Author: borderlesssg1

Categories
Poetry

The Mysteries of the Night

                               

A flash Fiction by Vandita Dharni

The stillness of night spelled doom for the Bellamy family as the light of their home flickered only to be extinguished tragically someday. The neighbourhood echoed with a cacophony of strange moaning sounds each night. Everyone had ostracized them ever since their only child was declared a witch or to put it more plainly, ‘demon possessed’. Neurologists failed to find a remedy and so they termed it as a form of epilepsy.  Neighbours vouched seeing her walk barefoot along isolated lanes, communing with spirits while some saw her in the small of night eating bugs and lashing herself with a serpent. They attributed these strange occurrences to paranormal visitations or an entity that had taken possession of her body. A ghastly expression now painted the contours of her cheeks that bore perpetual scratch marks on them. 

I had been practicing exorcism for a year, without any professional training. When these occurrences crawled into my ears, I became insanely curious to meet this girl. A shop vendor who was pulling down his shutters to the setting sun, guided me to their home. I had carted all the paraphernalia I required to vanquish these diabolic spirits, hoping they wouldn’t be needed. But there she was in a catatonic state looking at me from the corner of her eyes, manacled to her bed. I was horrified to see her tied up with a thick rope so I requested her parents to release her. They quipped, “It is a regular ritual now. We have to strap her up or Satan will take her away.”

 Not convinced by their logic, I asked my man Friday, to light candles so we could create a sombre atmosphere. Aromatic incense sticks were burnt that swallowed up the nauseating stench emanating from the dark room. The girl gnashed her teeth and laughed mockingly on observing the crucifix in my hand. Her hair hung loose like the wild untethered fury of the Niagara below her shoulders while her head spun like a ferris-wheel. Her body shook convulsively as I began to chant the beads of the rosary. She tattooed her hands with feline claws, digging deep into her skin until streaks of blood dripped from both arms. The two white balls of eyes upturned, without visible corneas. She held her neck, trying to release herself from being strangulated by an invisible force, all the while hissing with guttural sounds. She grabbed her thighs, pounded her chest and contorted her restless body while her throat swelled up like a balloon. I began to work her up into a state of hysteria by clicking my fingers and summoning the demonic spirits to leave her body. I murmured a few verses from the scriptures while invoking them,

“Be quiet, I rebuke you in the name of the Almighty. Leave her alone, I command you.”

 Within seconds, the tongues slithered out speaking strange languages, hissing and cussing. All I could understand was, “I am Lucifer,” “I am Aamon,” “I am Agares,” “and I am Belzebub.” “We have taken possession of what is our inheritance and we are not leaving.” They spoke in multiple tongues all at the same time. It was for the most part gibberish to me.

But I continued to mutter words from the holy book and within seconds, the girl’s movements became more chaotic. Her cheeks turned ashen, face contorted, with eyes charcoal black and teeth laced with blood and traces of chewed up skin almost like a revenant. Demons hurled her up and down in the volcano of her head. Twin black pellets rolled in their sockets while her hands were splaying frantically in revulsion. Soon, a violent seizure gripped her when I began uttering my rosary prayers. I sprinkled holy water on her forehead to expel the spirits but they wailed inside, persisting to be left alone. Her body broke into a feverish sweat as rivulets of blood splattered out from her raw wounds. I bound the spirits with a final prayer of deliverance, ordering the powers and principalities resident within her to loosen their control immediately. After six grueling hours, I heard the wind howl, rustling the four shrieking demons into the blanket of night.  An owl perched upon a tree screeched, to chorus their departure as it glared at the sky.

The cavernous gloom melted away suddenly as the first kiss of sun streamed through the dewy-lipped morning to dispel all the forebodings of the night. Vanessa’s catatonia had withdrawn. She collapsed, almost in a comatose. On waking, her eyes wore innocence once more. The ethereal calmness of her smile returned, injecting hope into the cold dark walls of a home that shut its doors to sinister visitations forever. The night buried its evil in graves of rotten leaves only to be resurrected again in another resident of the neighbourhood.

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Vandita Dharni is an acclaimed poet, scholar and a gold medalist from the University of Allahabad. Thereafter, she got a Ph.D.  degree in American Literature from the same University. Her articles, poems and stories have been published in journals like Criterion, Ruminations, GNOSIS, HellBound Publishing House and International magazines like Immagine and Poessia, Synchronised Chaos, Sipay, Fasihi and Guido Gozzano. She has published three anthologies.

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

Categories
Ghumi Stories

Table Tale

Nabanita Sengupta gives us a glimpse of life in a sleepy little town, long before social-distancing set in

Those were the days of large-hearted people, living in homes with large windows and even larger balconies and sleeping in large beds. Life was different, quite unlike the matchbox sized measured lifestyle of modern society. Raya, growing up in those times, was used to that free flowing largeness of existence, not necessarily reflected always in their material possessions. Their house, as she always remembered it later, had huge windows in each of the two rooms, that were themselves not too big. A large part of both the rooms was taken up by a bed each, larger than what you find in the furnished apartments of today. Sitting far from Ghumi now, Raya often wonders at the disproportionate decor of their homes in those days.

Raya’s father was particularly large hearted when it came to hospitality. Raya doesn’t remember a single month when they did not have relatives visiting them. It was something they looked forward too as well. Though it meant cramped living spaces and queuing up for the solitary toilet, the fun compensated for all the inconveniences.  And since her mom was an excellent cook, guests also meant lip smacking delicacies. If it were not the relatives visiting from other cities, there were local friends gathering for an evening adda*.

Luchi

Since both her parents loved large gatherings, most of the weekends saw their friends and families coming over for evening tea. And those teas were almost as elaborate as dinners. Occasions were numerous too – a visit from someone’s kin, end of children’s examinations, someone’s return from a travel or simply because they felt like meeting up. Raya loved to see the women, her mother’s friends huddling in the kitchen, rolling out luchi* or spreading dosa* batter, laying out plates and also serving the juiciest pieces of gossip with equal élan. Or at times, they would be just pouring out their woes in the warmth of a bonhomie and empathy of like-minded friends.

Dosa

Occasionally, men too helped out with food but mostly, kitchen was a space that these women kept for themselves. And children let go their boisterous spirits and ran around the house, laughing at the silliest of pretexts. At the end of such gatherings, Raya found her parents dead tired yet thoroughly contented with the day.

But there was a small glitch that at times interrupted the pleasant flow of these gatherings. And like every small issue that festers into something foul if left untreated, this onetoo took an unpleasant turn. Raya’s mother refused to entertain any guest till they had a new dining table, large enough to accommodate at least eight people. The one that they had now was a table for four, ancient and somehow supporting itself on wobbly legs. It posed a threat to the food that was heaped on it during such gatherings. Raya’s parents, especially her mother, were one of those kind spirits of the yester world who believed in smothering their guests with delicacies. And all painstakingly cooked by her! Her culinary skill was much appreciated. But the process of sitting around the table to eat had to be executed with utmost care, taking into consideration its rundown condition.

Those were the days before the instant gratification provided by plastic money and a ready credit offered by banks. Each purchase required careful planning because anything bought was considered to be an investment for a lifetime. The quality of the product was the most important criteria because durability was a must. Disposability had not yet become the norm. So, after almost a month of deliberations and discussions, Raya’s father went to the carpenter to place his order. Unlike big cities, small town Ghumi did not have any readymade furniture stores. In a place with a three thousand odd population, it would not have been commercially viable.

Raya knew that placing the order for the table would mean a visit from Mr. Sankar of Universal Furnishings to take the required measurements over umpteen cups of tea and discussions ranging from the cold war to children’s education. Just one-eighth of the entire conversation time would be dedicated to the discussion about the furniture to be made, its design and details. Raya enjoyed these conversations which seemed to move along serpentine tracks, changing courses or moving in circles, but always animated.The precocious mind of the little girl remoulded the adult discussions that she heard with utmost focusto give them a place in her own world of fantasies. So Shanker uncle’s visit was always one that Raya looked forward to.

And this had always been the ritual with every piece of furniture they procured. This table was not going to be an exception either. After the ritual of ‘ordering’ the table came the proverbial waiting period. Everyone in Ghumi knew what this wait meant. Normal deadlines never worked for Mr. Shanker and there was no account of the time that he would take to finish a product. If it was not a labour crisis, it would be some illness at home or some major existential crisis that would always upset the so-called deadlines of Mr. Shanker.No queries, no amount of harsh words or coaxing could affect the middle-aged proprietor of Universal Furnishing;he bore them all with equal fortitude and a smiling demeanour. But his products were of an excellent quality and that was what had helped him survive in his trade. The Ghumians had long resigned themselves to the fate of waiting.

Anyway, once the order was given and the advance paid, the gloomy cloud slowly faded away from Raya’s home and once again her mother agreed to have their regular guests for weekend evenings. As she served them food on the rickety table, she maintained her calm in the hope of a new one in the near future. The guests too continued with their cautious handling of both the food and the table.

After a long wait, that day also arrived when the ‘table’ entered Raya’s life. Five employees of Mr. Sankar came with a huge cardboard wrapping and four table legs tied together. They worked for almost an hour to fit the ‘table’ and once done, Raya and her parents were left speechless! A six feet by five feet dining table was not what one got to see every day and that too in an apartment measuring only 800 square feet. The ‘table’ took up almost whole of the room leaving little space for anything else.The ratio of the room size to that of the ‘table’ accentuated the latter’s hugeness. Raya cast a furtive glance at her mother and could immediately detect a sign that spelt danger. She just waited for the catastrophe to happen. But Shankar was perhaps a magician, to her complete disbelief, no tsunami shook their house that day! To her mother’s complete disbelief and boiling anger, Mr. Sankar had just one thing to say – “Bhabhi*, I thought you wanted it large! It is large enough to accommodate a dozen diners comfortably and more so if need be. You can also put it to other kind of uses.” The last sentence left her completely flabbergasted and was one of the rarest occasions where Raya saw her mother totally tongue tied. The ‘table’ came to stay though they did not even know what Mr. Sankar had meant by ‘other uses’.

But they did not have to wait long for the answer. Later that week when six of Raya’s cousins from Kolkata sprang a surprise visit on them, the ‘table’ happily got converted into a makeshift bed too. Since there were only two beds in the house, one for themselves and another for guests, one of her cousins, in awe of that huge ‘table’, suggested that two of them could sleep on it. Raya’s mother who had already given up any rational expectation from this giant of a wooden construct did not even bother to argue. And the ‘table’ happily went on to serve its ‘other’ purposes.

*Adda: An informal conversation

*Luchi: Deep-fried bread of fine flour popular in Bengal

*Dosa: Pancake originally from Southern states of India, made of ground rice and pulses

*Bhabhi: sister-in-law, a common form of addressing a woman acquaintance in Hindi speaking areas.

Dr. Nabanita Sengupta is an Assistant Professor in English at Sarsuna College Kolkata. She is a creative writer, a research scholar and a translator. Her areas of interest are Translation Studies, Women Studies, Nineteenth century Women’s writings, etc. She has been involved with translation projects of Sahitya Akademi and Viswa Bharati. Her creative writings, reviews and features have been variously published art Prachya Review, SETU, Muse India, Coldnoon, Café Dissensus, NewsMinute.in, News18.com and Different Truths. She has presented many research papers in India and abroad.

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

Categories
Poetry

Of Nationhood

By Shyamolima Saikia

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When you are made just a pawn,

Being fiddled at the hands of a conjuror

And you dance to his tune

Forgetting that too, your own lines;

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When perchance you vent your spleen

Straight to his face,

Your mouth alas is then gagged

And doused is your rage;

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When you feel you could

Breathe in free air,

But then you are choked

And gasp as if going through a nightmare;

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When you think

You can play the perfect role,

The charlatans enact a farce

And you’re left just a spectator;

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It is then…

Invisible without a name,

Without the power to judge,

Without a mind to think,

That the ground beneath your feet slips away

And the hapless ‘you’ dies a thousand living deaths!

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Shyamolima Saikia is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. Of English, Gargaon College, Sibsagar, Assam. Prior to this, she was serving as a lecturer in the Centre for Juridical Studies, Dibrugarh University, Assam. She has also worked as an Academic Counsellor in the Directorate of Distance Education, Dibrugarh University. She has presented papers in various National Seminars and International Seminars. Besides editing a number of books, she has also published a book of poems titled Palimpsest. Moreover, she has also contributed several poems and few short stories in several regional dailies, magazines and e journals.

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

Categories
Poetry

The Storm that Rages

From the conflict ridden state of Kashmir, Rayees Ahmed writes of hope and restoration of peace. He translates his own poem, Ab tak Toofan, from Urdu to English. 

Neither this torrential rain has the will to stop

Nor the monsoon sky has the will to light up this darkness!

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God only knows what happened to the skies,

That breaks and explodes on us!

Maybe the sky is bleeding and wailing in agony,

As the Earth is clutched by the claws of oppression

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Is this the end?

Perhaps there may be another tempest broiling.

Yes, I could see this droplet of rain encapsulating the Psalms of freedom

Neither does this rain want to stop.

Nor the sky light up to burn this darkness.

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This will not stop!

How on Earth will this mayhem stop?

When innocents were killed and buried under mountains,

And the grass blanketed the pain and cries choked inside the soil

The Earth was bloodied with murder and arson! 

From that wetness of blood bloom new voices.

Voices of wisdom and humanity will resonate freedom,

new slogans of humanness will echo through the mountains.

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Yes the mother Earth  nurtures us with her milky dews,

The trees wait to witness the secret moves

Of a whirlwind that brawls faraway!

The time will stop when doomsday arrives,

Yes I know this rain will bring back a Hurricane…

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The thunderous clouds looming over with war-cry!

Yes this thwarting rain is bringing back the storm

And will wash away the pain and bloodshed,

uncover, and unveiling the nameless tombs and free the souls.

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Yes, these Dark clouds will clear up for a new Dawn

Yes, this New sky of Freedom will prevail Peace

the new sky will bring warmth of Hope and Life.

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Rayees Ahmad is a budding writer and poet from Kashmir. He has bachelor’s in mass communication and masters in Peace and Conflict Studies. He hopes to add a new colour to Kashmir and the conflict it faces through his poetry. He has written many poems and articles on the Kashmiri diaspora. 

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

Categories
Stories

The God Choice Awards 2065

A spoof by Dustin Pickering

1

Everyone knew the apocalypse was coming someday. After all, the Christ told us the endtimes were due and he left a few signs for us to look for. Some thinkers speculated that the endtimes already happened during the times of Paul the Apostle. Jewish scholars often tempered their arguments against the divinity of Jesus with rhetoric concerning Paul’s eschatology.

In the year 2025, it was announced that the final days were upon us. Television anchors and newscasters were in doubt — how could it be? The Holy Scriptures were right? The secular world was aghast in outrage. God could not come to our planet. He was made of fairy dust and he corrupted our world with his dogma. Freedom was a joke under his thumb. The concept of the endtimes had declined in popularity and people developed their own religions and thoughts around new concepts. St. Paul’s eschatology indicated that the end already happened when Jesus was buried and resurrected. No one, I mean no one, trusted the announcement of the endtimes.

It came over a large speaker.

“Attention! Attention all civilians! Civilisation has reached maximum corruption. We are the most decadent race in existence. Humanity must be redeemed, and the world forgotten. There is something new ahead of us. The end is near! The end is near! Beware of falsehoods and faithlessness. We are in the final stages of civilised decay. Continue on your path. Do not renounce your dreams. Salvation is at hand. Beware! The future of humankind is above us.”

After the dozens of wars recently fought, the birth of neo-colonial far right identitarian policy imposed from above, the races were in riot against one another. There were continuous earthquakes and floods all over the world, increase in diseases and famines, poverty at a height not seen in hundreds of years, and cruelty among the masses at its worst ever, hopelessness flooded humanity in a way never seen before. Even the Scripture was tossed into the fire. People doubted their own faith and deities and stopped trusting one another. The apocalypse would emerge soon.

The spontaneous emergence of fear and desolation accompanied by hope and revelation: the apocalypse. How can these two streams of being flood the universal human soul at once? They had for thousands of years. The Lord picked up these trippy vibes in the air—the twelve currents of IsReal, mistranslated into twelve tribes, were actually states and phenomenon, not political entities. However, the future of human awakening bled into the text of Scripture and the word “tribes” became the source material for Zionism. The shifting realities within the human soul, dubbed “IsReal”, became manifest in the country of Israel in 1948. The United Nations reluctantly acknowledged the country as its kibbutz were struggling to fight off Arab warriors. When the British visited the small villages to assess the situation, they were chased off by Jewish farmers who believed strongly in Israel. For years, they had toasted to “Next year, in Israel.” Now the Zionism they dreamed, that beautiful mountain of the soul, became a political reality and utopian visions melded with truth in splendour.

To his chagrin, Michael Drezier lost his doubt. A stern atheist for most of his life, he decided to visit Israel to see this new political reality. If it was everything said of it, he would turn over his agnosticism for good. He would convert to the ways of Christ. God was already at work on his destiny. His head was blessed with golden fire.

Michael spent six weeks in the country of Israel in the year 1952. This was prior to the Six Day’s War. Hostilities were not at their peak. Yet Michael talked with the Prime Minister.

“We all believe this is God’s land and we are God’s people. It is our holy mission, we tell others, to bring God into the world,” PM Ariel Bleikowitz told Michael. “The Jewish people are survivors. In your country, a survivor becomes a whiner. We always had hope that God’s justice would come to fruition through us.”

Michael asked, “What if you are destroyed? Do you have enemies? Why the violence?”

“We must protect what we have. God ordained our mission. He gave us this land. We are bringing the next state of being into the world as we did when we wrote Scripture.”

“But Scripture, as you call it, is human. A human hand held an instrument and composed it. It was edited, translated, and anthologised by humans. How am I supposed to believe it is truly God who speaks from it?”

“Much of what the Scriptures told was meant for us, strictly. Books were removed that did not contain the universal message of salvation.” PM Bleikowitz blinked sullenly. She didn’t really have the answers.

“But why do you not believe in Jesus Christ? Most of the Western world believes in his divinity. Even the Arab people believe in him as a prophetic voice. However, you deny him as Savior.” Michael paused. “If he isn’t the Savior of humanity, all of Scripture is based on pretense as I have often argued.”

“Michael, I consider the Gospel to be a kind of midrash.” She paused and scratched the sweat from her brow. “I cannot explain this. It is a mystery. The truth is Jesus was one of us—a Jew. We are tired of being slaughtered and mocked. He is the very face of us. Was he real? As real as Israel. I cannot confirm any more than that.”

The sun shone into Michael’s eyes and he grew tired and impatient. As an atheist, he was often rebuked concerning his views on Biblical texts and it annoyed him. He couldn’t buy that God descended and expected his worship, him, a small man in a lousy world.

“You know, we are a tiny fraction of this entire being in life. We are small creatures cast by God into a large universe. We aren’t alone, though, I know it.” The Prime Minister smiled, deep sorrow in her eyes. “The pogroms were bad enough. I had some grandparents who were tortured during them, their houses burned to the ground. A certain mystic in Russia advocated Jewish extermination. That book—Protocols of the Elders of Zion? He wrote it. To dismiss our mission. The world hates us. Why, Michael? We are people trying to live. We want the best for everyone.”

Michael had tears in his eyes. In his heart, he felt for this person. She continued to talk to him, his ears open.

“After Hitler, what was next? Our people have grieved the loss of God’s land since before the Christian era. God promised return. We have returned.” Prime Minister Bleikowitz sighed. “I can’t discuss this anymore. Enjoy your visit.” She closed the curtains to block the light and heat from outside. She then looked Michael in the eyes directly, calmly. “Michael, it is the end. Don’t doubt this. This is my faith.” Something in her words struck Michael deeply. When he left her presence, he was not the same.

Late night, at his hotel Michael smoked a cigar. When it reached its final ash, he stuffed it into the ground and went to his room. When he got to his bed, he pulled a notebook from the drawer. He picked up the pen on the dresser and began to write. What he wrote is considered the last of the Solemn Prophecies.

War after war challenged the legitimacy of the State of Israel whose flag stood tall in spite of the death toll. As humanity rolled into the next millennium like a limousine into an impoverished neighborhood, fear escalated, and people lost their minds in the millions. Energies were at their height when finally, something happened that relaxed things. Hope sprang eternal.

Michael died and left the paper he wrote with his family. He requested it be opened on April 1, 2065 by the eldest of the sons. When the son opened it, he passed out on the floor. It echoed what had taken place for the previous 100 years and noted what would take place in the coming months. The text follows.

“Sons and daughters of humanity: a moment has struck me anew. The State of Israel will face war after war and will struggle relentlessly on Yom Kipper. The Suez Canal will be the end of the British Empire as we know it. After the wars, America will become the world power. After the year 2000, American power will begin its decline while the dollar remains steady. An unpopular president will be elected who will move the American embassy to Jerusalem, signifying an attitude that will dominate until the end of the world. Israel’s struggle to exist will end as the Son of Man returns.

In the year 2065, a plan will be unveiled yet to be disclosed. This plan will finalise the existence of humanity within the ideality of its preconceived intention, before darkness sets over its eyes. You will find this prophecy buried under the Hill of the Skull where Jesus Christ was crucified. It is there the contest of the endtimes will take place and determine the fate of the world.”

In November 2016, President Trump came into power. His hair slightly messy and numbers short at his inauguration, he still appeared suave and strong. He would be the one to begin the end.

II

President Trump had been locked in a cryogenic mold for the previous four decades. His mind, it turned out, was so brilliant that science needed to study it. His ability to negotiate revealed itself in his second term.

In November 2020, after the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) struck down multiple laws concerning reproduction that were abysmally stupid, President Trump was elected to a second term. The blue cities turned red with rage and began destroying everything. Riots went on for 30 days and 30 nights. Finally, the President issued a proclamation.

CNN reported in full. “My fellow Americans! Please do be bold and stop this despicable behavior. I do not plan to take your rights, your dreams. You may continue your lives with the rule of law sacrosanct. My first term was dirty with the Mueller report, the investigations following, the violence in Russia that annexed Ukraine, the entire world set ablaze after climate change was revealed to be a hoax. I promise you peace, so please have a seat. Come to the White House, pay me a visit. Send your emissaries. Let’s discuss. I have knowledge as revealed in the President’s book only I have access to. It is time to reveal the 12 secrets only I know, only other presidents know.”

This shook the country. Rioting stopped.

ANTIFA (Anti-fascist political movement) negotiated carefully with its allies to determine who would visit the White House on their behalf. Comrade G. Stern Woody was finally appointed. The leaders of the alt-right finally admitted they were a satirical art movement designed to infuriate the left, but even they appointed their own ambassadors to hear the 12 secrets. AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations)
appointed Don Drummand to visit. Each organisation voted for their own emissaries to the White House.

President Trump cooked hamburgers himself. He said his wife made a “mean salad” for everyone. Everyone nodded delightfully as they stuffed their faces.

The President pulled the curtains and smirked. “Folks, you are here for a reason. Many wondered why I moved the Embassy, why I had Schiff assassinated, why I did all the things I did. Yes, I even dismantled the Federal Reserve. But I am not the one in control.”

“Mr. President, who is?” said Mr. Drummand. “If not the leader of the once free world, who?”

“I don’t know,” the President responded, “but I can say I know things. We are here to hear what I can reveal.”

Everyone nodded as they stuffed their faces.

“Most of the 12 secrets are irrelevant.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. It was soft and wrinkled. He unfolded it carefully. “Sorry, it’s been washed a few times.”

The President spoke carefully and concertedly to the crowd of emissaries.

“The 12 secrets. I am going to give you the gist of the plot. Lyndon Johnson killed Kennedy. This signaled the end of the American Dream. Johnson was a Soviet spy all along. Nixon, the one I modeled my presidency after, turned out to be perfectly innocent. The entire thing was a setup. The powers created the illusion necessary to get him out of office before he saved the world. Nixon had a lot of connections. Reagan didn’t exist. He was a talking head on Animal Planet they just pasted a mask on. He didn’t even know the Star-Spangled Banner. Finally, the end is near.”

“Mr. President, what end?”

“The end of our world as we know. You know, the REM song.”

Within hours, the rioting stopped, the economy drastically improved, wars ceased completely, and everyone was happy until 2065 when the Solemn Prophecy was read. All faces turned sad.

Scientists revived President Trump so he could dig up the final prophecy.

“I’ve been asleep for decades! Call this beauty sleep,” he joked. They flew him to Israel. They had already dug under the Hill of the Skull and found a plastic box which was possibly 3000 years old, and it was sealed with dry bloodied fingerprints.

“The blood of Pilate.” The President wiped his teeth as he adjusted them. “Yes, that was one of the 12 secrets.” He paused for a moment. “Let’s sing the Star-Spangled Banner.” The world sang.

The President solemnly opened the box. The lid was tight. Finally, his frail hands lifted it as it broke from the box itself. He wiped the dirt off. He pulled a scroll from the center of the box. “The Seventh Scroll.”

Former President Trump read the writing.

“The contestants for God of the Year are Loki, Hammarabi, Venom, Jesus Christ, and Marcel Duchamp. How do you vote?”

The world voted for Jesus Christ.

“Jesus Christ, you are the winner. Please come forward for your trophy and give us a speech.”

Jesus appeared at the top of Mount Golgotha. He held the trophy in his hands. He lifted it. It was a golden hammer on marble stone. In the stone was carved “God of the Year 2056”.

Jesus smiled. “Thank you all for this award.” The world cheered. “I would like to thank the committee that sponsored this! Thank you, former President Donald Trump. Now, this contest promised to be the final one. I tell you, there’s one thing the world forgot years ago.” Everyone was silent. “I can’t tell you enough how unfair the world has been to you all. I know this, I suffered with you. I carried my cross and you have as well. Be a good sport! I have to tell you, though, you have everything wrong.”

There was silence as the world waited for Jesus to tell them why they were wrong.

“You can’t vote for God. This contest is a fraud.”

There was universal outrage.

“I have always been your god. You can’t vote for me or vote me out. Godhood is not a democracy. You can’t vote for the outcome.”

Jesus’s ratings fell significantly, constantly, for the remainder of the existence, yet he steadily remained God and did not give a damn.

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Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post. 

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

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely that of the author.

Categories
Poetry

Spring of Sorae Port

by Eui Joong Kim

The wingings of seagulls are light

Among the beams of sunlight fluttering

With the cold wind.

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The smile of the Spring that I suddenly meet

Though sunlight is still weak

To awaken the sleeping earth.

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Sorae Port, where the living things at the risk of their lives

In the repeated ebb and flow of the tides,

Live in harmony.

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Spring doesn’t push the winter away

But melts it holding it in the breast

Slowly, softly and warmly.

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Eui Joong Kim was granted a Rookie Award for poetry in the magazine of Monthly Hanmaek Literature and Hong Kong Dongshin Literature Prize. He is a member of Hanmaek Writers’ association and Incheon Writers’ association. 

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Categories
The Literary Fictionist

In search of Lewis Carroll

Sunil Sharma travels through pages of a classic with ease and aplomb demystifying literary lore to unravel the identity of a man that never was…

…but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.

So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.

`Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: `we’re all

mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’

`How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.

`You must be,’ said the Cat, `or you wouldn’t

have come here.’

“Who are YOU?’ said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a

conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I – I hardly

know, sir, just at presen t– at least I know who I

WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must

have been changed several times since then.’

`What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar…

“So, who is Lewis Carroll?”

This question cannot be easily answered by me or anybody else. But Grace wanted a quick answer. She just finished Alice in the Wonderland and wanted to know about its wonderful creator who went by this name.

“Did he ever exist?” She asked me, eyes wide open—the way only nine-year-olds can. I said I would find out for her soon.

“It is not a real name,” Grace said.

“What is the real name?” I asked.

“Oh! I forgot!”

“No problem, honey.”

“But why do folks use other names? If I use a name not my official one, will it not be understood as something wrong?” she asked.

Being a lawyer, I had told her of cases where people using false names got caught — and punished by the law.

“It is literature,” I said.

“But rules are rules—for everyone, in every field,” Grace persisted. “You are trying to conceal your true identity.”

“In literature, rules are different,” I said tamely. “It is a different territory.”

“OK. Who is Carroll?”

We were back to square one.

“Give me some time,” I said.

That set me off on a strange journey. A literary odyssey that required the navigation of the choppy area between the imagined and real; the persona and the individual; social mores and  the transmuted artistic expression; sense and non-sense; fantasy and fact; historical and transcendental; the physical and the parallel universes; meaning and its production, creation and destruction… and lot more. Kind of investigation that a literary detective has to undertake.

“We find signs of its age in a serious literary work,” says Homocus (Not his real name, says he with a wink).

Can we?

Alice in Wonderland was published in the year 1865. “In a sense it mocks all the expected norms of novel reading and writing; it demolishes them and renews them for others. Very few works could overturn those norms set by Carroll — even he, himself could not through his other iconic work,” says Homocus Mirabilis over coffee in his well-appointed drawing room in Rome. “Although written in the Victorian age, echoes of our age are also traceable in a great book.”

How? 

“First thing first. The age when the book got written leaves its mark in that literary book,” claimed Homocus, considered to be a foremost authority on Alice and Carroll, two famous fictional characters for me.

He explains patiently to me his interesting hypothesis, “Let us talk about the book.”

All right.

“It is an escape from the prim and ‘propa’ Victorian world into a world of freedom. Freedom from the restrictions, stifling norms and stilted conventions of an imperialist society and its totalising binary imagination.”

Now, that is too much!

“Alice the book is full of riddles and signs that you have to interpret for yourself and the book speaks through the prism of time.”

How?

“You find the echoes of your time in that book. Only thing — be alert!”

Now, a pompous — for me — Homocus Mirabilis can be jarring on the nerves!

“Now, let us talk Alice, the Victorian girl.”

Go ahead, I say.

“Alice is almost seven-and –a- half-year-old girl who, bored on the morning of May 4th, finds herself falling through a rabbit hole and into a strange world. And the journey starts that still continues to delight adults and children alike across the world.

“During the dreamed adventure, little Alice — curious, questioning, courteous and believing — encounters the normal world in a new and fresh way. It is a world inverted, made strange, for the rationalists.”

Here is how, says Homocus:

“The talking rabbit with a pocket watch and a hall with locked doors of all sizes are all symbols — like much of the book Alice and much of literature. The fully-clothed rabbit leads the child on to a big adventure of sights and sounds. It destabilises all our expectations of looking at the normal world and experiencing it through language—itself a system of conventions. In a way, the scenes after changing scenes baffle our commonsensical view of things seen and repeatedly emphasise the arbitrary nature of symbol, sign and convention.”

Please explain.

“The rabbit stands for swiftness, speed and velocity. Metaphorically. Carroll, in order to render the experienced prim world of the Victorian era upside down, makes the rabbit as a creature speak and thus create a new symbol. The unexpected does the work of the expected; the impossible becomes possible; the illogical is nothing but logical in a strange world. It is purely arbitrary decision by Carroll to assign a new shocking value to rabbit operating as an old symbol in an underground realm where the young trusting viewer Alice expects only out-of-the-way things to happen because those happenings make the conventional life exciting and no longer dull and stupid in its common way for her. A gregarious female child experiences the restricted world in a newer way, a world where everyday realities are not prevalent but mad things rule. The book turns down everything topsy-turvy, on its head.”

Sorry!

“It is how every new literary artistic product behaves. You can see the Alice book anticipating the Cubists and continuing the tradition of Don Quixote.”

Hmm!

“By adding speech and clothes and waist-pocket watch, the rabbit becomes a new symbol rather than a tired cliché and infuses more energy into the funny narrative. But how a rabbit can talk, you ask. Why not? Carroll seems to say. Literature is a particular way of looking at the things and the world. Your realism might not be my realism. For a child, a fable or fairy-tale is more real, plausible than a work by Dickens. And how real is the real in these realistic novels? Is it not a mere illusion?”

Well, okay. Go on…

“So, once we expect the legitimacy of a parallel world created only by the extra-ordinary creative mind of a great artist, then we expect things occurring in that world as perfectly sane, logical and normal. In a fairy-land, every winged creature is normal; only a wingless human is abnormal.”

Good!

“So a talking rabbit is a novelty that ceases to be such after an initial encounter.”

What about the hall?

“Simple. It signifies the restricted environment for a female child then and now. It has got locked rooms of different sizes. Rooms that can lead to different realms but are locked in a big hall that closes down upon the looker. You need initiatives big or small to open that restricted space. Hence, she shrinks and grows bigger.”

Stretching it a bit?

“Not at all. We produce our own meanings out of a sacred text in every age. Criticism is like that only. A sacred text speaks in multiple tones to multiple folks.”

For a lawyer, this is all Greek!

“It is in our hands to manufacture a wonderland out of the rational and mundane. Alice the book proves that. Take the scene of Caucus race where everybody is going in circles and nobody is a winner. Middle-class existence in a post-modern society resembles that Caucus race only: Moving around in circles.”

Sounds intriguing!

“The Cheshire Cat!”

What about it?

“It shows that symbols are arbitrarily assigned their symbolism; meanings to objects. Red rose for love? Why not for hatred? You have no answers. A grin without a cat in fact suggests the gap between object and its assigned meaning by us; it suggests that it is all decided by community of users in an arbitrary way only. The entire language, symbols, signs — they all function like that.”

How?

“The meanings, symbolism get finally separated in an evolved sophisticated complex sign-system — linguistic and literary. A grin, the signified — separate from cat, its signifier — hints at the function of any given code — mathematical, musical, scientific, folk — evolved to communicate ideas.”

What else is there in this marvelous book?

“A lot. The Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat dialogues are all pointers in this direction. The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party is another intriguing scene. The take on the word mad is revealing. Don Quixote also examines this state.”

What is the message?

“Frightening change! We all change in the process of our experience — for good or for worse. But change we all on this earth, a brief adventure, for some mad; for some, sane. Boundaries are never fixed; they change rapidly for us. Words lose meanings and gain much. Innovative ideas once considered insane get accepted as sane in the long run. Mad become sane; sane become insane. Arts help quicken metamorphosis. Alice the book is more effective than any other solid earthly experience for some like Alice, the little question curious girl, who has got two sides to her.”

Hmm.

“Literature can bring transformations deep via their imagery and emotions, visual appeals.”

What is the message for you, of this book of fiction?

“Well, simple. The real education is done through experiencing the world. There are and can be bizarre and eccentric characters, low and high, articulate and dull, rational and irrational in a rich tapestry and they all can teach a child and us a thing or two about life and the world. We keep on changing fast — sometimes shrinking; sometimes expanding; sometimes small, sometimes big — it is all a big rollercoaster and you enjoy the eccentricities and delights of this short journey between dreaming and waking before you leave your earthly coil for good!”

Impressive, dear Homocus Mirabilis, my dear literary friend, a devotee of Cervantes, Borges, Marquez, Spielberg, Tolkien and Rowling– creators of the so-called marvellous for every generation. One Thousand and One Nights is his favourite. So is Panchtantra.

And what is marvellous?

“Well, well. It is the other side of realism. The upside down of reality, of human perceptions. As the jungle looks strange at night –taking on different forms; the trees and shrubs and hills look bizarre, outlandish or like giants in the inky darkness — for the traveler trapped there but reverts to its original shape the next morning and becomes less threatening than the one at night, it is the same with the marvellous. It is the exaggerated real and designed to defy logic and a sense of rational for the pure delight of telling a story, a fable. There are no giants we all know but we tend to believe in such stories, yarns or fables. The idea is to delight in the unknown and the mysterious and to creatively explore the free-flowing, unstructured side of human imagination. In other words, creating an alternative reality for the reading/viewing mind and an escape route from the regimented grimness of a rational, calculating world into the delightful realms of art.”

Marvellous!

Last question.

Yes.

Who is Lewis Carroll?

“The guy who overturned a tradition and created a new one of story-telling. The great innovator! He insisted that a medley of riddles, pun, poems, neologism and queer creatures in a fun narrative can also be quite an interesting method of communicating certain truths. He saw things largely unseen by his society and he made them vivid through a new style and presentation. Truths are truths, whatever be their forms of expression. If the factual can be valid, why not the fantastic for the artist and the wider reading public? In fact, he interrogates the conventions of evolving mode of realism and produces his version of realism— portmanteau realism.”

Illustration?

“He created a sur-realistic world much before Dali…Like, to give an example not from the book but to make a lawyer like you to understand, combining different things in one figure to make it bizarre: Adding cat/dog- whiskers to a mirror.

“Or, a Caterpillar smoking a hookah? I like those classic lines:

“‘I can’t explain MYSELF, I’m afraid, sir’ said Alice, `because I’m not myself, you see.’

“`I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.”

This exchange is profound. So is the startling image of a smoking Caterpillar. It is unusual, is it not?

“Yes, It is. You are right, my lawyer friend from India.”

Who was he in life? Our dear Carroll?

“He never existed.”

What?

“Yes. He is not historical.  A mere invention, a linguistic category only.”
Then who wrote the book?

“Lewis Carroll only.”

Now you sound like the Cheshire Cat or the Caterpillar.

“Not at all.”

Please explain.

“Carroll was/is an extension of the historic Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician, logician, dean, author and photographer of the Victorian age. He wrote under the pen name of Lewis Carroll. Former was a rationalist; Carroll, a romanticist. The first, a complex logical thinker thinking in abstract terms, solving problems of math. The second, a romancer playing with the imagination, words, logic, situations, norms most playfully, like our playful post-modernists. Two opposing sides! An interesting dualism not uncommon in artistic field.”

Hmm! Not very clear yet…

“He was two persons in one man — like most of the artistes. What Carroll could see the staid Dodgson could not; what the math teacher could see, the writer could not. Both were separated, yet unified in a single breast — like the meaning is in the word, the word is in the object; the object is in the mind, the mind in the matter…”

STOP!

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Sunil Sharma is Mumbai-based senior academic, critic, literary editor and author with 21 published books: Seven collections of poetry; three of short fiction; one novel; a critical study of the novel, and, eight joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism, and, one joint poetry collection. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award—2012. His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015.

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Categories
Review

How Non-nonsensical is Sukumar Ray’s Nonsense Verse?

Book review by Nivedita Sen

Title: Habber-Jabber Law:  Nonsense Adventure.

Author: Sukumar Ray; translated from Bengali to English by Arunava Sinha  

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books, 2020

It is believed by and large that Ha Ja Ba Ra La (1921) by Sukumar Ray, the father of Satyajit Ray, was attempted as an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Both start with the child protagonist going off to sleep out of doors on a hot summer’s day, under the shade of a tree, and entering a dreamscape in which creatures that are a mix of the real and the fantastic live out their lives. These characters are caught in situations where they constantly argue with one another and the protagonist about the strangest of words, events and ideas. Yet the very normalcy, credibility and sanity offered through the voice of the first person protagonist, juxtaposed and tested against the curious and the implausible in their formulations, is portrayed satirically, critical of some of the assumptions and values we take for granted, and interrogated for their logical fallacies.

Although Alice travels down a rabbit hole that leads her to Wonderland, Sukumar Ray changed everything from this point onward to match the ambience of an Indian, more specifically Bengali, way of life. And in the process, he not only crafted an original which is a milestone in the genre of nonsense writing in Bengali for children but offered food for adult thought to anyone who could read between the lines.

The book has an attractive cover and design and includes all the delightful original illustrations by the author. But it is a colossal task to actually translate line by line, if not word by word, this early twentieth century Bengali classic into English. Over the last forty years, language based translations have moved to culture based translations. This initial spadework was taken care of by Sukumar Ray in his adaptation of Alice.

When Arunava Sinha translates this text into English, we can assume that it is meant for an Indian readership. A crow (read human being) that traces its upper caste pedigree to the pure-blooded Rex Ravenus, a man who coyly appeals to people not to ask him to sing only because he wants his singing to be heard, and a court case for defamation in which the number of witnesses goes up because they get paid (bribed) for the ‘work’ are not unfamiliar across a pan-Indian spectrum. But the facetiousness and irony also extends to a universal human predicament in which the child encounters the worldly wisdom of ‘money is time’ that has to be factored in every calculation (reminiscent of a railway journey scene in Caroll’s Through the Looking Glass), when he iterates a multiplication table correctly but naively. Or in the utopian make-believe of making the world a happier place, when he learns, to his bewilderment, of an odd reversal in which the ages of people turn backward after they are forty, so that nobody dies old age.

Sukumar Ray’s Ha Ja Ba Ra La provides undiluted amusement to child readers but communicates more seriously to adult readers. Ashish Lahiri, an academic and writer, in an essay in 1982 in a magazine called Prabashi, had underlined the significant dichotomy between the first and second parts of the story. In the first, the current ‘scientific culture’ with its discourses of temporal and spatial relativity is tried to absurd extremes by the nonsensical utterances of the cat, the crow and the two dwarfish brothers. To start with, the handkerchief-turned-cat deconstructs our accepted structures of logic and common sense by arguing that he can be called cat chief, kerchief or capital zed, and extending its reasoning to spell out the ridiculous combination of alphabets that can identify it. Exact nomenclatures and absolute definitions are challenged in this episode.

Similarly, in keeping with findings in astrophysics and geography about the rotation of the earth, the cat says that we will never find anyone where we expect to find them, because no creature remains rooted in the anticipated spot, even if they are stationary. This hilarious observation while looking for someone called Big Tree Brother dwells on the relativity of time. It is corroborated by the logic of the crow who says that seven times two is not always fourteen because time is forever on the move and the arithmetical calculation changes by the time one works it out. Yet, all the bodily measurements of the first-person protagonist are fixed at twenty-six inches by the very creatures who make a case for the idea and practice of relativity, perhaps because he carries a baggage of absolute and rigid assumptions imposed on him by the adult world of common sense.

Hzzbuzzbuzz (whose original Bengali name Hijibijbij suggests hijibiji, a scribble that is garbled and meaningless) connects the two parts of the story with his compulsive need to laugh at the most hypothetical and incredible of situations. The second part, set in the open air courtroom of fantastic creatures, is resonant of human society at large for its dishonesty and deceit. It keeps the reader’s focus on the incongruity, dissonance and comicality of everything we ever learned or cultivated, from science and philosophy to the legal arbitration of civilised, educated, middle class life.

The court scene includes the moss-ridden coat or camouflage of the fraudulent lawyer, the book of law that epitomises a theoretical and meaningless justice and the owl-judge who cannot see things that are obvious by the clear light of day but only when they are under cover of nocturnal darkness. The crocodile’s convoluted questions for the sake of questions and his own weird interpretations suggest the ambivalences and distortions involved in the legal process. That the entire organisation of law and other human institutions and systems is based on big, unintelligible and fancy words that are absurd lies is critiqued in Hzzbuzzbuzz’s incoherent, unrelated but irreverent ramblings that tickle his funny bone. These anomalies, it suggests, are extant not only in law but every template of our civic rights and duties.

The transference of culture, except for very Bengali-specific ways of talking, social and professional behaviour, is not required in an Indian context. The simplicity and transparency of the situations would also not be difficult to translate verbatim if they were not based on tongue in cheek utterances that are apparently nonsensical. The translator’s credit lies in his translating each and every one of the nonsense rhymes, and much of the word play, including alliteration, assonance, puns, internal rhymes and onomatopaea. Evaluating what is technically termed as the aesthetic equivalence of the source text against the target text, these word and sound-related fragments are commendably done.

Sinha has, at times, morphed the nonsense expressions to equally incredible but compatibly bizarre sounding words and phrases that maintain an altered meter and matter in an attempt to integrate the English language within the coordinates of an indigenous linguistic culture. In a rhyme, for instance, that uses three different words for female ghosts – petni pishi, shankchuni and ultaburi, for example, the translator uses banshee aunty, ghouless and crone to cover all of them. Rhythms and cadences can hardly be the same in both languages, but Sinha struggles with and juggles the nonsense vocabulary by muting certain words, mutating others but also ends up mutilating a few. That, of course, is unavoidable in the linguistic upheaval of such a landmark of nonsense prose.

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Nivedita Sen is Associate Professor in English at Hansraj College, University of Delhi. She works on Bangla children’s literature, and has translated authors like Tagore, Sukumar Ray, Asha Purna Devi, Leela Majumdar and others for Harvard University Press, Vishwabharati Press, Sahitya Akademi, Katha, Tulika and more. Some of her works on children’s literature are Family, School and Nation: The Child and Literary Constructions in Twentieth Century Bengal. (Routledge, 2015), The Gopal-Rakhal Dialectic: Colonialism and Children’s Literature in Bengal (Tulika, 2015), translated from Sibaji Bandyopadhyay’s book, and articles on Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass in Alice in a World of Wonderlands (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2015) and Libri et Liberi: Journal of Research on Children’s Literature and Culture (2016).

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Categories
Poetry

The Kangaroo

By Vatsala Radhakeesoon

Vatsala Radhakeesoon was born in 1977 in Mauritius. She has authored 10 poetry books  including Unconditional Thread ( Alien Buddha Press, USA,2019), Tropical Temporariness (Transcendent Zero Press, USA, 2019) and Whirl the Colours (Gibbon Moon Books UK/Kenya, 2020). She is one of the representatives of Immagine and Poesia, an Italy based literary movement uniting artists and poets’ works. She has been selected as one of the poets for Guido Gozzano Poetry contest from 2016 to 2019 and nominated for Rilke Prize 2019, USA. She currently lives at Rose-Hill and is a literary translator, interviewer and artist.

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Categories
Excerpt

Corybantic Fulgours

Rhys Hughes introduces us to the delights of doodling poetry in his new book with a name that I would not dare to pronounce, Corybantic Fulgours.

I ought to explain the title. It’s a title I have wanted to use for a book for a number of years. I often write down titles for later use and I usually have no firm idea what the books or stories or poems will be like until I write them. I just like the music of the words and that’s sufficient reason for me to write the titles down. ‘Corybantic’ means to dance wildly but I can’t recall where I first learned its meaning. A ‘fulgour’ is a light or glow and I’m sure I picked the word up from M.P. Shiel or one of those other writers of ‘weird fiction’ from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries who loved to overindulge in archaic or abstruse words. I have always found it amusing that those writers tried so hard to be wilfully obscure. They were often very good writers but strove to make themselves less palatable to a popular audience rather than more popular. I admire this eccentricity. My favourite among them is Clark Ashton Smith, who never used one simple word when a dozen complex ones would serve.

So the title came first. Then I had to provide a rationale for using it. The book turned out to be a set of poems to accompany some drawings I had done. The drawings were all of monsters. I justified the title by declaring that these monsters were made from curdled light and that they danced a lot. Let’s say that I cheated in order to find an adequate reason for using the title, Corybantic Fulgours. I don’t mind admitting that this stratagem was highly contrived. Monsters themselves are highly contrived too, so it all fits together well. I have drawn monsters most of my life. But I must add a disclaimer here too. I don’t believe that I can really draw. What I actually do is doodle. I doodle a lot and the majority of my doodles turn out to be monsters. It is easier to draw monsters than anything else. The great thing about drawing monsters is that any mistakes will contribute to the monstrousness of the final image. Therefore those who can’t draw are better able to represent such entities monstrously.

In other words, I didn’t let the fact that I can’t draw well hold me back. I have long been interested in combinations of texts and imagery. Recently I obtained a volume of writings and drawings by the wonderful Mervyn Peake entitled Peake’s Progress that features work from the full span of his life, including projects he never completed. One section of the book is called ‘Moccus Poems’, written in 1929 or thereabouts, a set of drawings of monsters with simple short verses to accompany them. There are only six of them. Maybe there were more originally, but if so they have been lost. The drawings are excellent. Peake was an illustrator of genius. The poems are nonsensical and good fun. I decided that I wanted to attempt to create a book along the same lines. I know I can’t match Peake in image or verse, but I decided to amuse myself anyway.

I thought that if I doodled one monster every day, and wrote a poem for it, the book would be completed after two months or so. But I found that I was doodling more than one a day, sometimes four or five. I decided to stop only when I ran out of blank pages in the notebook I was using for my doodles. The result is that there are 54 monsters. One of the monsters, the ‘Unfeasible Space Giraffe’, covers three pages because he has such a long neck. He can stand on the surface of one planet and nibble the leaves of the trees that grow on another planet. But all the other monsters occupy one page to themselves. I wrote poems for each doodle as I went along. The monsters came first every time. The shape and size of each monster determined the length and structure of each poem, because I had to fill the remaining space with words and sometimes the remaining space wasn’t very much. I often curled and curved the poems around the bodies of the monsters and I allowed myself to enjoy certain typographical tricks, such as having text upside down or in the shape of a wave.

Poetry written for images that already exist is called ‘ekphrastic verse’. I didn’t know that until shortly before I began this project. The book took only two weeks before it was done. I am pleased with it. The hardest part was formatting the poems so that they followed the contours of the forms of the monsters, or at least appeared on the page in a manner that seems a little more interactive with the image than merely descriptive. Might I do a sequel one day or another similar book? I see no reason why not. What surprised me most was how purely enjoyable the creation of ‘Corybantic Fulgours’ was. Some books are headaches to write. This one was quite a delight. It turned out better than I had hoped.

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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