Author: borderlesssg1

Categories
Stories

Unlocking the Lockdown!

By Sarwar Morshed

                                               

Influential people and poseurs in our country place boards inscribed with professional tags like ‘PRESS’, ‘DOCTOR’, ‘ADVOCATE’ etc. behind the windshields of their cars. They do this with calculated designs in mind. Displaying their real or assumed professional identity, they can avoid unnecessary police interrogation in the street or can enjoy the prerogative of using untrodden and prohibited tracks to avoid traffic jams.

Mr. Nasir was going to the terminal point of the city, the airport. He had only one hour at hand. Within this time it was virtually impossible to sail through the vast ocean of traffic and swarming crowd in Agrabad Commercial Area and Chattogram Export Processing Zone.

He brain-stormed and contemplated. After surveying the cartography of his problem-solving cognitive domains, this pandemic-day Buddha jumped out of his sofa with a loud, near-20K dB sound, “Eureka, Eureka!”

His wife, consumed with ‘I don’t have any faith in my husband’s conjugal fidelity’-attitude, meteor-like appeared before him from the kitchen wielding her lethal weapon, khunti*.

“Which Rekha are you talking about so loudly in this holy times of Ramadan, you shameless old man?”

“It’s not any blossomed beauty or Tinseltown Rekha, my intelligent Home Minister. I said, ‘Eureka’ meaning ‘I’ve got it’. I’m celebrating my solution to the heavyweight problem of going to the airport in time.”

“Thank God, you aren’t philandering then,” with these words, the relieved better-half resumed her full-queenship in the kitchen.

The king prepared a paper-board and bidding adieu to the queen, boarded the car. The driver, confused and skeptical, gave his unsolicited verdict that they would not be able to make it to the airport in time. The de-stressed Mr. Nasir just nonchalantly commanded his driver to place the board behind the windshield a la mode the self-styled VIPs and drive. The driver complied.

At a busy intersection, an arrogant traffic police aggressively approached the car, but a glimpse of the inscription melted his anger and he quickly made way for them. Mr. Nasir’s triumphal march met another opposition within the next five minutes — at Agrabad area, a troop of patrol police halted the car and asked why they were driving during the lockdown.

Mr. Nasir, wearing a grave but gloomy look, drew their attention to the board non-verbally. The enigmatic writing on the board almost froze the cops! With unbelievable haste and apparent respect, they let him go. At the busiest EPZ area, other vehicles, made way for Mr. Nasir’s car as if they had seen a ghost car!

They kept receiving this preferential and reverential treatment at every point and consequently reached the destination much ahead of scheduled time.

Amazed and pleased, the driver asked, “What magic words have you written on the paper, sir?”

“You see, if you have substance inside your head, you can manage even to run on water,”boasted Mr. Nasir gloatingly.

“I can’t disagree with you, sir. But what are the miracle-words?”  the driver impatiently tried to penetrate into the secret success-code of his boss.

Smuggly, the puffed-up Mr. Nasir revealed, “Ex-Covid patient driving a new one home.”

*khunti: A metallic spatula

Sarwar Morshed is a Professor of English at the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. His works have appeared, among others, in The Bosphorus Review of Books, The Bombay Literary Magazine, City: Journal of South Asian Literature, Star Literature & Reviews, Contemporary Literary Review India, Mahamag and the Ashvamegh. Mr. Morshed’s books have been reviewed at home and abroad – in the Asiatic (IIUM, Malaysia), Transnational Literature (Flinders University, Australia), the Ashvamegh (India), Star Literature & Reviews, Observer Literature, daily sun and Dhaka Courier (Bangladesh).

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Categories
Poetry

Imagine

By Zeenat Khan

Imagine the first bee

Imagine the world before

Imagine the sunflowers host

Now move a little, turn and yearn

see its garden, garbed in green

How Van Gogh would have

painted the sunflower, imagine

How sunflowers would have

been without bees, imagine.

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Imagine the first bee

Imagine the world before

Imagine the honey without bees

Imagine the life without this

Imagine the ancient tombs of Egypt

Archaeologists marvel to visit

How the dead would have been

embalmed without honey, imagine.

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So, Imagine, Imagine

Imagine this poem without bees

Imagine a swarm of poems, look, see,

of flowers, of honey, of bud, of dead,

of lives, without bees, imagine

Imagine the world without bees.

Imagine!

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Zeenat is a young and self-critical poet of 19. She lives in Delhi and doing her graduation in English honours from Vivekananda College, DU. She is a passionate reader of poems and lives. She started writing in 2020.

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Categories
Poetry

Birth of an Ally

Smoke and Fire by Alia Kamal

By Tamoha Siddiqui

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Yesterday I heard the sound of colourful feet

to Indonesian beats, in the middle of Michigan:

white, black, brown, all were one

pitter-patter paces in a conference hall.

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You thought I wasn’t looking, but I was.

You were smiling a late November sun

stubborn in joy, fresh in giving;

a horizon broadening in deepening twilight.

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Your grey hairs picked up the song, 

The music bent down for a kiss.

Immigrant spices dissolved

ladling a new tone on your tongue

As you threw up your pink arms

And danced.

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Somewhere, your soul alighted;

Moonlight on a tulip,

Wind on the sand dunes,

Mellow in a melting of colours,

You danced.

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Tamoha Siddiqui is a teacher-researcher and poet from Bangladesh. She’s a Fulbright awardee currently housed at Michigan State University as a graduate student.  In 2018, Tamoha founded a bilingual poetry collective in Dhaka, working as a performer, organizer, and facilitator of local poetry shows and workshops. Furthermore, she debuted as a performance poetry artist in America in 2019 through events hosted by the The Poetry Room, Michigan. Her work has been highlighted in a number of Bangladeshi newspapers and anthologies.

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Categories
Poetry

In Quiet & Conversation

By Anasuya Bhar

In quiet

You and I have not laid our

Eyes, on each other

For days, months, now

You and I have changed,

Both to the world, and

To us, unknown.

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Conversation

Two glasses

Sit in eager anticipation

Two chairs

Sit in mute expectation.

Twinkling lights

Empty tables, slow music

Dusk,

All wait for us –

Now drifted,

Now apart.

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Dr. Anasuya Bhar is Associate Professor of English and the Dean of Postgraduate Studies in St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College Kolkata. She is also a Guest Faculty at the Department of English, University of Calcutta. Dr. Bhar is the sole Editor of the literary Journal Symposium http://www.spcmc.ac.in/departmental-magazine/symposium/, published by her Department. She has various academic publications to her credit. She is also keen on travel writing and poetry writing. She has her own blog https://anascornernet.wordpress.com/.

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Categories
Musings

The strays

By Rana Preet Gill

In the times of the pandemic when social distancing has become the new norm, emotional distancing has come out as a byproduct. Somewhere this conflict has delineated the boundaries, traversed species. It is evident in the way changed perceptions have led to the dwindling number of stray dogs on the homely streets. And though this is a welcome development it is not the result of a conscious effort to rehabilitate such wandering souls, it is the result of a changed attitude that fed on the guile that dogs are a carrier and spreader of the dreaded Corona virus.  

Driving along the familiar roads we had been so habituated to see some of these strays that we always remember them as we passed by their favourite haunts.

 A certain white female with a pink nose would always sit outside a particular house as if awaiting her morning nashta or breakfast. We nicknamed her the pink nosed dog. Her eyes, the shade of pale yellow, jaundiced with the desire to have more, yet unable to ask for it. But how could a modest household splurge on a stray dog. A dog that would not be a guard and yet sit outside their house. A seeker of alms. In times of pandemic this generosity of sparing the scraps seemed to have died down.

We know that a pair of brown female dogs were together day after day often making us wonder if they were related to each other by kinship. They would be found at their usual spot, a blind turn that masked a road but was the private entry to a house, early mornings, late afternoons, slouching in the sun, keeping company, sharing a territory and the benevolence of the people in the form of food and knick-knacks. They are missing. The blind turn now desecrated by the foremost fear of saving human lives have let go off the strays.

 And there was the territorial shrine dog, with a peculiar elongated face, who would stand stiff, serving as the sentry to this religious place. He became my muse for an article that ended up getting published putting him at a cherished spot on my list of favorites. I would look up to greet him with a gentle nod which often went unacknowledged. Too stiff in his demeanor, too rigid to have beneficence encroaching his life he did not like affectations bothering him.

During times of lockdown I spotted lesser stray dogs on the road and none in their regular haunts. The pink-nosed dog is missing, the sisters gone, the shrine dog sank into oblivion. Either they have been driven away or they lost out on the generosity of the hands who fed them making them move out of those places, their self-proclaimed homes.

It’s not only the strays who burnt the ire of misconceived notions but the pets in loving families too were at a risk of being labelled unwanted. A friend who owns an affectionate Labrador was faced with a dilemma when the family objected to the howling of the animal at a particular time in the night. The times of Corona, rising cases, imposition of lockdown not only necessitated the perpetuation of unusual reasoning, it lead to a strange kind of fear. The elderly matriarch drew visions of Yamraaj (the god of death) visiting their home to claim its share of life in the wails of the animal.

The relatives when consulted advised the family to consult a certain Babaji who was kind to offer advice on phone empathizing with the family and reiterating the same facts.  The dog was indeed peculiar and the howling was definitely a bad omen. It had to go. When I got call from this harassed friend   to save her dog from home displacement by prescribing a medicine to put an end to its howling I was confused. Our adopted mongrels often howl in the dread of the night when the pups in the neighboring kennel create a ruckus. They respond to a stimulus.

 There was no letup in the animosity against this dog, the family stood firm in the castigation of this canine for an innocuous crime. But after a few sleepless nights my friend had uncovered the stimulus in this case. A patrolling police van crossed their home precisely at the same time. The siren was the stimulus.

The family not satisfied with this logic has decided to call the faithful Babaji once again, this time for a personal visit. The animal in question, bereft of the impending doom, unaware, romps merrily all over the house, a place where it has thrived since its arrival as a little pup. I hope the maw of these uncertain and testing times do not swallow home of a loving animal. I hope they let it be and let it stay.

Our adopted mongrels refuse to touch the pedigree, the dog feed, some days. A crease of disappointment crosses my face when they act pricy. The feed is expensive, I take out the money out of my precious salary to buy them this treat. My resources are limited but they do not seem to care.  The crows which live on the silver oak boughs have an eye for this tasty treat. When the dogs refuse to touch their bowls, they circle around the food to have their peck. I am disappointed by this behavior of my canines. They disrespect food bought and brought with love and care.

 I let the crows have their fill not before displaying my remorse in front of the mongrels but I am not too strict to castigate them.

We do not tie them, they are living by their free will on our property, they can howl, bawl, be whimsical. We have accepted them as they are. Their soft moans at our approach and that subtle wagging of the tail tells me they are happy with us. This fear of Corona did not pervade our home, we did not drive them away. For now, their territories are safe. They future seems secure as long as they do not feel tethered in the confines of our home. Outside, the world is brutal. I wish I could explain this fact to them but they close their eyes and place their snouts on my feet, beseeching, pleading for a rub on their backs. They are not aware of the outside world around. For now, they are happy to be choosers in this house which they have adopted as their home. They have chosen us to be their benefactors and we are glad to have them.  

Rana Preet Gill is a Veterinary Officer with the government of Punjab, India. Her articles and short stories have been published in The Tribune, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Statesman, The New Indian Express, Deccan Herald, The Hitavada, Daily Post, Women’s era, Commonwealth writers. org, Himal, Spillwords press, Setu Bilingual, Active Muse and Indian Ruminations. She has compiled some of her published pieces into a book titled Finding Julia. She has also written two novels – Those College Years and The Misadventures of a Vet.

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Categories
Poetry

We, the Sojourners

By Dr Santosh Bakaya

Dr. Santosh Bakaya is an academician, poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, Ted Speaker and creative writing mentor. She has been critically acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi [Ballad of Bapu]. Her Ted Talk on the myth of Writers’ Block is very popular in creative writing Circles . She has more than ten books to her credit , her latest books are a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (Only in Darkness can you see the Stars) and Songs of Belligerence (poetry). She runs a very popular column Morning meanderings in Learning And Creativity.com.

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Categories
Poetry

Harmony

by Christopher Manners

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Amidst the crowded cacophony of chaos,

this sweet perception fleetingly crystallized,

in these suddenly calm, pristine waters,

as I no longer perceived each ego clashing,

but a united chorus of the countless cascading

with those blazing harps of blissful harmony

trumpeting beyond all the mundane misery,

as each valiantly distinct and voyaging voice

was a dear resonance of deathless radiance

all vastly imagined by the boundless artist.

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Christopher Manners has had 2 poetry books published by Sophia Perennis.  He has also had poems published by Harbinger Asylum. Born and residing near Toronto, Canada, he has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from York University.   Manners is the founder of poetryimmortal.com, a poetry blog and encyclopedia dedicated to the classics. 

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Categories
Poetry

Heredity

By JGeorge

The way a cracker fires up to the sky, and then blooms into scattered pieces of joy;

Like sprinkling water, is exactly how my father’s hand moves in hopelessness.

He raises his hands upwards, a little higher slowly,

and then throws his fingers from its closed bud, to the air opening up,

“Ohh…Onnulla” (Oh! Nothing) ,

with the “Ohh” dragging itself to the top and in “onnulla”, all that agitation and frustration

cracks up open, falling back to his lap.

I really don’t remember how she initiated a hug or being in her embrace,

her, she – my grandmother, his mother;

was it firmer, with left hand holding and right patting, or the other way, I wonder.

But this piece of movement, is so familiar to me, like the signature end note of a musician,

it was hers and now, I see it all growing in you, father.

The lines of worry piling up, just like the ones on your forehead;

how that lips down turn themselves, after nothing (Onnulla) and

how she turns her head sideways away from me.

All in you, I see replicated well, the worry, the anxiety,

the deep sadness dwelling behind those heavy eyelids.

She was sixty when I went to stay with her,

and now, you are in your sixties while I am here for this extended lockdown stay

and maybe it’s this inacqaintance that I notice as a bare connection.

Or maybe all I want to ask you is to open your fingers a little more widely to a hug,

and watch joy sprouting from hope, in a million faint moments around,

something she never understood.

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JGeorge’s poems appear or is forthcoming in several online and print journals, most recently in “Mookychick”, “The Initial Journal”, “Active Muse”, “TROU Lit Mag”,”Peach Street Mag”, “The Martian Chronicles”, “FishfoodMag”, anthologies of “Boundless”(Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival 2019) and “Love, As We Know It” (Delhi Poetry Slam). Currently, she lives in Pondicherry, pursuing research at Pondicherry University.

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Categories
Musings

New Normal & Corona Puja

 By Nishi Pulugurtha

Covid_19 has been changing a lot of things. We are trying to get used to the ‘new normal’. Most of us are still indoors, working from home, trying to deal with things in the best way we can. Those of us who are into teaching are working from home too and trying to learn new ways of engaging with our students, of being connected with them. I tried ways and means of taking online classes if and when I could, of emailing my student papers and reading material,  of getting assignments mailed to me, of correcting them and of counselling them.

I even tried various online platforms.  There is the question of network connectivity, not all are able to join in regularly. Some call and talk too. One misses out a lot when one is teaching online. I feel it is important to see my students when I teach. All I am looking at is a blank screen — their videos are off to save bandwidth. I know they do disturb in class with their fidgeting, their talking and their daydreaming but teaching online is a poor substitute to classroom teaching.

I see many of my students write poetry these days. Some of them scribbled once in a while, but these days I find them doing that more often. Some of what they write is really good. I encourage them to go on as I am impressed to see them expressing themselves in English. There are many who want me to read and comment and edit their work too. This, I feel, is their way of trying to deal with the situation they are in.

There are many who draw and paint and share their art work too. I had always wanted to have a Literary Society in the College I teach at but never actually got down to having the students work at one, so I thought I would use the online medium to create one. A platform where I could share the creative done by students of the college I teach at.  I am sure that some encouragement will make them work harder at it.

We even got down to celebrating various events online. To commemorate World Theatre Day, we shared readings of plays in the department virtual group. We shared video recordings of our readings, songs and even dance recitals on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore too. It was nice to see many of the students joining in. The best we could do. A student compiled them all into videos and posted them online too.  

There are a number of Webinars being organized.  I jumped the bandwagon too. I have felt that they are nice ways of engaging. Yes, there are gaps, lacunae, criticisms and the like but at least for some time I think it does open us up to ideas and thoughts in a scenario where concentrating on something is becoming difficult for many of us every day. I have had people tell me that as long as they are listening to the lectures their mind was engaged in stimulating discussions for some time at least. I learnt working on a new medium in order to organise it all. Yes, there were hiccups and snags and I am still trying to navigate my way through the technical maze.

A young dancer and dance teacher told me that he had begun taking dance classes online. A friend tells me her son is taking karate lessons online. I was surprised to hear that initially, but have taken that in my stride now. This is the new normal, the way things might have to go on for some time. My nephew’s coaching classes are all held online. He was even given a test that he had to take at home. I guess, one of the important things is to be connected with whatever one is involved with.

My mother’s carer was speaking about how people in her village are reacting to ‘Corona’. She said that though there have been no cases as yet in her village but people are scared. They have been asked by the village elders to do a number of things that would help them ward off the evil eye of ‘Corona’. I could not but be interested in what she had to say.

One of the first things that they were asked to do was to get up early in the morning, before sunrise, and stand facing the East. Now they had to chop onions into round pieces, put them into their mouth and chew and eat them. They could only have water after about one and a half hours after that. She said, that her family followed all the instructions, like everyone else in the village.

Another set of instructions soon followed as more news about the pandemic trickled in. This time they had to get up early in the morning and stay unwashed. They were asked to eat five grains of rice and five wet tulsi leaves.

At another time, they had to get up early in the morning, have a bath, light five lamps, earthen diyas, which they had to make the day before, and pray to the gods. I laughed when I first heard her say all of this but soon realised that this was their way of trying to deal with the unknown disease. They had no clue about it, or what it could do. As it is the gods are goddesses are propitiated when someone in the family falls sick.

I was reminded of the Sitala Puja that is associated with sickness and disease. Maybe these village folk were trying to do the same with this new sickness as well.  She tells me that there is talk about ‘Corona Puja’ as well. I ask her details of it.

She said that her folks are awaiting news and information from the village priest. Inspite of all the blind faith and beliefs, one thing that she tells me is that they make it a point to drive home the importance of wearing masks, of washing hands and of quarantine. A local school is the quarantine centre. Her brother who has been out of work, recently returned from Coimbatore and is now housed there. Once he is out of quarantine he is going to get married to his sweetheart, she smiles as she tells me. Some new beginnings in these times.

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Dr. Nishi Pulugurtha is Associate Professor in the department of English, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College and has taught postgraduate courses at West Bengal State University, Rabindra Bharati University and the University of Calcutta. She is the Secretary of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata (IPPL). She writes on travel, film, short stories, poetry and on Alzheimer’s Disease. Her work has been published in The Statesman, Kolkata, in Prosopisia, in the anthology Tranquil Muse and online – Kitaab, Café Dissensus, Coldnoon, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The World Literature Blog and Setu. She guest edited the June 2018 Issue of Café Dissensus on Travel. She has a monograph on Derozio (2010) and a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open (2019). She is now working on her first volume of poems and is editing a collection of essays on travel.

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Categories
Poetry

Resurrection & more…

                                     

By Aneek Chatterjee

Resurrection       

Some issues are so puzzling …

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Often I ask myself, where does the

mind stay …

In the brain, the heart or the eyes

or in the thin layer of the skin

when a touch ignites

irresistible passion

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and I get more confused … 

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When I look up, clouds

paint me words, images,

I lost in a forest of bricks 

of dingy bylanes; 

in the asphalt of avenues,

smell of markets. 

Clouds, white, black or sepia

hold me inside, and I float … 

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I float and finally

descend down on

the skin of narrow bylanes 

And avenues;

in the heart of the city center,

And discover me there

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Fresh as ever

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About Time & Pride                                        

Sometimes I’m ahead

of the time I yearn to be.

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The magical night laughed at me

I was at the airport, and the next

flight to Nice was in the morning,

eleven hours later. 

I didn’t know how I beat time

when I slept on the floor,

with my cabin bag as pillow and

my left hand inside the strap,

as if it contained hundred

years’ of accumulated wisdom.

I didn’t know how I beat time

and possible cheaters. 

A little drunk

and the night passed in a whimper,

aimed at transborder 

lumpens.

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In the morning, I found

my bag open, and some coins

and papers on the floor.

I picked up all and realised

these actually escaped

my powerful pocket.

I searched for my toothbrush 

and saw in the electronic board that

my dream had left for Nice.

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Howled at the beginning and

then laughed, pitied me and time

lazily at the washroom,

always my best bunker;

and waited for the next flight

eight hours later.

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I’m still ahead of my time,

yearned pride & dream.

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 Aneek Chatterjee is a poet and academic from Kolkata, India. He has been published in reputed literary magazines and poetry anthologies across the globe. His recent credits are:  Chiron Review, Shot Glass Journal, The Stray Branch, Chicago Record, Ann Arbor Review, Dissident Voice, Café Dissensus, Setu, Ethos Literay Journal, New Asian Writing, Pangolin Review, Montreal Writes, Mark Literary Review etc. He authored two poetry collections named “Seaside Myopia” & “Unborn Poems and Yellow Prison”.  Chatterjee has a ph.d. in International Relations; and has been teaching in leading Indian and foreign universities.

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