Rain-Auvers, Painting by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). From Public Domain
THE RAIN WAS LAUGHING SIDEWAYS(2)
Looking down into the box, back on everything, back through that wonderful maze of things.
And it seems that the rain was laughing sideways.
Pernicious alligators climbing up out of New York bathrooms.
Though I have never been the way of that buxom bridge.
Not once across the fancied millennia.
It's more of a faraway thing. The teeming thunderous clap.
An inner drive to ceremonial drums, can you see it?
Back through through the alluvial plain with a walking stick of hungry crows.
To stand over dirty shave water with that new face.
To smile like a king of many well-kissed things.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
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Title: The Eleventh Commandment And Other Very Short Fictions
Author: Rhys Hughes
Publisher: Recital Publishing
Taurus
“What sign do you think the minotaur is?”
This was an unexpected question from above. I turned my head and saw him three floors above, leaning out of his window. I was watering the flowers in their boxes on the balcony and I stood up slowly and stretched. Then I paid serious attention to the question and finally said, “Taurus.”
He nodded. It was the obvious answer, but his nod was ironic and it was clear he was disagreeing with me. It occurred to me that maybe the body of the minotaur and his head would have different birthdays and be born under two different signs, but I was in no mood for riddles and shrugged.
“Do you suppose he was attracted to women or cows?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The minotaur! Were his amorous desires determined by his human mind or his bovine physicality? I can’t work it out.”
“You seem very interested in the details of his life.”
“Don’t be absurd, he never lived.”
“Yes, he was a myth only.”
“Nonetheless, he was born under the sign of Taurus.”
“But that’s what I said earlier.”
“Oh, did you? I misheard. I thought you said ‘torus’, which as we both know is a geometrical shape and not a zodiac sign.”
My neighbour was a joker, of this I was certain now. I wondered why we hadn’t interacted until this moment. I spend a lot of time on my balcony and he must have seen me there. I leaned on the railings and looked down on the city. The old alleys and narrow streets were like a maze. The thread that would lead a lost traveller out again was made from air, only the wind.
It was perfectly possible for the minotaur to have escaped the labyrinth by chance, from wandering at random, and in this case Theseus would have found it empty when he ventured inside, but for the sake of saving face his story wouldn’t change. Nobody could dispute that he slew the creature. Yet the monster was free, making his way in a world where he must always be alone.
No woman could want him, nor any cow. Never settling down, he would voyage to the edge of the known world and who can say what he would do when he reached it? Sit on his haunches and wait, I guess.
My neighbour had a man’s head, not that of a bull, so he couldn’t be the minotaur, as I briefly suspected when he asked me a third question, “Who does he support in a bullfight, the beast or the matador?” and I said, “The answer depends less on the fact he’s a hybrid than on his sense of justice.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“Anyone with a sense of justice supports the bull.”
“I am his descendant, you see.”
“How is that feasible?”
“Somewhere on this remarkable planet of ours he must have met a woman with a cow’s head. Over many generations the bovine aspects weakened. All that remains is my unusual stomach. I don’t complain.”
Before I could raise an objection, he added wistfully:
“A shame I don’t exist.”
In the Den with Daniel
Daniel Day-Lewis is the best actor in the world. You know this. Everyone else knows this. Your wife knows it when you kiss her on the cheek before you set off for work. Your fellow commuters know it on the underground train that is always crowded at this time of the morning. Your colleagues in the office know it when you arrive. When you sit at your desk and switch on your computer you can’t imagine how the simple truth could be different. He is the best actor in the world. There can be no argument.
He is more than an actor and this is why he is so magnificent. He inhabits his roles, he refuses to regard the characters he plays as separate from himself. He becomes those characters, absolutely without doubt or hesitation. He puts aside his own identity for the duration of the making of a film. He lives his role, no matter how uncomfortable, even when cameras aren’t rolling. This is the supreme commitment to an art form and you admire him immensely. We all admire him. He is a marvel, a genius.
Whether he is playing a dramatic villain in remarkable circumstances or an ordinary man in an everyday situation, he is utterly convincing, not only to his fellow actors and the audiences of cinemas, but even to himself. When he plays a role, the role vanishes. The character is suddenly real, no less solid than I am. I am strolling the office floor today, chatting with the employees. I do this from time to time, to make them feel at ease. I approach your own desk. You swivel your chair and wait for me to speak.
“You have a wife, a child, a mortgage on a house. I have been asked by my superiors to make cuts to the workforce. I don’t wish to do this. I know it will be difficult for any employee who is forced into redundancy. But I have my quota to fulfil. Jobs will be lost. You need to prove that you are invaluable. That is the only way you can secure your future here. Do you understand? Prove you are irreplaceable. Do this for me. Be irreplaceable, I am begging you. Please don’t make it easy for me to dismiss you.”
And you nod, but I see in your eyes that you have given up. At the end of the day, you rise from your desk to begin the journey home. You are descending the stairs and hear the words, “Finished,” from above. Suddenly you remember that you are Daniel Day-Lewis, that your office job is fictional, the woman you call your wife is a fellow actor, your child doesn’t exist. It was an act all along, brilliant, inspired, relentlessly perfect.
But you wonder. How can you be certain that Daniel Day-Lewis himself isn’t just a character in another film?
Beyond the Edge
A man was crouching on the path that runs along the side of the river, and as I approached him I saw he was moving a chess piece in the dust. It was a white knight. I was almost on top of him before he paused and turned to look up at me. Then I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he was playing a game of boardless chess. It had started in a distant city on a regular board, like most chess games, but frustrated with the limited area on which the entire struggle was expected to progress, he had agreed with his opponent to allow pieces to move beyond the boundary squares when necessary. And that is what had occurred.
“My knight kept going,” he added, “off the edge and along the streets and out of the city, and I didn’t have a desire to turn him around and head back to the board. So here we are, and the game continues, or at least I’m assuming it does, many years later. My opponent might have resigned by now and gone home; or he may have captured my king in my absence and defeated me without me knowing; or he too could be wandering the world with a piece in his hand, moving it across the invisible squares of the land until a stranger stops to ask him about it.”
I laughed and bade him have a good day, then I rode around him with due care and cantered towards the small town I saw looming ahead, milky smoke issuing from the chimneys of its houses. As I entered the town and reached the main square, I saw two men playing chess outside a café, and I wondered what might happen if the white knight also came this way and became involved in their game, an unexpected and accidental ally to one side, capturing black pieces as it wandered across the board. The incident could incite a real fight between these players and the newcomer, a three-way battle that would mean broken teeth.
If only that migrating knight was half black and half white, like many actual horses in the world, bloodshed could be avoided. A piebald chess piece is surely neutral. I was tempted to return to the river path and warn the fellow of the hazard ahead, but I had vowed never to retrace my steps. I was fleeing a battle and I too was a knight that had ventured beyond the edge of his board and kept going. Unlike the man crouched in the dust, I had taken precautions, for I had stopped at an abbey and bought a flagon of the darkest ink from the brothers in the scriptorium and had painted on my white stallion the stripes of salvation.
About the Book
Rhys Hughes’ unique observational, aphoristic humour abounds in this collection of artfully crafted, extremely short stories. A perennial master of invention, Hughes explores our perceptions of humanity, mining truths beneath the clutter of culture with incisive wordplay and trademark wit.
Hughes has arrayed eighty-eight narrative gems into three groups, The Zodiacal Light, Beyond Necessity, and The Ostraca of Inclusion-clever new takes on mythology, history, and science. A thirteenth star sign, minotaurs and gorgons, a dog ventriloquist, gears and cogs, a clock-wrestling octopus — all are semantic Möbius strips where fantasy and philosophy are seamlessly melded as only Hughes can do; both thought provoking and entertaining.
About the Author
Rhys Hughes was born in Wales but has lived in many different countries. He began writing at an early age and his first book, Worming the Harpy, was published in 1995. Since that time he has published more than fifty other books and his work has been translated into twelve languages. He recently completed an ambitious project that involved writing exactly 1000 linked short fictions. He is currently working on a novel and several new collections of prose and verse.
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Tonight, I'll go into the mist For there is no rain And I'll feel the cold sting While I wait for you. You come like a flash of light That goes away faster than it came. I know it's a dream, For I cannot find you anymore. I'd give up tomorrow for a moment If it had but you in it. I don't want the world to see me, For I fear the tears that rush From voids that do not fill. Now come on horseback Take my sorrows away with the wind. Drown them or ride them away. I'll keep the calm you leave me. Ride into the tide already, For I know it's a dream And the mist awaits me.
Amarthya Chandar is a wildlife biologist with a lifelong passion for poetry, who finds the fusion of environmental elements with everyday feelings and emotions enthralling.
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Ratnottama Sengupta introduces a prolific, popular and celebrated Bengali writer and an artist
Dhruba Esh; Courtesy: Kamrul Hasan Mithon
“Dhruba Esh, born 1967, is a full time cover designer – and a part time writer. He has authored stories for children and thrillers for grown-ups. A total of 40 books — or maybe more.”
This is from the cover flap of one of the artist’s published works. Cryptic? Yes. But it does not fail to convey the whimsy every Dhaka-based publisher and poet identifies with the name, Dhruba Esh. Read what Humayun Ahmed (1948-2012), a prolific author, dramatist and director of unforgettable films like Ghetuputra Kamola[1], saysabout the designer in Chaley Jaay Basanta Din[2]. “Must get hold of Dhruba Esh. For some unknown reason he’s been out of reach. Pasted on the front door of the flat he lives in is an A4 sized paper. It is adorned with the sketch of a crow in flight and is signed off with these words in Dhruba’s handwriting: ‘The Bird has Flown the Nest.’
“What I need to do is this: Throw away that A4 sheet and replace it with another, inscribed by these words: ‘Come back, Birdie!’
“Dhruba Esh might not know, but a bird that takes to its wings always returns to its nest. Only the caged bird has nowhere to fly off to. Its only reality is to stay put in one location…”
Why am I taking a serious note of what Humayun Ahmed wrote? Not only because Dhruba Esh has penned the biography, Tumi Achho Kemon, Humayun Ahmed? More so because this custodian of Bangladesh literary culture, who continues to be a top seller at Ekushe Book Fair[3], is one of the cornerstones of modern Bengali literature on either side of the barbed wires.
Dhruba Esh is himself a legend in the Bangla literary firmament, I learn from Kamrul Hasan Mithon, a photographer turned publisher cum writer has been instrumental in reconnecting me with my father, Nabendu Ghosh’s roots in Kalatiya, once a village in Dhaka district that is now a suburb of the capital city. Bhaiti, as I affectionately address him, has been writing a column, Dyasher Bari (Ancestral Home), in Robbar (Sunday) magazine published online from Kolkata. Featured in it are all the major names of Bengali art, literary and cinema world — from Suchitra Sen, Mrinal Sen, Paritosh Sen to Ganesh Haloi, Miss Shefali, Sabitri Chatterjee and not forgetting Baba.
“Dhruba Esh is just one of his kind. He does not have a wife, no mobile, nor a Facebook page. He does not even ride a bus or train. If a destination is too long to walk, he travels only by rickshaw. He is most indifferent to money matters. But he is most enthusiastic about painting and designing.
“Starting in 1989, when he was still a second year student at the Dhaka University, he has designed nearly 25,000 book covers. In addition he has designed music albums – and T’s too! Three years ago he was bestowed with the Bangla Academy Literary Award for his contribution to Children’s Literature – with titles such as Ayng Byang Chang[4] and AmiEkta Bhoot[5].”
I fell for ‘Amiyashankar…’ at the very first reading. How effortlessly the surreal narrative etches a contemporary reality obtaining in the land of my forefathers!
Amiyashankar Go Back Home
Story by Dhruba Esh, translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta
Subachani or Bar footed Geese flying over Himalayas: From Public Domain
“Amiyashankar Go Back Home!”
“That’s the title of the book?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Is there a poem by this name?”
“No Sir. There’s no mention of Amiyashankar in my poetry.”
“No mention at all? Oh!”
“Can I send you some of my poems?”
“You may send.”
“Can you do the cover within this month?”
“Not this month. You’ll get it on the 12th of the next month. Only sixteen days to go now.”
He started laughing.
He’s a small town poet. A young professor. I have been to the town where he teaches in a girls’ College. It’s like a watercolour painting. There’s a river to the north of the town. Blue mountains in the distance complete the view.
The geese of Subachani had flown over this town on their journey towards the Manasarovar to restore Ridoy to his human size. The poet was unaware of this. He has not read Buro Angla[6].
“What is the book about? Birds?”
“You can find the PDF on Google.”
“Thanks. I will read it.”
Two days later he called. “Reading BuroAngla has sparked some fireflies in my mind. I’d not read the book until now.”
He was given my number by Rasul Bhai, a poet and a cricketer from the same town. He just about looks after the family publishing business. A good person. Last year I had done the cover for his book of poems, Lake Mirror of the Full Moon.
The poet had emailed his poems. He had said he’d send some poems, instead he had sent the PDF of the complete book. On the basis of Divine Selection I read 13 poems. He cannot be faulted for not reading Buro Angla. This poet writes good poetry. In two days I readied the cover for his book.
*
“Is Amiyashankar a friend of yours?”
“No.”
“Why are you telling him to go back home?”
“Because he is Amiyashankar.”
“What?”
“His wife waits for him.”
“He has no one of his own but his wife?”
“He has kids. One son, one daughter.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a teacher in a government primary school.”
I was startled. Subhankar, Tushar, Amiyashankar, me — we are childhood friends. Our Amiyashankar is a teacher in a government primary school. He has a son and a daughter. The poet who lives in another town has never been to our town. He is not likely to have set his eyes on or made an acquaintance of Amiyashankar. Or, is a person likely to know another person through social media?
“I am not on social media,” said the poet.
“Why?”
“I get disoriented. Confused.”
“Oh. Your Amiyashankar’s wife is named Mitra?”
“Mitra. Yes, I did not tell you, sorry. Amiyashankar’s son is called Arnab, his daughter is Paramita.”
“Why are you creating Amiyashankar?”
“I have no friend.”
Our Amiyashankar’s wedded wife is Mitra. His son is Anu, Miti his daughter.
I call him.
“Hey, what’s the proper name of Anu and Miti?”
“Here — Anu is Arnab…”
“And Miti is Paramita?”
“Yes. You know it already.”
Really tough to suffer this.
I mentioned the poet. Amiyashankar did not read or write poetry. He had never heard of the poet.
“A modern poet?” he was curious.
“A post-modern modern poet.”
“Now what is THAT? Good to eat or wear?”
“Eat. Wear.”
“Does it hide your shame?”
“It covers your shame.”
“Good if it hides all.”
“Yes. Right. Where are you now?”
“I’m here, at Moyna and Dulal’s stall, sipping tea.”
“Aren’t you cold? Go back home.”
Amiyashankar, go back home.
*
On the 12th I sent the EPS file of the cover to the poet.
“If you don’t like it you may discard it,” I messaged.
Reply: “Will you design another cover then?”
Reply: “No.”
Reply: “This will do. I like it. There’s no Amiyashankar but one can visualise him. Thanks. Do I pay you online through bKash?”
I sent my bKash number. He sent the money.
End of give-and-take.
*
I blocked the poet’s number. I deleted every bit of communication in the mail. We had an Amiyashankar in flesh and blood. The poet had concocted an identical Amiyashankar. That Amiyashankar did not live and breathe – how’s that? Such convolution and complication! I was fed up of continuously, endlessly, unendingly living in complexity.
Better to shut my eyes and think of uncomplicated glow worms in my mind.
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[1] A 2012 film by Humayun Ahmed centring around the exploitation of ghetupatras – young boy performers, Komala being a ghetupatra.
[6] Book by Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951, nephew of Rabindranath Tagore) published in 1953. Buro Angul is Thumb in Bengali. This is the humorous story about a mischievous boy, Ridoy, who was shrunk to the size of a thumb. He had to journey to the Mansarovar in Himalayas to regain his original size and meets various creatures, including the geese referred to here.
Dhruba Esh, born 1967, is a full time cover designer — and a part time writer. He has authored stories for children and thrillers for grown-ups. A total of 40 books — or maybe more. This story was first published in Bengali in a hardcopy journal called Easel.
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and writes books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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If I am you and you are me, Something Seuss may have rhymed, and Rogers tried to share in time, the grass is never greener. The right shoe doesn’t fit the left foot. Distressed, non-blessed, oppressed. If you are me, I am you. That I was shot down in Kharkiv, that person was you sitting here free, or reverse wading in an ocean on fire in Hawaii. Then that person was here warm, sipping tea. Pleased. Appeased. If I am you and you are me. If my house stays, your house goes; if your house stays, my house goes. My cancer grows, your cancer remits; my cancer rescinds your cancer relit. Your child is well, my child is lost; your child falls down my child is found. A circle profound. My money causes you harm, your harm cost me money; your money buys me time, my time causes you loss. Your indignation steals my value, my value shames your worth. I curse. You swear. I dare you you dare me. It’s not turning out to be -- We. Us. I am not you. You are not me. A common ground then. Jesus. Democracy. Then who made all those damn guns and bombs and Anthrax and coronavirus? And egos that ban books, hide history and rule others’ bodies. You were never me. I was never you, or she/her, they/them. And on and on and on it goes. It must stop on common ground, for you, for me. Peacefully.
Tracy Lee Duffy’s poetry expresses emotion from life experience and observation through career, marriage and motherhood. She has been published in journals, online and recently in the Poets for Peace Anthology.
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I first encountered the word in a B-grade flick of the same name. Ever since then, the word has struck my fantasy. Serendipity. My birth: serendipitously born after a son’s birth and death; coincidentally, even if a consolation prize, I am a cisgender[1] female. A girl child! What a joke. A substitute, but a girl version. I have often laughed, perhaps, loudly in my head at the joke that serendipitously played on my mother’s body. At the same time, another part of me wondered if that birth was serendipitous or the result of a deliberate quest that emerged from the nebulous grief of my mother. Was I a loss, a replenishment, or just serendipitous—just there? That is a conversation I have chosen not to have with the person who holds the secret of my birth. My birth mother. Some things are best left serendipitous.
Then came the best part of being in places I was never supposed to be found in. In family lore, always the darker-skinned, the book bug, the quieter child, who lacked the tall gait and the elegance of looks that one associates with class-caste. I was never that child. The second best and the serendipitous.
At best. I looked like my paternal grandmother; her broad forehead, dusky complexion, laborious quiet life, and ever-brooding absence in our growing up sealed her in my memory—a shadow without form. The faded yellow print of her pictures rotting in the corner frame above the walls in the rooms of my childhood held her in a stony gaze, looking over us. I looked like her, everyone said. Every mirror time, I tried to notice the resemblance and failed. Serendipitous. And so, I heard that she had died cooking for a family of 14 during the 1950s, in the heat and the labours of the kitchen and the birthing and rearing of children; she had gone just like that. Unnoticed. Serendipitously. At that reckoning, I had no idea what she might have thought of her life or its worth or if those thoughts were relevant and meaningful.
Yet, I looked like her, and by some strange rationale, I felt that I might start and end like her, except that I had to blot out that fatal certainty of her being absent. Her life’s work remained unmentionable, making her especially precarious and serendipitous among us siblings. But I had to do the erasing without any radical shifts. A bloodless coup over destiny. To live looking like her and yet living, unlike any of her days. It was as if my war with serendipity would have to be conducted serendipitously. Unseen. It was behind the covers of the book I was authoring—my life. Or so I felt at the time.
Our resemblances in looks took me to places far away in the books I preyed on. Sometimes, she became Bertha Mason[2], hovering over me, around me, hunting me down to consume my Self; some other times, I thought of the chances I could explore to blot her out and start owning me. I also wondered, somewhat fantastically, about who’d witness our meeting, our two entities fusing in a symphony unheard of. Sometimes, her emergence and eclipsing me seemed possible since I was not supposed to own any articulative space. At all. I was to gradually become the lady in the photo who was my father’s mother. I looked like her. And as my looks distanced me from my mother, I had to stay aloof, forever stuck in the picture, when the individual, my grandmother, was never a real presence in our lives growing up. She was gone before my parents were married. Gone before the serendipitous connection between the daughter of her sixth child could be made, and what would decide my fantasy with her.
Early on, like a gothic heroine coming to claim her rightful place after her travails were written by other men who decided for her, I figured I had to let her go out of that picture and claim space for her while allowing me the freedom where I was not the second best, the substitute child, the replacement, the accidental error. But the person who mattered. My paternal grandmother had not counted, and I did not either. But somehow, she had to come out of the picture so I could. Too. In my adolescence, there was this constant war against the serendipity of the accident of my birth, and it was shaping me from unnoticeable presences that shaped my sense of self at the time. A continual tug of war with the self.
In picture after picture, after adolescent year after year, the resemblances kept piling up. Anyone meeting me from my mother’s side noticed how I did not quite look like anyone they knew on their side. The voices noticing that I did look like someone long since passed crept up, ambushing me serendipitously. “You look just like her. Her forehead and complexion look just like hers.” I was aghast. What did she sound like? Are there stories I could find about her? Things she liked? Books she may have read? Stories of her girlhood she may have shared? Anything that took me back in time and let me feel her for real, like the person I looked like, but had never seen or felt a presence of. How can I think of her and me in me simultaneously? My thakurma[3] haunted me. And so did the fact that her granddaughter from her sixth child, whom she could not have foreseen, would become obsessed with her. She haunted me with her absence.
The lost child, the one lost in time, haunted my parents in his way. He came to live between us. Every time, a caress on a birthday, a milestone in life, or a decade past, I have been reminded that if he were here, we would be two years apart and that the gathering would only enrich itself if he were here. I was never enough. My decades, milestones, and being me were never enough. Either as the serendipitous birth or the look that outed me every time I stood before the parents or their side of the family, I became more and more distant from the people I came home to. Or I thought I had. While the people in the pictures, a dead person who birthed my father, who birthed me, became more defined in my life, and another dead person, a dead son, replaced me every time I tried being me.
A strange dilemma crept on me over time. The fantasy with the mingling of the pictures had disappeared, just like the stories that I had suddenly grown out of. A maturer self-reflected on the depression that came serendipitously to inhabit the space between my mother and me. My heart rumbled, and my eyes cried at the helplessness of that disorder. Was the boy child ever going to stop haunting my mom? If my thakurma were alive, could she steer my mother back to the present moment where she had her own children? Me? I reflected deeply as I entered my 30s at the time, torn apart by a conflict I could never quite diagnose myself, and a voice I could never hear, yet a presence that kept haunting us.
Both dead voices. Dead people. They were long gone in time. Yet never absent. Serendipitously creeping up on me. Ambushing me every time I peeked out.
[1] A person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex registered for them at birth
[2]Bertha Mason was the first wife (afflicted severely mentally) of Edward Rochester, the hero of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s novel published first in 1847.
Aparajita De is a mid-career academic, trying her hand at creative writing. this short piece represents her efforts juggling to find a voice between academic writing and more accessible creative writing. Aparajita has been published in venues such as Kitaab.org, Tin LunchBox Minimag, and TheJournal of Epxressive Writing. Aparajita also plants, walks, and organises.
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The story of Hawakal Publishers, based on a face-to-face tête-à-tête, and an online conversation with founder Bitan Chakrabortywith his responses in Bengali translated by Kiriti Sengupta. Clickhere to read.
The Great War is over And yet there is left its vast gloom. Our skies, light and society’s soul have been overcast…
'The Great War is Over' by Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam.
Jibanananda Das wrote the above lines in the last century and yet great wars rage even now. As the world struggles to breathe looking for a beam of hope to drag itself out of the darkness induced by natural calamities, accidents, terror attacks and wars that seem to rage endlessly, are we moving towards the dystopian scenario created by George Orwell in 1984, which would be around the same time as Jibanananda Das’s ‘The Great War is Over’?
Describing such a scenario, Ahmed Rayees writes a moving piece from the Kashmiri village of Sheeri, the last refuge of the displaced refugees who were bombarded after peace was declared in their refuge during the clash across Indo-Pak borders. He contends: “People walked back not to homes, but to ruins. Entire communities had been reduced to ash and rubble. Crops were destroyed, livestock gone, schools turned into shelters or craters. How do you rebuild a life when all that remains is dust?”
People could be asking the same questions without finding answers in Gaza or Ukraine, where the cities are reduced to rubble. While we look for a ray of sunshine, amidst the rubble, Farouk Gulsara muses on hope that has its roots in eternity. Vela Noble wanders on nostalgic beaches in Adelaide. And Meredith Stephens travels to the Australian outback. Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in lighter notes writing of driving lessons while Suzanne Kamata creeps back to darker recesses musing on likely ‘criminals’ and crimes in her neighbourhood.
Lopamudra Nayak writes on social media and its impact while Bhaskar Parichha writes of trends that could be brought into Odia literature. What he writes could apply well to all regional literature, where they lose their individual colouring to paint dystopian realities of the present world. Does modernising make us lose our ethnic identity and how important is that? These are questions that sprung to the mind reading his essay. As if in an attempt to hold on to the past ethos, Prithvijeet Sinha wafts around old ruins in Lucknow and sees a cemetery for colonial soldiers and concludes: “Everybody has formidable stakes, and the dead don’t preach the gospel of victory or sombre defeat.”
We have mainly poetry in translation this time. Snehaprava Das has brought to us Soubhagyabanta Maharana’s poems from Odia and Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. Sangita Swechcha’s poem in Nepali has been rendered to English by Saudamini Chalise. From Bengali, other that Jibanananda Das’s poems translated by Professor Fakrul Alam, we have Tagore’s pensive and beautiful poem, Sonar Tori (the golden boat). Yet another Bengali poet, one who died young and yet left his mark, Sukanta Bhattacharya (1926-1947), has been translated by Kiriti Sengupta. Sengupta has also translated the responses of Bitan Chakravarty in a candid conversation about his dream child — the Hawakal Publishers. We also have a feature on this based on a face-to-face conversation, giving the story of how this publishing house grew out of an idea. Now, they publish poetry traditionally, without costs to the poet. Their range of authors are spread across continents.
Our fiction again returns to the darkness of war. Young Leishilembi Terem has given a story set in conflict-ridden Manipur from where she has emerged safely — a story that reiterates the senselessness of violence and politics. While Jeena R. Papaadi writes of modern human relationships that end without commitment, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a value-based story in a small hamlet of southern India.
We have more content. Do pause by our contents page and take a look.
Huge thanks to all our contributors without who this issue would not have materialised. Heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless for their support, especially Sohana Manzoor for her iconic artwork that has almost become a signature statement for Borderless.
Let’s hope that next month brings better news for the whole world.
Sonar Tori(Golden Boat) is the titular poem of Tagore’s book of the same name. This celebrated collection was first published in 1894.
Art by Rabindranath Tagore. From Public domain
Amidst dense clouds and heavy downpour, Without any hope of respite, I sit on the shore. Many sheaves of rice are piled in droves, Housed in straw-built stores. The river's edge is like a razor as the water flows, Torrential and ferocious. While the rice was being cut, it started to pour.
I have a small field, and I work alone. The water sways on all sides and overflows. On the other shore’s horizon, I see etched A village under the shadow of trees Covered in misty morning clouds. On this shore, I am alone in this small field.
Someone is singing and rowing to this side. Looks like, I might know her. Without glancing around, She rows past in full sail. The waves helplessly Part to give way— Looks like, I might know her.
Oh where do you row, to which foreign land? Come to me in your boat. Go wherever you want, Give to whoever you desire, Only, do take With a smile, My golden crop from this shore.
Take as much as you wish into your boat. Is there anymore? — There’s none left. By the river, I stashed into the boat All that I had done in my life In bundles — Now, please be merciful and take me along.
I have no place. The boat is too small. It is filled with my crop of golden paddy. Surrounded by heavy Monsoon clouds, I stayed by the Lonely shore — Whatever I had was taken away by the golden boat.
Art by Sohana
This poem has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravartywith editorial input from Sohana Manzoor.
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Jibananada Das’s poems translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam
THE GREAT WAR IS OVER
The Great War is over And yet there is left its vast gloom Our skies, light and society’s soul have been overcast One has to intuit whatever light there is every day The sky is dark; society vacuous; Existence Disgraced; love dead; blood flowing fountain-like; Knowledge becoming the bearer of an immense load of corpses And of its own self as well!
A NOBODY A nobody wanted to walk down the path as always. How then could those closest to him get lost forever, And disappear in some underground world?
Painting By Jamini Ray (1887-1972)
Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) was a Bengali writer, who now is named as one of the greats. In his lifetime, he wrote beautiful poetry, novels, essays and more. He believed: “Poetry and life are two different outpouring of the same thing; life as we usually conceive it contains what we normally accept as reality, but the spectacle of this incoherent and disorderly life can satisfy neither the poet’s talent nor the reader’s imagination … poetry does not contain a complete reconstruction of what we call reality; we have entered a new world.”
Borderless 