, the Asian, the African or the American are going through a common crisis. There is, distinctly, a spirit of human solidarity that underlines the community, at large, keeping in abeyance the cultural, racial and political differences. Just like Picasso, Rabindranath, Einstein, and several others survived the last pandemic, the Great Wars or the holocaust, so did many of our grandparents. Would it be too presumptuous to count on destiny and chance, with the hope that we too would survive this, and have some stories to recount, perhaps, to our own grandchildren?

A philosopher had once said, that life would have lost all its meaning had there not been death; and that, we rush forwards doing what we do, because we know that there is a finite end for us. And Thomas Hardy had taken our minds to the chilling observation that our day of death lies skilfully hidden in the calendar year. We laugh, we cry, we continue through years with the nitty-gritty of life, but one particular year that day claims us, in an eternal embrace. Death is the only inevitable, irrevocable and irreversible truth and end in our lives. This year has taught us, among other things, the value of our lives, the value of relationships, the value of the world of nature, and taught us to value our time, before its ‘winged chariot’ gets hold of us.

Dr. Anasuya Bhar is Associate Professor of English and the Dean of Postgraduate Studies in St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College Kolkata. Dr. Bhar is the sole Editor of the literary Journal Symposium (ISSN 2320-1452) http://www.spcmc.ac.in/departmental-magazine/symposium/, published by her Department. She has various academic publications to her credit. Her creative pieces have been published in Borderless Journal, Setu Bilingual and Ode to a Poetess. She has her own blog https://anascornernet.wordpress.com/.

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Categories
Poetry

Noh Ka Likai

By Shakti Pada Mukhopadhyay

Noh Ka Likai: Photo Courtesy; Wiki

Noh Ka Likai*

The enraged splashes of the cascade,

surrounded by eerie ghost vales,

echoed through the hills

and Sal and Pine trees,

roaring down a thousand feet,

through their milky ways

along escarpment.

Looked foggy, like holy spirits

thrashing to effervescence

and unspooling forever,

reminding us of the sad demise of

Likai’s infant daughter.

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A legendary dame of the hills, Likai,

jumped from the cliff to end her life,

since her second husband killed her earlier daughter

 in envy and plotted to let her devour

ignorant that it was the flesh of her own daughter.

The hills failed to catch her

before she fell, without a break,

succumbing to the summons of gravity.

Since then the hills are in tears

and the falls run down the cheeks.

We, on a tour, could correlate the tragedy of Likai

with that of King Oedipus, who, after killing his father

and marrying his own mother unwittingly,

pierced two gold pins in his own eyes

and later died in exile. His mother

hanged herself to death. Oedipus Rex

ended with the chorus wailing,   

‘Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last’.

But I closed my wife for a peck,

to swab her weeping rains, soothing all the pains.

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*Noh Ka Likai, is a beautiful waterfall of Meghalaya, India. The words “Noh Ka Likai” literally mean “jump of Ka Likai”,where Ka is prefixed to name a female personality in Meghalaya.

Shakti Pada Mukhopadhyay, MA( English), writes poetry and prose. A lyrical drama written  by him has been staged. He enjoys acting, singing, travelling and reading books.

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Categories
Review

The Brass Notebook

 A recently penned autobiography by eminent economist Devaki Jain, written based on a suggestion made by Doris Lessings in 1958, with a forward by Amartya Sen and reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha.

Title: The Brass Notebook – A memoir

Author: Devaki Jain

Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2020

This is an unusual memoir. Unusual because it isn’t archetypal, not old-fashioned nor even written in a sequential order. The autobiography is set apart into personal and professional years, covering all that happened in a long and distinguished career.

The Brass Notebook by the celebrated economist-writer, Devaki Jain, is structured in such a way that it is no-holds-barred and edifying. In the brilliant life account, she recounts her own story and also that of an entire generation and a nation coming into its own.

Born in 1933, in Mysore, Karnataka, Devaki Jain was the daughter of the Dewan (prime minister) in the Princely States of Mysore and Gwalior. A student of Mysore University, where she studied Mathematics and Economics, she furthered her education in St Anne’s College, Oxford University and graduated in Economics and Philosophy, where she is now an Honorary Fellow.


Devaki Jain made significant contributions to feminist economics, social justice, and women’s empowerment in India. From 1963 to 69, she was a lecturer in economics at Miranda House, Delhi University. She moved on from teaching to full-time research and publication as the director of the Institute of Social Studies Trust.

Over the years, Devaki Jain founded a wide range of institutions such as the Development Alternatives for Women for a New Era (DAWN), a Third World network of women social scientists, and a research Centre in Delhi — Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST). She had been a member of several policy-making bodies in India and abroad, including the State Planning Board of Karnataka; the erstwhile South Commission, established in 1987 under the chairmanship of Dr Julius Nyerere; the Advisory Committee for UNDP Human Development Report on Poverty (1997), and the Eminent Persons Group associated with the Graca Machel Committee (UN) on the impact on children of armed conflict.

A recipient of the Padma Bhushan (2006) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Westville, Durban, South Africa, the eighty-seven-year-old wrote: “It was difficult to reveal my personal life, but because I felt that my story could be a source of strength for many women, I decided to share both my political engagements and my personal adventures.” Her earlier works include Close Encounters of Another Kind: Women and Development Economics and Harvesting Feminist Knowledge for Public Policy: Rebuilding Progress.

With a ‘Foreword’ by Amartya Sen, The Brass Notebook has been inspired by Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Not just the title, but the idea of the book itself was suggested by Lessing when Jain first met her in 1958. It took Jain 60 years to honour that advice.

In the memoir, Devaki Jain begins with her childhood in south India — a life of comfort and ease. But there were restrictions too, that come with growing up in an orthodox Tamil Brahmin family, and the rarely spoken about dangers of predatory male relatives. 

She writes in the autobiography, “While most of the other students, largely Anglo-Indian or Goan Christians, would walk or cycle from their nearby homes, my younger sister and I came to school every day, to our great embarrassment, in a coach drawn by a beautiful chestnut brown horse. There were no buses or any form of public transport from where we lived to the Cantonment. It was like two different cities. We wore the standard school uniform: a blue serge pleated skirt with a white shirt, tucked neatly in, and a brown-and-gold tie with diagonal stripes. We all sang the school anthem–‘Brown and Gold’–with great fervor, every morning at assembly.

I loved the various prayers and litanies that were part of the Roman Catholic tradition of the school. I would go to the chapel, make the sign of the cross, and sing all the hymns, ‘do’ the rosary (a friend gave me one to pray with). The rosary had to be hidden when I was at home, and my private devotions restricted to the bathroom. Like so many girls who feel the aesthetic appeal of Catholicism, I wanted more than anything to be a nun. Of course, I breathed nothing of these thoughts to my family at home, upper-caste Hindus who would have been shocked at one of their children abandoning both her family’s religion and hopes of a happy domestic life.

“As it was, we were not allowed to enter the house proper without first shedding our uniforms, bathing and changing in the bathroom which we were to enter by the back door. We had two very orthodox grandmothers living with us who regarded close proximity to Christians as polluting.”

Elsewhere in the memoir she writes about the Gandhian way of life at Wardha Ashram: “Another experience, which took me deeply into the ethos of India’s freedom movement, while I was still cocooned in the orthodox family, was a student seminar in Bangalore in 1953. This was convened by the Quakers, in this case the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Normally I would not be allowed to go to such workshops and conferences, but as I have mentioned earlier in this memoir, my brother Sreedhar had me invited. He was studying in the US and was drawn to the spirit and culture of the Quakers.

“At the seminar, I was gripped by the simple attire and eclectic ideas of two young men, aged twenty-one and nineteen, who had come all the way from Gandhi’s ashram in Wardha–one British, David Hoggett, and the other Indian, Vasant Palshikar. I was fascinated by their attitude, behaviour, clothing and ideas. They were living in Wardha at the Sarva Seva Sangh Ashram. They dressed like Gandhi–that is, dhotis made of khadi, tucked high up between their legs, a light sleeveless banyan, vest, also made of khadi, and coarse handmade leather chappals. They were very calm, friendly and totally at ease with the mixed bag of people that we were.”

Ruskin College, Oxford, gave Devaki Jain her first taste of freedom in 1955, at the age of twenty-two. Oxford brought her a degree in philosophy and economics — and hardship, as she washed dishes in a cafe to pay her fees. It was here, too, that she had her early encounters with the sensual life. With rare candor, she writes of her romantic liaisons in Oxford and Harvard and falling in love with her ‘unsuitable boy’– her husband, Lakshmi Chand Jain, whom she married against her father’s wishes. 

Devaki’s professional life saw her becoming deeply involved with the cause of ‘poor’ women — workers in the informal economy, for whom she strove to get a better deal. In the international arena, she joined cause with the concerns of the colonized nations of the south, as they fought to make their voices heard against the rich and powerful nations of the former colonizers. 

The book — divided into seven parts and running into a little over two hundred pages and with photographs from the album —  is as absorbing as thought-provoking. In all these encounters and anecdotes, what sparkles is Devaki Jain’s uprightness in telling the story. In the chronicle, there is a message for women across generations: one can experience the good, the bad and the ugly, and remain standing to tell the story. Honesty permeates the narrative in whatever challenges Devaki Jain has faced in her life.

An entrancing memoir, The Brass Notebook is a must-read for women who want to know how to survive and succeed in a patriarchal society, for men to know that women are not a weaker sex but just uninformed about their inherent strength, and for policymakers to know that even seven decades after Independence, the basic flaws in their policies on women’s empowerment have still not been addressed.

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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Categories
Essay

Remembering Rokeya: Patriarchy, Politics, and Praxis

In this tribute, Azfar Hussain takes us on a journey into the world of Madam Rokeya who wrote more than a century ago in English, Urdu and Bengali. Her books talked of women, climate and issues related to patriarchy.

I repeat the same truth, and, if required, I will repeat it a hundred times.

— Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain*

 What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?

—Audre Lorde

December 9 marks both the birth and death anniversaries of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932). The Rokeya Day in Bangladesh also falls on December 9. Indeed, Rokeya has by now been institutionalised, iconised, and, for that matter, even reified. This means a certain misappropriation and depoliticisation of her work as well. But there are now several biographies of Rokeya and scores of books and articles on her. Although I do not intend to recount Rokeya’s biographical details here, I should stress the point right at the outset: Rokeya’s life as a Muslim woman — lived courageously and even dangerously — illustrates nothing short of sustained struggles against religious bigotry, lack of education, shifting vectors and valences of colonialism, patriarchy affecting the practice of everyday life, and other forms and forces of oppression in colonial Bengal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Theorist-activist, essayist, fiction-writer, poet, translator, journalist, educationist, organizer — and an organic intellectual in her own right — Rokeya produced a remarkable corpus of written works, making distinctive contributions to Bangla literature while articulating with full force the cause of women with a particular, if not exclusive, focus on their education and emancipation. Roushan Jahan already characterized Rokeya as “the perceptive feminist foremother,” given the ways in which she anticipates a constellation of feminist questions and concerns broached later, although Rokeya and what a whole host of third-world feminists have called “Western, white feminism” do not go hand in hand. 

Rokeya’s important works include Motichur, vol. 1 (1904); Motichur, vol.2 (1921); her only novel Padmaraag (1924); and Aborodhbashini (date uncertain), among numerous others. Rokeya knew five languages — Bengali, English, Urdu, Arabic, and Persian — while she directly wrote in three of them — Bengali, Urdu, and English. Her work Sultana’s Dream — a novella first written in English and later translated into Bengali by the author herself — is usually described as “a feminist utopia” that, as Roushan Jahan rightly points out, “antedates by a decade the much better-known feminist utopian novel Herland by [the American novelist and poet] Charlotte Perkins Gilman” (1860-1935).

Yet another work in English by Rokeya is instructively titled “God Gives, Man Robs” (1927). It’s a powerful essay that carries her famous words: “There is a saying, ‘Man proposes, God disposes,’ but my bitter experience shows that God gives, Man Robs. That is, Allah has made no distinction in the general life of male and female — both are equally bound to seek food, drink, sleep, etc., necessary for animal life. Islam also teaches that male and female are equally bound to say their daily prayers five times, and so on.” Some contend that this work advances Rokeya’s nuanced version of what is called “Islamic feminism” at a conjuncture that witnesses androcentric and colonialist abuses of religion itself. Rokeya of course already puts it clearly and simply: “Men dominate women in the name of religion”*.

Although it is impossible for me to characterise or summarise the entire range of Rokeya’s written works, I can readily call attention to one particularly predominant concern that prompts, energises, and constitutes the very production of her words and her world: the woman question relating to the question of the total emancipation of humanity — of both women and men. And the woman question itself is constitutively and irreducibly a revolutionary question insofar as in the final instance, it prompts us to interrogate, combat, challenge, and even destroy the historically produced system of male domination called patriarchy on the one hand, and, on the other, those systems of domination and exploitation that variously support and even enhance patriarchy itself. And Rokeya’s specifically revolutionary stance decisively resides not only in raising the woman question but also in making that question integral and inevitable to the entire horizon of her work — literary, pedagogical, organisational, social, familial.

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Let me return to Sultana’s Dream (1905), because a number of its aspects still continue to remain ignored, although these days this work often gets discussed by those who claim to do postcolonial studies. I think this work is more than just a subversive and satirical intervention in the genre of what might be called “political dream-fiction” or “political science fiction.” And I read it as a work offering—through a radical reversal of the patriarchal or male-dominated order of things—a social imaginary that looks forward to, or even creates in imagination, a space and a place in which not only patriarchy spells out its own death but in which also science, political economy, ecology, and the forces of nature and the forms of justice remain adequately responsive to one another in the best interest of not only all humans but also all living beings themselves. And, thus, this work remains opposed to the destructive and oppressive logic of colonialism, militarism, and masculinism—and even anthropocentrism—profoundly interconnected as they are. In Sultana’s Dream, Rokeya also brilliantly anticipates a version of feminist science, offering a critique of colonialism’s relationship with science as a power/knowledge network. Indeed, “Sultana’s Dream” is, thematically and stylistically, the first work of its kind in the entire history of literary productions in Bengal.

Rokeya is also an early but powerful theorist of women’s liberation, a tireless organiser, an exemplary pedagogist of hope, and even a revolutionary in her own right. And her revolutionary moves reside in ways in which she gave voice, at the beginning of the twentieth century, to an entire generation of women struggling in confinement, or struggling against the purdah system itself, against the abuse of religion, against the shackles of not just double but multiple colonisations of women by patriarchy and colonialism and ‘feudalism,’ for instance.

Rokeya’s work Aborodhbashini is often reckoned the locus classicus of the discourse surrounding the purdah system, but does Rokeya combat the system of women’s seclusion and segregation à la Western feminists? No. For Rokeya, purdah is not just a floating signifier but heavily meaning-loaded, conjunctural, contextual; it’s more than an external veil covering a face or any part of the body, but it refers to an entire system of both mental and physical imprisonment to which the questions of colonial patriarchy and patriarchal colonialism remain relevant. Rokeya says: “The Parsi women have gotten rid of the veil but have they got rid of their mental slavery* [manosik dasattya]?”. It’s here where Rokeya not only anticipates Kazi Nazrul’s own formulation of “mental slavery” (moner golami) — but she also accentuates — way before Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire and Ngugi wa Thiong’o — the need for anti-colonial, emancipatory education for both women and men.         

Last, Rokeya is also a politically engaged satirical poet whose apparently playful wit and sarcasm could be devastatingly subversive at times. Some of her famous poems include ‘Banshiful’, ‘Nalini o Kumud’, ‘Saugat’, ‘Appeal’, ‘Nirupam Bir’, and ‘Chand’. And her poetic but satirical interventions at various levels keep making the basic point about praxis itself: your silence is not going to protect you. Notice, then, a stanza in a poem she wrote as a response to those sell-outs, those middle-class bhadralok collaborators of the Raj who not only resorted to silence, but who were also nervous about losing their “honorific title”s, in the face of the Indian nationalist movement gathering momentum in 1922:

The dumb and silent have no foes

That’s how the saying goes

All of us with titled tails

Keep so quiet telling no tales

Then comes a bolt from the blue

Passes belief, but it’s true

All of you who did not speak

Will lose your tails fast and quick

Come my friends and declare now

In loud and loyal vow

Listen, ye world, we are not

God’s truth, a seditious lot

(quoted in Bharati Ray’s Early Feminists of Colonial India)

I’ve so far quickly contoured only a few areas of Rokeya’s interventions but honouring the legacy of her work calls for rereading, remobilising, and even reinventing Rokeya in the interest of our struggles for destroying patriarchy and all systems of oppression.

* These phrases have been translated by the writer, Azfar Hussain.       

Azfar Hussain teaches in the Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies Department within the Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Grand Valley State University in Michigan, and is Vice-President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies, New York, USA.

First published in the literary page of Daily Star Bangladesh

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