Author: borderlesssg1

Categories
Humour Poetry

Christmas Poems

By Rhys Hughes

Krampus on Campus

Dear Admissions Tutor
I am rather too mature
a fellow
to present myself to you
in this manner
(it is true)
but I believe potentially
I will have a
bright future
if you allow me to enrol
at your university.

And let me now explain
the meaning
of my name. Krampus
the word derives
from ‘claw’
and I am wearied by my
seasonal chores
which unlike those of
Santa Claus
involves punishing bad
children instead
of rewarding the good.

I am hairy,
my long tongue lolls
and I have cloven hoofs.
I leap across
your roofs at night
giving children such an
awful fright!
and this has been my role
for years.
To cap it all my head
has horns.
My appearance generally
as you can see
is hardly prepossessing
but that’s
how I was born.

And now
I’ve had enough!
I want a
change of career,
no more
nastiness and no
more fear.
I long to improve myself.
Please permit
me to enrol and achieve
my goal,
a Krampus on campus
will be quite
a boon to your noble
institution.
My essays will all
be referenced properly
with the correct
attributions.
I promise this!
Yes, you
can provide the solution
to my woes!

I write this letter
with my talons crossed for luck.
I have inspected
your prospectus
and the course I choose is
“Mythology
and Cultural Studies,
modules one and two”
and in advance I am thanking
you. Sincerely yours,
without a fuss, Krampus.

P.S. What don’t
you want for Christmas?
A Krampus
Once I was an Elf

Once I was an elf
(a real elf)
and I was proud
and strong.
I loosed my arrows
at dragons
and never thought
it wrong
to engage in battle
with my other foes,
the goblins
of the underworld.


How I miss
those ancient days
with their better ways
when mounted
on a flying horse,
a quiver on my back,
I soared above
the mountain peaks
that chewed the clouds
like demon fangs,
ready to attack!


Few back then
were quite so bold
and fewer still
so keen to seek
mighty new heroic deeds
to perform each week.
Caring not for
fame or wealth
while swooping
from the sky,
I defeated giant lizards,
evil wizards
and necromancers
for I was an elf
well versed in magic
with nothing tragic
about my circumstances.

But times changed
as they always do
and the age of wonders
passed away,
for even valour
and honour too
must eventually decay.
I fell on hard times
like all the elves
and sold my golden arrows,
cut short my hair,
lost my flying horse
and begged for work
everywhere,
cursing the worsening
of my situation
until at last I found a boss
willing to take me on.


The work is seasonal
and very hard
and now is the busiest
time of year.
I sometimes weep
as I recall how long ago
the good times were
when to be an elf
earned both respect and fear.
I have become
little more than a slave
in the modern world
and it is cold
so near the North Pole.


Yes, once I was an elf
(a real elf)
but now I am a mockery
of myself.
I slay dragons no longer
but every day
I just make toys
from a very long list
for girls and boys
who doubt I even exist.

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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Categories
Essay

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

Santa Claus Parade Dunedin, New Zealand: Photo courtesy; Wiki

There is something quite surreal that happens across the Southern Hemisphere in the last week of December. It seems to be a mismatch between festivities and seasons. Temporarily, around Christmas, the world ‘down under’ somehow pretends it is winter, not summer. The European and North American cultural traditions associated with the birth of Jesus Christ, believed by Christians to be the Son of God, get mixed up when the seasons are reversed. Within the same week as the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, many throughout the South still celebrate the observance with images of snow, tinsel, evergreen conifers, mistletoe, reindeer, sleighs, and of course, jovial Santa. So, during the hottest months, when Christmas carols can be heard in petrol station forecourts and in the ‘music on hold’ when waiting for customer support, there is an artificial feel to the merry Christmas and tidings of great joy. 

As the child of immigrants to New Zealand, I guess Christmas time must have been both comforting and disconcerting for my Scottish and English parents, who had been used to chilly temperatures, the prospect of real snow, and the need to have hearty traditional British Christmas foods including roasted turkey, ham on the bone, puddings infused with brandy and hot drinks. For some reason, we always had the out-of-season Brussel sprouts on the table for the main Christmas day meal. 

For most of my childhood, we stuck to the typical Christmas foods, always eating too much of the plum pudding made with treacle and the beef fat suet after a huge meal prepared by my mother slaving away in the kitchen with the oven set at 180C on a 30C day. It was only in the 1980s that our family, like many other New Zealanders, gradually moved towards cold meats, seafood and salads. Eventually, the Christmas plum pudding was replaced by the pavlova, the meringue-base topped with whipped cream and fresh strawberries. More families gather together at the beach at Christmas time, listening not to sleigh bells but the sizzle from the BBQ. 

In recent decades, some New Zealanders have got seasonal-correct, by having a mid-winter Christmas complete with roast meat, potatoes, sweet potato, and pumpkin, at a time of year when such warming food is best appreciated. 

The first Christmas in New Zealand happened many centuries after the arrival of the first settlers, the Maori. In 1642 Dutch explorer Abel Tasman celebrated with fresh pork and extra rations of wine, while English navigator James Cook, who landed more than 250 years ago, feasted on pies made with seabirds on Christmas day in 1769.

Pohutukawa blooms

Over time, Christmas has become localised to its climate and geographic location. In New Zealand, there is a native tree, the Pohutukawa, which blooms vibrantly red during what is still known as the ‘silly season’, and this has been dubbed the Kiwi Christmas tree. Some Santas in shopping malls wear red shorts, and local businesses, community groups and churches make decorative floats for the annual Santa parade which always includes fire trucks reminding participants of the impending forest fire danger. 

Pohutukawa tree

With the warm temperatures and long days, the holiday time is more about a lazy game of cricket on the back lawn or getting sunburnt at the beach than excessive feasting and drinking, awkward gift-giving, and church attendance. One modern development in my hometown is that one neighbourhood has taken on the North American tradition of decorating houses with festive lights and kitschy displays. However, as it doesn’t get dark till after 9.30pm in December, parents must allow their children to stay up later to visit the suburb when the lights are on and glowing. 

I’m fascinated how cultural events (and religious festivals) have been exported and imported around the world. In New Zealand, where Indians make up 4% of the total population due mainly to recent arrivals for study and work, the Hindu festival of Diwali is celebrated in most of the main centres, with calls for it to be declared a public holiday from 2022. Sikhism is the fastest-growing religion in the country according to the latest census, and my hometown of Christchurch now has more than 10,000 Sikhs (more than 2.5% of the population), meaning that there’s a good chance that someone from Chandigarh, Amritsar, or Ludhiana lives in your street. 

When I’ve lived in other parts of the world, I’ve noticed how festivals, some with nature-based or pagan origins, may at first seem out of kilter with the seasons or time of year. Among the Yi, Bai and Naxi of southwest China’s Yunnan, a torch festival is held around the summer solstice to symbolise warding off locusts and ghosts. One legend about its origin tells the tale of a spirit being sent to torch the Earth and its evil residents, but when he fell in love, he convinced the inhabitants to light fires for a few days to make it seem that he’d accomplished his task. It’s an almost identical tale on the west coast of Ireland where an ancient midsummer festival to protect the crops is said to have its genesis in the desire of an angel for harm not to come to the Irish people. 

This year 2020, which for pretty much every one of the Earth’s 7,800 million human inhabitants has been interesting, to say the least, closes with some unusual phenomena, including the ‘Christmas star’ created by the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the solstice, and perhaps a collective sigh of relief when midnight rolls over on the 31st of December. 

From afar it must have looked as if the world was both on fire and burned down, as wildfires have raged across Australia, the Amazon, Siberia and California, and whole populations have ‘sheltered in place’, deserting once crowded streets and landmarks, reducing pollution and carbon emissions. 

As we reflect on the year, perhaps we could learn from the words of prize-winning novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren: “History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.” 

.

Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer, author and creative writing mentor, with a background in psychology and social sciences. He has been published in newspapers, magazines, websites and journals around the world, and his work was nominated for the Pushcart prize. Keith was featured as one of the top 10 travel journalists in Roy Stevenson’s ‘Rock Star Travel Writers’ (2018). He has undertaken writer residencies in Antarctica and on an isolated Australian island, and in 2020 plans to finally work out how to add posts to his site Wandering in the World (http://wanderingintheworld.com).

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

Categories
Humour Poetry

Algae Masks

By Sekhar Banerjee

It is always easy to use Google maps

when you love to guess

a place but do not wish to reach,

as if, it is an old mulberry bench

in a bottomless sleep

.

However, you will not possibly find

this place

where I am sitting now in the middle

of autumn’s heavy late-afternoon traffic – an urgent

meeting of brown dry leaves

and some broken yellow sunlight

.

Here I am going to leave

all old latitudes and longitudes

neatly creased

and folded like a new tourist map

near the empty tea cup; in them, you may find

shadows of fish, bougainvillea seeds,

bees in November, dry deciduous leaves

and ample ember 

.

But coordinates are much like our obsessions– hard to go;

they will follow

you through the busy streets in the evening

behind every pedestrian with algae masks

like numerous notifications

for one lost search

.

Sekhar Banerjee is an author.  He has four collections of poems and a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. He is a former Secretary of Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi and Member-Secretary of Paschimbanga Kabita Akademi under the Government of West Bengal.  He lives in Kolkata, India. 

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Categories
Essay

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

                  

                                                                                                                        By Anwesha Paul

The very act of writing is a “doing”, and hence, paradoxical to the theme of this particular discourse. Nevertheless, I shall make an attempt to give form to the formless, and resolve the anomalies contained therein.

The other day I was in the act of doing something completely silly. I was walking around the house barefoot, reveling in the smoothness of the marble floor beneath my soles. It had been a while that I indulged in such sensuous wanderings and the gnome in my mind kept interjecting — “Shouldn’t you spend your time in creative pursuits?” or, “Why don’t you make the most of your four-day holiday?” It went on to further castigate me, “You have already spent two of the four days in bed listening to lectures and hardly coming up with anything worthwhile.” Oh, well … the softness of marble… so delectable… I am one with this moment and its contentment. Ah…the senses take over and the mind formulates luxuriant phrases. I wonder if my attention to its properties awakens something within the stone itself? Almost as if in response to my thought it glows translucent in the sliver of sunlight, the green veins almost holographic, twinkling ever so slightly, stretching across the wide expanse of warm white, like the star clusters of Ursa Major, the snapshot of the universe etched in its most humble creation, the basest of life, a stone.

Turning my gaze upwards and outwards I perceive the street beyond my window. The hubbub of life, unnoticed in the routine of more important things, washes up on the shores of my consciousness. The raucous calls of the vendors belong to a forgotten era. The fragrance from the florists’ stalls wafts to my nostrils. Beguiling, bewitching memories take over the mind.

In a different age, seemingly eons apart, I used to notice my grandmother observe the busy street outside. Oh! What a forgotten activity is world-watching! I would often join my grandmother as she would lean against the railing, her hands crossed over it, extending outside, just observing. But was she just an observer? Or was she an active participant in Dionysian delusions? If not actually, in her mind, she surely participated in the scenes that unfolded outside? But, then again, does the world exist separately outside our mind?

 I remember pastry sellers with their delicious wares in boxes atop their heads, and other hawkers doing the rounds of the streets. These astute purveyors knew women were potential buyers, and if they came within their range of awareness, surely, they could make a sale or two. I remember the tableaux taken out on India’s Republic Day and Independence Day every year and how these shows went by the street in an awesome procession, and we would be privy to a glorious carnival, a free ringside view, at that.

This habit of world watching had another aspect to it. It was both an idle pastime and an active pursuit. As one lolled languorously against the wrought iron balconies, one inadvertently registered bits of information about neighbours as well as strangers. Though the verandahs have shrunk or disappeared altogether, and women actively make up the world now — having long given up their role as bystanders to throng the centre-stage of the theatre, there is this new platform, a kind of liminal extension which affords one a glimpse into the lives of others. It’s no longer a local thing like the flavour of aloo paranthas escaping from your lunchbox at school recess but a richer repast of global fare conveying people’s lives from across the world in the geography agnostic space of social media.

If we slowed down a little, perhaps we could once again discover the joys of being bystanders and absorbing the minute, ordinary, interesting details of life, which blossom into something extraordinary under the telescope of idle scrutiny.

In the early days of the lockdown and pandemic people were busy producing content. Everyone was dancing, singing, writing, painting, or engaging in some activity that was considered “fruitfully spent”. There was almost this urgency which required one to keep doing, and doing more, because somewhere, perhaps this thought lurked that if we did not “do” something we would cease to exist. Thus seen, “doing” comes across as a survival technique, an imperative which keeps one going. The thought occurs to me that “doing nothing” is not necessarily a counterpart, but a complement to the active life. Perhaps, one is meant to hibernate, and go within at times, in the alternating winters of the soul so that when the time comes, one can emerge out of her halcyon hollows, energized by ennui.

As the winter months draw closer and the nights become longer, the slight nip in the air feels delightfully welcome. Leaving the dream realm and the cozy warmth of the blanket becomes perhaps, the hardest achievement to pull off, no matter how brisk the mornings may be. The soft bed clothes and the duvet become my tribal totems, claiming me as their own and clinging on with the tenacity of limpet linen which seek to enclose me in their sybaritic shell. With a herculean effort I have to fight off the smothering love of the blankets to embrace the cheery day.

A warm bath and a brisk walk scented by the fragrance of the seasonal flowers is all it takes to get out of my morning tryst with torpor. In the sub-tropical climate, the winter months are short and longed for, and consequently savoured. I try and eke out the days of pleasant weather. Delhi winters are, of course, something I would really want to revisit. I remember it was zero degree the first winter I spent in Delhi. Fresh from the experience of a freezing Himalayan solstice in Kathmandu, I was sure Delhi would be a cakewalk. Was I wrong! Delhi surprised me with a zero that year. However, it did not repeat its feat in the following four winters that I spent there.

Winter is a paradox — it is bright and brumal; brisk and lazy. It is lethargy wrapped in mental discipline. It is agility layered in lassitude, only to be coaxed out with great effort. It is de jure dormancy. Now, if you cancel a plan stating, “It’s too cold and I cannot get out of my blanket,” you will probably be dropped from several social invitation lists in the near future. Conversely, you may be excused by the similarly lazily inclined who would probably have preferred to loll around in their sun-kissed balconies but, nevertheless, went wherever they had to.

The fear of missing out on things is a real ailment. I don’t know if a word for this condition exists in the English dictionary. The acronym FOMO (‘fear of missing out’) was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2013 giving this pronounced social anxiety a lexical legitimacy. If I were to coin a word that describes this fear it may be something like “missophobia.” Well, I agree my inventive faculties are not that great, but they are, kind of instigated during this spell of doing nothing. Even as I pen this rambling enquiry into the lost art of doing nothing, I remember lying around on a camp cot on the terrace of a winter afternoon, consuming a whole lot of chocolates and oranges while listening to Simon and Garfunkel on loop, just indulging in daydreams.

The delectable indolence, the frenzy of life, the charmed memories waxing and waning like the moon, wakefulness followed by sleep, and birth by death, all turn in an endless, inevitable and anticipated cycle. Returning to the paradoxical nature of “doing nothing,” I’m tempted to agree with Tom Stoppard who famously declared, tongue firmly in cheek, “It takes character to withstand the rigours of indolence.”

Anwesha Paul is a UX designer and graphic artist from Kolkata, India who is also into writing, having published several pieces in various print and online publications. Anwesha is an animation filmmaker whose short films have been screened and awarded in various international film festivals.

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Categories
Humour Poetry

Watch the Nose

By Vatsala Radhakeesoon



As Mr. Jologg was getting ready for a date
He was hooked by some twist of fate
.
In the centre  of his face
waved a red satin heart
all flappy and as soft as petal
.
“Oh my nose!
Where is my nose?”
He shouted
.
Hastily he cancelled his date
He called some healthcare modernists
He called some traditional  apothecaries
They prescribed him capsules
They prescribed him potions
Some even prescribed him songs
and some even pyramid- shaped canvas
He tried them all
Nothing worked
.
Then he jumped, jumped, jumped
on the green grassy hill
He ran, ran, ran
across the Antelope-fields
But nothing worked
.
Lost in despair, he called Vanilla –
his girlfriend,
the nurse with  sunflower smile
.
“There’s no curse, Jologg”
She assured,
“Go on , take this,
Sniff, sniff,
Breathe in”


As he did what she said
black and white pepper
swirled magically
A roman nose settled in

.

“Oh, my nose! My nose!”
he exclaimed overjoyed
“ It is back but never forget
Watch out!
That trickster! The nose!”




Vatsala Radhakeesoon, born in Mauritius in 1977, is the author of 11 poetry books, including Tropical Temporariness (Transcendent Zero Press, USA, 2019),  Whirl the Colours (Gibbon Moon Books UK/Kenya, 2020) and नीली हंसिनी के गाने – Songs of the Blue Swan (Bilingual Hindi -English, Gloomy Seahorse Press, UK/Kenya,2020). She is one of the representatives of Immagine and Poesia, an Italy based literary movement uniting artists and poets’ works. She currently lives at Rose-Hill and is a literary translator, interviewer and artist.

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

Categories
Poetry

Abandoned & Lost


By Netra Hirani

Soft glow of the sun,

warm rays smiling at the silky cool water

running in between my fingers,

polite teasing breeze whispering me to steel myself,

as your hands hold my fabric tight and keep me near,

.

A pearl on my hand,

a star on my neck resting between my collar bones,

ravens on my shoulder awaiting flight.

Smell of fresh baked cookies and a warm brownie,

that hugs your heart, melts the frost.

.

Gentle touches in this white,

your hands warming mine as I slip them in your cloak.

A few more hours until the bridge burns down to Ashes,

as we collect wood and build once again.

The time has its way, crisp and clear.

.

The green striped walls and elevated chairs,

a dash of an old stored marmalade on soft biscuits.

The pebbles on the streets where we wove hands.

Old cream cakes and milkshakes.

Before sunset, goodbye.

These paths and tastes,

remain abandoned and lost.

.

Netra Hirani is a sophomore at Thapar University, pursuing Computer Sciences. She has been writing since she was 12 and loves poetry. She is the author of ‘Breathings’, a compilation of her poetry and has a WordPress blog, ‘Scriptechtellus’. She loves music, has a playlist for every occasion and enjoys dancing. She likes solving Sudoku, appreciates good humour alongside a cup of hot tea.

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

Categories
Review

What is the idea of India?

 

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

Title: Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India: Writings on a Movement for Justice, Liberty and Equality

Editor: Seema Mustafa

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books, 2020

Shaheen Bagh is a compendium of writings that document and comment on a watershed moment in India’s history, evoking memories of that other flashpoint in India’s history, the Partition. For Nayantara Sahgal, the nonagenarian writer, it is all too reminiscent of that other critical event in Indian history. Narrated and recounted by journalists, writers, social and political activists, it represents both the uniqueness of that moment when a movement propelled by one of the most dispossessed groups in Indian history took up cudgels on behalf of their communities, the men in their communities. It was a registering of both solidarity and political awareness, capturing moments of protest in a tone that was at times exhilarating, at times despairing.

The narrative incorporates the accounts of various women protestors who recount that significant moment when they were catapulted into assuming  unexpected and unlikely roles as torchbearers of democracy and custodians of democratic rights of citizenship. Shaheen Bagh, a Muslim neighbourhood in the capital city of Delhi in India became the epicentre of an unprecedented protest, an unbroken continuous sitting for over 70 days by citizens with Muslim women coming out in large numbers against the Citizenship Amendment Act adopted with a huge majority by the national parliament in December 2019 and also the National Register of Citizens, a notified national population register perceived rightly or wrongly to be hugely discriminatory against the Muslims and some marginalised groups. The CAA or the Citizenship Amendment Act is also perceived and presented by sections of the population as violating the spirit of the Indian Constitution adopted in 1950 as a sovereign democratic republic with the preamble adding the word ‘secular’, distinguishing it from a theocracy in 1976. The government however has refuted these claims and fears and with the counter claim that the CAA is only intended to grant citizenship to migrants, read as persecuted minorities, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian and Parsi communities who came to the country from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on or before December 31st, 2014. Clearly the Muslims of all sects have been kept out of this particular dispensation. Just to remind us all, India has 11% of the world’s Muslim population around 16% of the Indian population , at least 226million of one billion population are Muslim. Interestingly the Supreme Court of India has refused to order a stay on its implementation which has been requested by about 144 petitioners and has granted the government time to come up with a response. It has also restrained other courts, the high courts for example from hearing please against the CAA till it arrives at a decision to take it forward.

Shaheen Bagh captured the imagination of the youth in India and of women’s groups in particular. India is still a young country, 50% of its population is below the age of 25, 65% below 35 years of age. The people that converge here everyday in large numbers are young women. Shaheen Bagh evokes memories of earlier resistances that the world has witnessed or known. US campuses against the Vietnam war, Occupy Wall Street, Tiananmen Square, Ken State University, Tahrir Square, the student uprising in Paris in the 60’s closer home to the US Montgomery March and Nashville Tennessee. But this was all that and more as many women  in burkhas and  hijabs crossed several boundaries, broke several barriers and some even stepped out of conservative homes and conventional customs and taboos for the first time in a civil disobedience vigil to uphold the values of equality and freedoms enshrined in articles 15 and 19 of the Indian Constitution. Placards that these women used often said: ‘Don’t be silent but don’t be violent’.

As the Introduction to the book Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India pithily states: Shaheen Bagh became a “first in living memory. As the days passed, Shaheen Bagh acquired greater strength, for the women ,” brought no malice, no anger, no abuse into their protest, and countered every allegation hurled at them with a smile and an honest and forthright response. Moreover, “the idea of Shaheen Bagh ignited, and became, the idea of India for hundreds, because the women sitting in protest spoke a language that came from the compassion of the matriarch.   It was born of the love for children, and brought with it a smile and an embrace for the youth who spent the nights sitting and singing with the women.”

In the process, the protest empowered women. They played an agential role in the proceedings and the experience helped to develop their confidence in their own abilities, in their judgment and their decisions.  There was never any doubt that the women were in the lead. They were sitting on protest, they commanded the stage, they spoke to the media.

Shaheen Bagh became the site of a major exercise in the dance of democracy. It became a site which enabled and catalysed a kind of consciousness-raising for both the participants and the witnesses. While I would stop short of calling it a great leveller, it offered a kind of space for forging solidarities, of experiencing community and of practising democracy. Shaheen Bagh assumed a unique significance since it presented a vignette of inclusiveness from the start. “There was no religion or caste here. “

In a somewhat romanticised vein, a scholar who had spent a substantial chunk of time in Delhi , described it as a  “pilgrimage’’ for many Delhiites. A young professor from Delhi University  who spent time at the protest site said that “I come to Shaheen Bagh whenever the world outside depresses me. I find solace and peace here.” Whether to seek social salvation or rub shoulders with the Delhi literati, who were also here  from time to time, Shaheen Bagh represented an experience of democracy that few had imagined possible in the gloom and doom of our recent history. Many privileged youngsters also joined the milling groups around the protest site, preferring to savour this experience over their usual modes of entertainment. Some sat with the women as they collectively , and in solidarity, sang Faiz’s song, “Hum Dekhenge” ( “We shall see” in Urdu and Hindi) a stirring anthem raising a flag to unity and harmony .  All axes of identity — religion, castes, class — seemed to recede and fade in this space that helped  “Delhi find its conscience”. The moment seemed to resonate with other similar moments in the course of the freedom struggle. This laying claim to democracy and its variegated symbols by lower and lower middle class Muslim women, people  who were probably among the most dispossessed and marginalised groups, and among the most disaffiliated from the lineages of class and economic power, struck a chord. The question that had come up here was an enormously significant one: to whom does the nation belong?
The book captures the mood-defiant yet resolute-of the protest told in a racy journalistic idiom, conveying both its political implications and its historical significance. The mood of the nation — which was simmering with rabble — rousing hate speeches the order of the day and condoned and overlooked by the ruling dispensation, was brought to a boil by the unlikely protestors of Shaheen Bagh. Wearing their hijabs and burkhas in February 2020, the unlikely political actors of this moment were also making “history” or “herstory”. It was a unique moment of historical significance, as the women fought their numerous fears and limitations. It was also a moment of political and feminist assertion with women occupying the centre, not huddling on the margins or periphery.

The segment, ‘Timeline’ , covers the chronology and clarifies that it was the deliberately rigged  Delhi riots and then the lockdown in March 2020 that brought the gathering of crowds to a grinding halt. Seema Pasha’s chapter on ‘Women , Violence and Democracy’ presents witness and participant accounts as “Ground Reports from a Protest. “This engagement with people  and facts on the ground, the micro-histories of the protest constitutes one of the features which add to the readability of the book . Instead of an academic or theoretical approach, the book takes a lively “ankhon dekhi” (a vividly visual and engaging account, translated from Hindi) approach and this works well. In addition to this is the fact that the book brings in voices and narrative accounts  of some sane voices like that of Harsh Mander — of writers and activists– who represent a holistic and secular, democratic and not divisive, vision of Indian history and democracy. Collectively, these voices maybe said to articulate a vision which upholds an “idea of India” which is not idealised or utopic but reflects the vision of many of its founding fathers. It is in that vein that Seemi Pasha writes, that in spite of the terror unleashed in the run-up to the Delhi Assembly elections, “Shaheen Bagh endured, and continued to showcase the best of India’s tradition of secularism, liberalism and ethical, non-violent resistance.” It was a reminder that the idea of India was premised on a vision of democracy and freedom, which stands threatened  today. Shaheen Bagh was an attempt at reclaiming some of these affirmations which are in grave danger of erosion and violation.

Moving and poignant,the book is both a testimony and paean  to a beleaguered  idea  of India, as it is to the courage of  some of its marginalised citizens. It is also an interrogation of the protectors and ‘custodians’ of India and the idea of India.Till we all wake up to an awareness of our roles as active citizens, the idea of India continues to be a threatened and endangered  one.

Acknowledgements

The discussion of the CAA-NRC is drawn from Dr Meenakshi Gopinath’s observations as part of a feminist conversation on Shaheen Bagh and Citizenship, conducted under the aegis of the “International Feminist Journal of Politics.”

Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is Associate Professor in English at Hansraj College, University of Delhi. She  has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition  to numerous published articles on gender and/in literature and feminist theory. Some of her recent publications include articles on lifewriting as an archive for GWSS, Women and Gender Studies in  India: Crossings (Routledge,2019),on ‘’The Engendering of Hurt’’  in The State of Hurt, (Sage,2016) ,on Kali in Unveiling Desire,(Rutgers University Press,2018) and ‘Ecofeminism and its Discontents’ (Primus,2018). She has been a part of the curriculum framing team for masters programme in Women and gender Studies at Indira Gandhi National Open University(IGNOU) and in Ambedkar University, Delhi and has also been an editorial consultant for ICSE textbooks (Grades1-8) with Pearson publishers. She has recently taught a course as a visiting fellow in Grinnell College, Iowa. She has bylines in Kitaab and Book review.

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Categories
Poetry

The Vernacular of Silence

By Megha Sood

The vernacular of silence cannot be heard by ears which are profoundly ringing by the overwhelming tunes of lofty desires. Silence has no shape and a beautiful shape at the same time. It can fit itself in the trickiest of places. It can strip itself of any facades and stand stark naked in front of you and still, you cannot trace it. Sometimes it lives surreptitiously on the edges of the serrated palm leaves bathed by the shifty-eyed moon. The hushed whispers of the moon cleave a story out of the night’s cleavage. The balmy wind carries the whispers under the thick layers of the drapes. We all have a story to tell but only a few can interpret the silence. Silence culled in the bones can birth a rattling symphony for generations to tell. Silence culled in the twisted boughs of the wild oak. An unwanted witness to the miseries of mankind. A silent giant. Sometimes nature has its own lexicon of spoken and unheard. You just need the right pair of ears to listen to. Like the turbulent story of an ocean in roughly carved layers of the conch. I can still hear the waves if I press my ears too close to it. Nature is humming a sweet lullaby. Only a few can hear it. Silence and death are interchangeable the moment you part your lips.

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Megha Sood is an Assistant Poetry Editor at MookyChick and Literary Partner in the project “Life in Quarantine” with CESTA, Stanford University, USA. Works widely featured in journals, newspapers, including Poetry Society of New York, WNYC, American Writers Review, SONKU, FIVE:2: ONE, KOAN, Kissing Dynamite, etc. She has numerous works in anthologies by the US, UK, Australian, and Canadian Press. Currently, she is editing ( “The Medusa Project”, Mookychick), and (“The Kali Project, Indie Blu(e) Press). She blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/ and tweets at @meghasood16

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Categories
Poetry

Silly Questions

Poetry from Nepal by Nabin Pyassi, translated by Haris C Adhikari

Nabin Pyassi

Sometimes I feel—

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Why does the breeze

Not blow only for itself, why

 Does the sun

Not say, ‘I’ll rise only in palaces?’

Why do the rivers

Not say, ‘This comes in other’s frontier?’

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What happens if

The clouds get angry,

And soils sprout

Only weeds?

What happens if

Our own heart forgets

Our body?

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I myself stand

In the dock, and question—

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Why, without any fear,

Do flowers bloom?

Why don’t birds claim, ‘The sky is only ours!’

Why, without regret,

Do roads spill their nakedness

Far and wide?

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Why does the mountain

Not keep on freezing

But melt as well? Why do

Nights have to take their leave, though reluctantly?

Why doesn’t the winter scream, saying

‘Let no new leaves sprout!’  

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Why do babies come carrying

A great mountain of suffering

In the wombs and from the wombs?

Who

Do the cracked heels tease

Over and over again, grinning?

Why,

Why do revolutions always stand

On the

Labourers’ backs?

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Placing my palm lines

On my forehead, I question—

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Why does the dustbin refuse

To clean its own appearance? Why

Does the guitar not accept

The tunes brought to life 

With my inexperienced fingers? Why

Do our own eyes

Not see ourselves

As ‘beautiful’?

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Why doesn’t the mirror show

My frustrations, my vanities, and my sins?

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Why doesn’t

Time take

Commands of people?

Poets Bio:

Nabin Pyassi (b. Dec. 21, 1995) an aspiring poet and an avid reader of poetry, hails from Khotang district. He is pursuing his studies from Tribhuvan University, with English literature and sociology as his majors. Most of his poetic works are romantic, insightful and metaphysical as well as deeply rooted to the native soil.

Translator’s Bio:

Haris C Adhikari, a widely published poet and translator from Nepal, and an MPhil scholar in English language, teaches at Kathmandu University. He has three books poetry and literary translation to his credit. Adhikari’s creative and scholarly works have appeared in numerous national and international journals. Until 2017, he edited Misty Mountain Review, an online journal of short poetry. Currently, he co-edits Polysemy, a journal of interdisciplinary scholarship, published out of DoMIC, Kathmandu University. He can be reached at haris.adhikari@ku.edu.np

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Categories
Essay

Role of Editors in News Media

Bhaskar Parichha, a senior journalist, explores the role of editors in swaying public opinion.

In recent years the increasing influence of the media has changed the shape of Politics all over the globe. Consequently, it has raised provocative questions about journalism’s role in the political process. There are questions about media’s effect on the political system and the subsystems– the legislature, the executive and the lobbies.

Is media power in politics a myth or an exaggeration? Who influences whom? When does the media power peaks and when does it touch the bottom — these and similar other questions, however, defy any clear cut answer.

Research suggests that the media effect on politics cannot be answered in broad generalities. There are various types of effects, on various types of political dispositions, at various levels of political activity, under various conditions. Further, the mass media are highly diverse in content, of which politics is only a minuscule part .

In politics, the mass media influences not only individual opinion but also the way politics is conducted. If political roles are changing, so are the expectations of politicians. Changes take place even between the relationship of followers and leaders, and also, perhaps, some of the values of political life itself.

Walter Lippmann, the renowned American Journalist and political analyst, once said: “Journalists point a flashlight rather than a mirror at the world.” Accordingly, the audience does not receive a complete image of the political scene, they get a highly selective series of glimpses instead. Reality is also tainted. It was his view that the media cannot possibly perform the functions of public enlightenment that democratic theory requires. He  reasoned that  mass media cannot  tell the truth  objectively because  the truth is subjective and entails more probing and explanation  than the hectic pace of news production  allows.

Images of reality portrayed by the media differ from country to country. Judging by their respective media, audiences are apt to form varied images about events and the international ramifications. Different media produce different opinions. There is no commonality in   which political actors and actions deserve the spotlight and which should be regarded positively, negatively, or neutrally.

Influence also depends on the credibility of the media and on the esteem with which their audiences regard them. A TIMES NOW story or one by CNN-IBN will attract diverse opinion from viewers. So,credibility is the big thing in media exposes.

Nearly everyone acknowledges that  the media play a powerful role  in our public and private lives. Also,opinions about the media  and estimates of their influence  on society’s other institutions are  important barometers of democracy’s functioning. On the other hand, attitudes about the media have at times been   highly critical and  critiques of the press have spanned a century and several continents..

Whether the media actually impede the operations of the other three organs  of democracy is difficult to say, but as the Indian experience shows, media have  an abiding influence on government and its institutions than the institutions have on the media.

American humorist Will Rogers said long ago, “All I know is just what I read in the papers.” For many Indian politicians there is a good bit of truth in this aphorism — what they learn about ongoing political events — comes primarily from the news media.Therefore, media as a supplier of information undoubtedly  molds public opinion and influences political decisions. If the media guides citizens’ attention to certain issues and influences their thinking process, it goes without saying that the media influences politics. That, in essence, is the reasoning behind the agenda-setting hypothesis of scholars like Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw.

Agenda-setting or the ability of the media to influence the course of events in the public mind has been part of the   political culture of the United States of America for nearly a century. The idea of agenda-setting asserts that the priorities of the press to some degree become the priorities of the public. What the press emphasizes is, in turn, emphasized privately and publicly by the audiences.

In 1952, the Republicans  led by Dwight Eisenhower successfully exploited the three Ks — Korea, Corruption and Communism — in order to regain the White House after a hiatus of twenty years. The prominence of those three issues, cultivated by press reports extending over many months and accented by partisan campaign advertising, worked against the incumbent Democratic Party.

There are numerous instances of how popular American presidents’ actions and statements reported in the media affected public opinion. These include President Nixon’s  persistent opposition to accelerating troop  withdrawals from  Vietnam during 1969,1970 and 1971;Reagan’s  1981 argument of AWACS   airplane sales  to Saudi Arabia; Carter’s 1977-78 increased attention to Arab countries, his 1982 bellicose posturing  towards the Soviet Union; Ford’s 1974-75 defense of military spending and Carter’s advocacy of   cuts in domestic spending . In contrast, a number of  unpopular presidents made serious efforts to advocate policies but failed to persuade the public.

In no area of public life have practicing politicians take media effects more seriously than during elections. Political campaign organizers spend much time, effort and money to attract favorable media attention to candidates for major electoral offices. When their candidates lose, they frequently blame the tone of media coverage or rather the lack of it.

There is an old saying that there is many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip. It is one thing for politicians to try to create a particular image and another for that image to be conveyed to people and, through them, to the voting public.

Systematically establishing the impact of election communication on the public’s opinions and behavior is a real challenge. The nature of campaign coverage has also a profound impact on the way people vote. This is confirmed by how people tended to view the candidate – as the winner or the loser. As for the media, that old line of legendary coach Vince Lombardi – Winning Isn’t Everything, It’s The Only Thing — is taken to heart and the public response usually follows suit.

The media affect politics and public policies  in a variety of ways. By mobilizing hostile public or interest group opinions the media may force a halt to political choices. But, as a general rule, journalists should disclaim any motivation to influence public policies through their news stories. Except for the editorial pages, their credo calls for objective, neutral reporting. Only investigative stories may be the major exceptions to this rule.

Contemporary political folklore pictures the media as adversaries of officialdom who alert the citizens to governmental misdeeds or failures. In reality, there are, or may occur, many situations   when officials and journalists work together to bring about needed action.

The power of news people rests largely in their ability to select news for publication and feature it as they choose. Many people in and out of government try to influence these media choices.  But in the ultimate analysis, it is the editor and news directors –the gatekeepers in news media — who decide which item to pass and which to kill.

First published in Bhaskar Parichha’s blog

Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha (2020) 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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