Categories
Poetry

Morning Sermons

By Pramod Rastogi

Painting by Sybil Pretious
Ecstasy fills your morning sermons,

And words flow from your beak

Like bullets from a machine gun

At a frightful cadence that belies

Your tiny size with two tender eyes.

 

Your freewheeling words tear asunder

My early morning sleep ritual

That allows me to soak in the miseries

Of our planet and its inhabitants,

Elevating me like an icon.

 

Yet I dream to see the world

From your perspective by undoing

Your uncombed melodious flow

To understand why you speed up,

Alas, to slow down all too hastily.

 

Your escapades are legendary.

You fly from one end of the globe

To the other, noting in detail

Different colours of human misery

Which you store in your memory.

 

Even if I do not understand your sermons,

There is no divergence in our positions,

And that's such an enlightened feeling.

Coming from the tree next to my house

The tonalities in your chirps heal me.

Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the EPFL, Switzerland. He is a poet, academician, researcher, author of nine scientific books, and a former Editor-in-chief (1999-2019) of the international scientific journal Optics and Lasers in Engineering. He has published over ninety poems in international literary journals.

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Categories
Essay

How Do You Live?

By Aditi Yadav

Hayao Miyazaki and the poster of The Boy and the Heron in Japanese

In January 2024, The Boy and the Heron became the first Japanese movie to win the Golden Globe Award for the Best Animated Feature Film. However, when the original movie was released by Studio Ghibli in the summer of 2023 in Japan, it was marketed with ‘no marketing at all’-without any trailers, TV commercials or newspaper advertisements. A minimalist movie poster carrying the sketch of a heron and the Japanese title Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka, was all it took the movie to record the biggest box office opening in Studio Ghibli’s history.

Hayao Miyazaki, the godfather of Japanese animation who celebrated his 83rd birthday in January, 2024, broke a decade long hiatus to give his directorial swansong to the world. The movie is inspired by Miyazaki’s favourite book Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka, written by Genzaburo Yoshino in 1937. This coming-of-age Japanese classic had been tenderly translated into English under the title How Do You Live? by Bruno Navasky and brought out by Penguin in 2021 with a foreword by a writer no less than Neil Gaiman.   

Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka byGenzaburo Yoshino

The protagonist of the story is Honda Junichi, a fifteen-year-old boy nicknamed ‘Copper’ after Copernicus, by his uncle.  He has a diminutive frame, but his intelligence, bright personality and athletic skills, make him a popular kid at school. As Copper has been raised by a single mother, his uncle, who is a fresh law graduate, is the only male guardian around him. Their bond is an interesting one: not only do they share a warm friendship, but also discuss about the world at large, its history, philosophy, human relationships, so on and so forth. 

 The book chronicles Copper’s world, his thoughts and day-to-day incidents, in a format that alternates between a third person narrative and notes from the diary Copper’s uncle. Copper’s everyday experiences are similar to those of any other school going child — peers bullying, fighting, discovering class differences, bonding over games, pranking one another, and so on. The book delves into the mind of the adolescent boy, trying to make sense of the world to understand how he’d transition to an adult. He approaches the world with an innocent curiosity, musing how people are ‘a little like water molecules’ in the vast ocean of human society.

His uncle deeply moved by these observations and expressions, begins to pen down about these interesting episodes in his notebook. He also adds facts and references associated with them, that encompass wide range of topics including art, science, economics, history, politics, philosophy and language. He probably thinks that when Copper reads the notebook later on, it would help him see the world better alongside his personal mental and moral evolution. These notebook entries bear sagacious titles like- ‘on ways of looking at things’, ‘on human troubles, mistakes and greatness’, ‘on human relationships’, ‘on poverty and humanity’, etc. However, the words do not intend to preach. They brim with warmth of empathy, and capture the strengths and vulnerabilities of being human: “If it means anything at all to live in this world, it’s that you must live your life like a true human being and feel just what you feel. This is not something that anyone can teach from the sidelines, no matter how great a person becomes.”

Yoshino wrote the book as a part of the “Nihon Shoukokumin Bunko” (Library of books for the Younger Generation) that aimed at disseminating progressive knowledge and ideas to Japanese young adults. The work is a precious one – a classic example of how thoughtful adults can help young children to have a healthy mind and human heart.

Published in 1937, this masterpiece itself is an act of resistance against all regressive beliefs and authoritarianism, as Navasky pens in his Translator’s note, the book is “…particularly valuable to us now, when violence against citizens is on the rise, and independent thinkers are being attacked by their governments”. The book itself was censured several times, before it could be printed in its originally intended form. It’s important to mention here that from 1911 to 1945, Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu (or Tokko), the Special Higher Police, heavily monitored political groups and ideologies that posed a threat to the Empire of Japan.  The Peace Preservation Law passed in 1925, expanded the powers of Tokko to suppress all socialist and communist idea in Japan. The heavy-handed ‘thought policing, only ended in 1945 with Japan’s surrender in World War II.

How we live, invariably depends on how we think. The universality of the book lies in how it links thought processes across borders — individual and collective — will have decisive roles in the ideals we follow and the society we construct. Our journey from the primitive caves to modern skyscrapers has been a long and tumultuous one. The prowess of human mind and the resilience of human spirit has brought of this far, but a peaceful society demands empathy and honesty of the human heart. Copper is sensitive enough to realise this, when he jots down–

“I think there has to come a time when everyone-one in the world treats each other as if they were good friends. Since humanity has come so far, I think now we will definitely be able to make it to such a place.

So, I think I want to become a person who can help that happen.”

Charting the ups and downs in the life of young Copper, the book closes on a sunny fulfilling note where our protagonist sees the world with an open heart as his extended family. And so, this timeless classic that touches the heart ends with a deep question for all of us – “How will you live?”

.

Aditi Yadav is a public servant from India. As and when time permits she engages in creative pursuits and catches up her never-ending to-read list. Her works appear in Rain Taxi Review of books, EKL review, Usawa Literary Review, Gulmohur Quarterly, Narrow Road Journal and the Remnant Archive.

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Categories
Poetry

Love Poems

By Michael R Burch

Chez le Père Lathuille (1879) by Édouard Manet (1832-1883)
BECKONING



Yesterday

the wind whispered my name

while the blazing locks

of her rampant mane

lay heavy on mine.



And yesterday

I saw the way

the wind caressed tall pines

in forests laced by glinting streams

and thick with tangled vines.



And though she reached

for me in her sleep,

the touch I felt was Time’s.



CAMEO



Breathe upon me the breath of life;

gaze upon me with sardonyx eyes.

Here, where times flies

in the absence of light,

all ecstasies are intimations of night.



Hold me tonight in the spell I have cast;

promise what cannot be given.

Show me the stairway to heaven.

Jacob’s ladder grows all around us;

Jacob’s ladder was fashioned of onyx.



So breathe upon me the breath of life;

gaze upon me with sardonic eyes . . .

and, if in the morning I am not wise,

at least then I’ll know if this dream we call life

was worth the surmise.

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers.

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Categories
Notes from Japan

Becoming a Swiftie in my Fifties

Narrative and Photographs by Suzanne Kamata

I was already living in Japan when Taylor Swift was born, so she was never part of my American cultural experience. I didn’t hear her songs on the radio, didn’t see her face on the cover of magazines, and because I never clicked on links about her, she never entered my online bubble.

I had a vague awareness that she was a Country and Western singer, but I’d always been more inclined to listen to “alternative” music (Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux, Sinead O’Connor, Bjork, and so on).

At some point, my students at a small teacher’s college in Western Japan began to mention her as their favourite singer in their self-introductions. When they asked me what musicians I liked, I struggled to come up with someone they had heard of. Finding a favorite Taylor Swift song seemed like a good way to connect.

I learned a little bit more about her: she enjoys baking and knitting; she loves cats. Every time she visits a city, its economy improves. She gives generous bonuses to the people who work for her and supports LGBTQI rights. She has inspired girls all over the world. She seems like a genuinely nice person.

My son listened to her music, and after he shared one of his playlists with me, I had “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” on my phone. I liked it. It was catchy and relatable, easy to sing along to. But I didn’t really become a fan until she released Folklore during the pandemic. A friend whose musical taste I trusted raved about it on Facebook, so I downloaded the album. I listened to it as I drove to my office where I sat alone at my desk all day, uploading material for virtual classes. I became enamored with her storytelling, evident in songs such as “Betty,” about a teenage love triangle, and “The Last Great American Dynasty,” which exudes Great Gatsby vibes.

Last July, I learned that Taylor Swift would be performing four shows in Tokyo. A lottery would determine who would get tickets. I had never been to a big concert in an arena—well, not since I saw the Bee Gees in Detroit, when I was in junior high school, and that was before artists began incorporating mapping and other bells and whistles. I thought it would be fun. An extravaganza. I asked my husband if he wanted to go to a Taylor Swift concert with me.

“There’s no way you’ll be able to get tickets,” he said.

I entered the lottery anyway. Lo and behold, I “won” two tickets for Thursday, February 8, the second of four shows. As the date was months away, I didn’t count on anything. A lot could happen. And it did!

A week before the concert, I got an emergency text from my sister-in-law telling me that my elderly mother had fallen down and broken her hip. She was in the hospital, about to have surgery. The last time something like that had happened (to my father), I had rushed back to America. But my dad told me that everything was under control, and my mother made it through surgery without any complications, so I decided to put off my return home.

Then, three days before the start of the concerts, a rare snowstorm hit Tokyo, shutting down transportation. Since my husband and I live in distant Shikoku, we were planning to take a plane on the day of the show, arriving just a few hours in advance. If the snow continued, we wouldn’t make it.

“It’ll melt,” my husband assured me.

He was right. By Thursday, most of the snow was gone.

We made it to Haneda Airport, checked into our hotel in Ueno, had some sushi, and took the train to Tokyo Dome. Two hours before start time, a crowd had already gathered. Young women in spangled dresses, tiaras, and cowgirl hats, speaking various languages, posed for photos and exchanged friendship bracelets. Hundreds of people were queued up to buy merchandise related to the Eras Tour. Although my husband and I waited in line for almost an hour, when it became clear that we risked missing the beginning of the performance, we left and went to find our seats, which were high up in the rafters.

Slowly, the seats began to fill. By the time the lights dimmed, the place was packed. The music began, and dancers came onto the stage holding what looked like Japanese fans. Cheers surged. To my left, an earnest young woman, who was apparently attending alone, recorded nearly the entire show on her phone. A white-haired Japanese man, also on his own, sat just in front of me. Several young women in short dresses stood behind us, singing and dancing along to the songs that they knew. Whenever Taylor disappeared for a set or costume change, they would squeal in delight at her reappearance on stage: “Yabai, yabai, yabai[1]!”

For three hours and twenty minutes, as Taylor went through her set of 47 songs, ranging across her career, the arena was filled with joy.

Occasionally, my husband would lean over and ask, “Do you know this one?”

I confess that I didn’t know all of the songs—especially those from her early albums. I danced along anyway.

After the concert, my social media feeds were abuzz with reactions from other friends who had been there, or who’d attended the performance the night before. It felt as we had been part of something huge—and happy.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, rumors were circulating that Taylor Swift was part of some Deep State government plot to re-elect President Joe Biden in November. NFL fans were complaining that she got too much onscreen attention when she attended her boyfriend’s games (to cheer him on). Others slut-shamed her for having had too many boyfriends or attacked her for polluting with her private plane.

I was glad that none of that vitriol had reached Japan.

My husband and I went back to Tokyo Dome the next evening, during the concert, to buy T-shirts. At that time, the line for merchandise was blessedly short. We saw people sitting on benches outside the arena, or with their ears pressed to the walls, taking in as much as they could. It was strangely moving.

When I got back home, I downloaded two more of her albums. I’ve been listening to them non-stop ever since.

.

[1] Great, great, great!

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

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Categories
Poetry

Who Moves Time and Other Poems

By Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Antonia Pozzi (1912-1938), Italian Poet
ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR YEARS 



After Antonia Pozzi



One hundred and four years ago you were

composing your words like a violinist was

composing musical sounds. Your words are

alive still, quivering with beauty, delirium,

and the sobs of time, as the violin strings

reach a crescendo of the loudest order.

I see your words on the page bleeding. I

feel the sharp sea breeze as if I was out

at shore. I look up at the cluster of stars,

which are your words, soft and compact

one moment, and loud and exploding

the next. Your instrument cries out loud

as if death is on your trail. You lived only

for twenty-six years. Yet, you are still alive

with these words I am reading now. Perhaps

in a hundred and four years I should be

so lucky, for someone to find mine.



WHO MOVES TIME



Who or what moves 

time like the sky

moves clouds? We

cannot move time

as it inhales and

exhales its evil.

Time has no heart

or arms to lift

our burdens. Mute as

a field of weeds,

time is hard to gauge.

Like air it will not

stay in one place.

It follows its own

rules -- slow when

you are rushed, fast

when you need it

to last longer.



THIS HOUSE



This house I live in

is made of air.

If you look up at

any time of day

you will see stars,

the moon, the sun,

and clouds. It is

all windows all

around and no

walls. If you look

down, there is grass,

dirt, and cement.

I do not need doors,

plumbing, or a stove.

I keep it real

simple with a soft

pillow and thick

blankets. People

give me stuff like

food and water, a

dollar or enough

change for a hot

meal. I do not pay

rent or utility bills.

I move a lot, not

always willingly.

You know the grass

could be greener,

but I settle for

what I can get.



NOTHING BUT EMPTINESS 



I left nothing

but emptiness

and useless

meanderings

for you to digest,

sparse ideas

and drunken

diatribes to

moist your

appetite.

There is more

of nothingness

I could offer,

but I do not

have the heart

to do that.

Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, CA.His poetry has been published by Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Escape Into Life, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, SETU, and Unlikely Stories.

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Categories
Poetry

The White Lady by Atta Shad

Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch 

O, White Lady!

Your alluring figure,

With seductive gestures

And sway of your gentle gait,

Sets lamps aquiver

In shame and discomfiture.



O, White Lady!

Your flower-adorned hair,

At times, gleams red,

At times, shines black,

At times, turns grey.

The morning and evening breeze

Tousle them in shameful disarray.

Women, sneer at you

As with comely grace

Their exquisite clothes they array.

Atta Shad (1939-1997) is the most revered and cherished modern Balochi poet. He instilled a new spirit in the moribund body of modern Balochi poetry in the early 1950s when the latter was drastically paralysed by the influence of Persian and Urdu poetry. Atta Shad gave a new orientation to modern Balochi poetry by giving a formidable ground to the free verse, which also brought in its wake a chain of new themes and mode of expression hitherto untouched by Balochi poets. Apart from the popular motifs of love and romance, subjugation and suffering, freedom and liberty, life and its absurdities are a few recurrent themes which appear in Shad’s poetry. What sets Shad apart from the rest of Balochi poets is his subtle, metaphoric and symbolic approach while versifying socio-political themes. He seemed more concerned about the aesthetic sense of art than anything else.

Shad’s poetry anthologies include Roch Ger and Shap Sahaar Andem, which were later collected in a single anthology under the title Gulzameen, posthumously published by the Balochi Academy Quetta in 2015.

Fazal Baloch is a Balochi writer and translator. He has translated many Balochi poems and short stories into English. His translations have been featured in Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters and in the form of books and anthologies. Fazal Baloch has the translation rights of Atta Shad from the publisher.

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Categories
Slices from Life

Suga Didi

By Snigdha Agrawal

A Santhali woman

She stood somewhere at 5 feet 8 inches.  Of athletic build.  Swarthy skin. A face full of punch holes; ravages of smallpox during childhood.  Her disarming smile more than made up for the lack of a flawless complexion.  The girls were told she was being employed as their Ayah, with strict instructions to address her as ‘Didi[1]’.  The Ayah affix after her name, was a ‘no’, ‘no’ in a Bengali household.  So, it was Suga Didi right from day one. The rest of the elite living in the cosmopolitan community frowned upon such bourgeois sentiments.

Suga lived in a Santhal village, on a river bluff, surrounded by dense Sal Forest. Inaccessible by road and cut off from civilisation. The only Santhal village in the area, close to the gated community, offering employment opportunities to the tribals. Not that they were keen on leaving the village to work in the steel and brick factories. Suga was the one-off amongst them venturing out from her cloistered society.  She arrived for the interview, hair oiled, drawn back from her face tied into a chignon, and dressed in a cotton saree with a red border, way above her ankles. The blouse was missing. Her attire would surely be viewed as improper in the elitist community.    She spoke in the Santhal dialect, with words common to Bengali and Hindi.  Amenable to change, she did not resist the suggestion of wearing a blouse, nor letting down the saree border to her ankles, when reporting for work.  Agreed happily to the working hours from 6.30 am to 4.30 pm, five days a week.  During school vacations, morning reporting was pushed back to 8.30 am. 

The decision to employ Suga was borne out of necessity. With four growing girls, aged between fourteen and four, or thereabouts, it was becoming increasingly difficult for their mother to handle all the chores.  Plaiting their hair, getting them dressed for school, ironing uniforms, and accompanying them to the school Bus stand, were some of the many activities entrusted to her.  Add to that, the role of a luggage carrier.  With four school bags, piled on her head, and four tiffin baskets weighed down with filled water bottles, hand-held, she shepherded the girls safely, morning and evening.  It wasn’t an easy walk. There were open drains to cross.  Heavily loaded truck movement posed a serious problem as well. She guarded them like her own. Taking care of the girls when they got home from school was also included. Occasionally, when the mood was right, she shared ancient tribal folklore, sometimes breaking into a song. 

The eldest of the four had read stories of tribal practices.  Witchcraft.  Human sacrifice.  Eating wild animals.  Men and women drinking ‘mahua’ toddy. Suga was questioned on the validity of all this to which, she neither denied nor confirmed.  Tribal secrets were not for the ears of the civilized. But she couldn’t ward off the pestering from the girls for long.  And went on to narrate the story of the Santhal deity, Bonga, visiting their village on a moonless night, in the guise of a king cobra to drive away the bad spirits living on the edge of the forest, responsible for killing the cattle.  Quietly slithering on the muddy terrain, the twelve-feet reptile, held the spirits captive, performing a wild dance with its raised hood.  And then struck.  The spirits screamed and fled, never to return. The village headsman invited the cobra for dinner, sharing toddy and barbequed lizards.  That was not the end of the story.  Suga concluded that the snake dissatisfied with the host, gobbled his head from neck upwards.  The girls held onto each other shocked out of their wits.  A bizarre ending.  Doubts were raised as to whether the story was real or imaginary, made up by Suga Didi.  Many such stories found their way into the older one’s scrapbook.  Later found in the steel trunk, along with old photos, discovered by the younger two. 

When Birbhadra the cook took leave to visit home, Suga filled in, helping out with cutting, and clipping the meat and fish.  All the preparatory work for cooking the meals.  Prepared by the lady of the house.  The girls were curious to know what Suga cooked at home. Her stock answer was hot, spicy, and unpalatable.  Their persistent pleading to cook a tribal dish at some point bore fruit. Reluctantly, she agreed to treat the household with a recipe, made from goat innards. The butcher supplying meat was duly informed to send the liver, fat, spleen, heart and intestines.  “Eww, gross!”  But not so, when the dish arrived on the dining table.  Blood red with a film of fat floating on the top, garnished with freshly chopped coriander leaves.  In no time it was polished off.  Delicious!  Delicious! All exclaimed.  Suga was on cloud nine that day.  They named the dish “Chagol Pagol Curry[2]”.  Suga’s signature dish.

It was the spring of 1959.  By then, the older girls had left for boarding school.  Younger ones then six, were pretty much able to ready themselves for school on their own. Suga’s workload had halved.  For most of her free time, she took upon herself the role of gardener, attending to the vegetable garden, and advising the gardener on how best to get good yields from her experience of growing vegetables in the village.  The smell of ‘bidi[3]’ wafting into the porch, meant the two were sharing a smoke.    

And then for over a week during that summer, she had not reported for work. Alarm bells rang in the household.  Had she fallen ill?  Had she died of cobra poisoning?  Had she been thrown out from the village for violating the rules?  Worst still, was she a victim of human sacrifice?  Concerns that kept the family awake.  No one knew her address, except that she belonged to the Santhal village on the river bluff, inaccessible to non-tribals.  A security guard from the factory was sent to find out if the headsman could be summoned to the river, under the ruse of gifting him Scotch whiskey.  Didn’t work.   No one responded to the call, announced with a handheld loudspeaker.  Several attempts were made to no avail.  Rumours mills were churning out stories of her having eloped with the cook, Birbhadra, though it made no logical sense.  Happily married with a dozen or so kids living in Begusarai, he could least afford a second wife.  Though coincidentally, Birbhadra left employment around the time Suga was out of the radar.     

It was decided there was no further need to employ a nanny aka ‘didi’ for the girls. Suga was the first and the last.  Irreplaceable.   She remains an enigma to date.

.

[1] Elder sister

[2] Crazy goat curry

[3] A type of cheap cigarette made of unprocessed tobacco wrapped in leaves

Snigdha Agrawal (nee Banerjee) is a published author of four books and a regular contributor to anthologies.  A septuagenarian, she writes in all genres of poetry, prose, short stories and travelogues.

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Wendy Jean MacLean

Wendy Jean MacLean
ANYWHERE PARTICULAR

“We are all indigenous to some place.” Randy Woodley


Like buttercups and daisies

my roots sprawl and spread

but don’t belong

anywhere particular.

I have tried being part of a garden

but scorn and scolding have discouraged me

from flaunting my yellow bit

of the day’s praise.

Nobody plants me.

I find my tribe in blue-weed and chicory

and the weeds

that turn the roadside

into a sanctuary.

My roots are seasonal

and ephemeral.

Like all time.

Like all space.

They belong everywhere

and nowhere.



ORION FOUND MY NAME 

Orion found my name on a genealogy site

and wrote to let me know

that our grandfathers were siblings.

I've seen him shining a million times

and never knew

we were so closely related.

Just a few generations separate us,

that, and a few billion years

of distance, across the universe.



We look for family traits.

Astonishing similarities

confirm our connection.

I ask him about the arthritis in my shoulders--

the same as my mom's and my brother's.

"Congenital," he says, "We all have it.

Being part of a spiral galaxy takes its toll

on a body, but just look

at how we shine."



 Wendy Jean MacLean is an award-winning poet with three books, several collaborations with Canadian composers. Published in Presence, Streetlight, Crosswinds, Gathering, Green Spirit, she is a spiritual director and minister.

.

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Categories
Excerpt

New Novel by Upamanyu Chatterjee

Title: Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life

Author: Upamanyu Chatterjee

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

It is the 20th of December 1980, a Saturday, and at dinner, Lorenzo Senesi, who will turn twenty-two in a little over a month, tells his mother, ‘Mamma, I think I just might go down to Padua with Roberto and Francesca for Christmas and the New Year. Should be back by the 3rd or 4th of January.’

Elda glances at her son but says nothing. Amedeo the father grunts once to acknowledge that the information has reached his ears. Paola, Lorenzo’s sister, older by fourteen months, asks in a tone that suggests that it wouldn’t matter if he doesn’t respond, ‘With those two? But I thought you were bored to death of them.’

The next morning, Lorenzo packs some essential things, including his copy of Carlo Carretto’s The Desert in the City, in an overnight bag, places the bag on the rear seat of his Renault 5, goes to the kennel in the corner of the garden to hug and nuzzle Vega the dog (a handsome golden-brown beast, half German Shepherd, a quarter Retriever, and in her reflective moments, there is something about her eyes that recalls the young Sylvester Stallone) and is off. Francesca and Roberto are nowhere to be seen. From Aquilinia, the dot on the outskirts of Trieste where they stay (a workers’ village, really, an adjunct to the Aquila oil refinery is how it was conceived and inaugurated in 1938, with habitual pomp, by Mussolini), he takes La Strada Costiera, the scenic coast road, down to the plains.

It is late in the morning, and bright and sunny. On his right lie the hummocks, ridges and undulations of karst, their eroded limestone continually sneaking a peek between the trees of lime and pine at the brilliant blue, on his left, of the bay of Trieste. The landscape tumbles down in leaps and bounds to the radiant sea that stretches like blue polythene till the haze of the horizon. On some curves, he can spot the white sails of boats, as still as life, on the aquamarine lapping at the feet of Miramare Castle.

The Renault, three years old, is an acquisition that dates from his road accident and the insurance money that he reaped as one of its consequences. It moves well; he makes good time to Sistiana and thence to Monfalcone where, having left the Adriatic and reached the bland plains, he takes the A 4 west-south-west towards Milan. He is undecided—but only for a moment—between the radio and the cassette player. Radio Punto Zero on FM wins; with his arms fully stretched to grip the steering wheel, he leans back in the seat to enjoy Adriano Celentano crooning ‘Il Tempo Se Ne Va’.

A hundred and fifty kilometres, more or less, to Padua, an uncluttered highway through the ploughed cornfields and plantations of poplar of the region of Gorizia; Celentano on the radio is succeeded by Franco Battiato, Giuni Russo, Antonello Venditti and Claudio Baglioni. Friuli-Venezia-Giulia gives way to the Veneto a while before Lorenzo switches off the radio to enjoy, in peace, the noon silence. At Padua, though, it not being his final destination, he still has a further fifteen kilometres to go to reach Praglia at the foot of the Euganean Hills.

He parks the Renault as far as he can from a bus disgorging a contingent of British tourists alongside the church wall of the Chiesa Abbaziale di Santa Maria Assunta and carrying his overnight bag, walks across to the arched recess in which is inset an iron door. It is the principal entrance to Praglia Abbey of which the church forms an integral part. He rings the bell and waits.

He glances back at his car. Behind the wall, the church rises solid and grey, monolithic like a fortress, almost forbidding. Hearing the clang and whine of the iron door being opened, he turns back.

The monk whom he sees, Father Anselmo, sombre in his black robe, is tiny. He smiles and nods at Lorenzo and ushers him in. ‘Oh, have you come by car? Then I’ll open the main gates for you so that you can park inside.’ Without ceasing to nod and smile, he ushers him out.

Father Anselmo, being the porter of the abbey, is a statutory requirement of the institution. Let there be stationed at the monastery gate, says Chapter 66 of the Rule of Saint Benedict, a wise and elderly monk who knows how to receive an answer and to give one and whose ripeness of years does not suffer him to wander about. This porter ought to have his cell close to the gate so that those who come may always find someone there from whom they can get an answer. So when the Father does not reply, it may be presumed that the question was not worth a response. For they do not speak much, the Benedictines.

The Renault having found its parking berth in a spacious, paved, open corridor that runs right around a large, rectangular garden, Lorenzo returns to the reception room where Father Anselmo, at his place behind a plain, unadorned desk, waits for him.

‘Good afternoon,’ he starts again formally. ‘I would like to meet the maestro dei novizi. I have an appointment. My name is Lorenzo Bonifacio.’

A cue, as it were, for Father Anselmo to nod and smile again, and without getting up, lean sideways in his chair and press, six times in a measured, definite code, a red plastic button affixed to the wall. One push of the bell, a long pause, two pushes, a short pause, two more pushes, a long pause, one last push. Immediately, from the great bell tower of the church, clearly audible in each nook and cranny of the abbey, begins to ring, in the same code and with the same pauses, one of the lesser bells. Father Anselmo then gestures to Lorenzo to sit down in one of the chairs ranged along the wall. No conversation ensues.

(Extracted from Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life by Upamanyu Chatterjee. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2024)

About the Book

One summer morning in 1977, nineteen-year-old Lorenzo Senesi of Aquilina, Italy, drives his Vespa motor-scooter into a speeding Fiat and breaks his forearm. It keeps him in bed for a month, and his boggled mind thinks of unfamiliar things: Where has he come from? Where is he going? And how to find out more about where he ought to go?
When he recovers, he enrols for a course in physiotherapy. He also joins a prayer group, and visits Praglia Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in the foothills outside Padua.

The monastery will become his home for ten years, its isolation and discipline the anchors of his life, and then send him to a Benedictine ashram in faraway Bangladesh—a village in Khulna district, where monsoon clouds as black as night descend right down to river and earth. He will spend many years here. He will pray seven times a day, learn to speak Bengali and wash his clothes in the river, paint a small chapel, start a physiotherapy clinic to ease bodies out of pain, and fall, unexpectedly, in love. And he will find that a life of service to God is enough, but that it is also not enough.

A study of the extraordinary experiences of an ordinary man, a study of both the majesty and the banality of the spiritual path, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s new novel is a quiet triumph. It marks a new phase in the literary journey of one of India’s finest and most consistently original writers.

About the Author

Upamanyu Chatterjee is the author of English August: An Indian Story (1988), The Last Burden (1993), The Mammaries of the Welfare State (2000), Weight Loss (2006), Way to Go (2011), Fairy Tales at Fifty (2014), and Villainy (2022)—all novels; The Revenge of the Non-vegetarian (2018), a novella; and The Assassination of Indira Gandhi (2019), a collection of long stories. 

In 2000, he won the Sahitya Akademi Award, and in 2008, he was awarded the Order of Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government for his contribution to literature.

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

Categories
Poetry

Satirical Poems by Maithreyi Karnoor


HIGH AND MY TEA


A cup of Darjeeling 

Just brewed, dark, steaming

Sat on the high table 

That at first seemed stable 	

It wasn’t. I’m sullen.

Look! How my tea has fallen! 





DEATH OF THE AUTHOR 


The author is a scripter who no longer bears 

Passions, feelings, impressions

He simply sits on chairs

He hands over the keys to the meaning of his words 

To a reader who lacks history 

And biography – what a nerd!

Forlorn for want of importance he takes to eating much

Cakes, biscuits and puddings 

Custards, pies and fudge

He eats and eats and mopes over the sordidness of writing

And the ingrate world that takes away  

One’s claim over one’s citing

His blood sugar shoots up like a star he’d hoped to be

He swears aloud at Roland Barthes 

And dies of diabetes  





MEN BELONG IN THE WOODSHED 


Men belong in the woodshed 

Swinging axe, chopping kindling

It’s as sweet mother nature intended 



Boys raised well will always tread

The right path – which isn’t writing and reading

For men belong in the woodshed



Buffing brawn is their daily bread

And not knitting or pee sitting 

Just as sweet mother nature intended 



Let no state be by man led 

They would take wars for playthings

As men belong in the woodshed 



Men must be to women wed 

Who push them to fulfil their calling 

Where they belong – in the woodshed 

As sweet mother nature intended 





LETTING IN THE DRAUGHT 


Topple a tipple 

We’re lager than life 

Never an outsider in cider 

But all ale pales 

Before pale ale 

A draught as smooth as eider





THIRD WORLD LITERATURE AS NATIONAL ALLERGY* 



Our pulp fiction is pulped too fine

Rising up it irritates the sine-

-uses, giving headaches and fevers

In Fahrenheit of ninety nine  



Every hero in lit prose

Makes the nation preen and pose 

Blowing pollen on the west 

Giving it a runny nose 



Stories of the global south 

Of reddened eyes and cottonmouth

Will try to claim postcolonial angst

But in fact they are mouldy growths 



Our novels are but spicy stews

With peanuts slipped in for the chews

We try to match the great canon 

But all we write is achoo achoo! 



*Fredric Jameson’s essay ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’ that claims all third world literature is a ‘national allegory’.

Maithreyi Karnoor is the author of the novel Sylvia and the translator of Kannada novels A Handful of Sesame and Tejo Tungabhadra. She is a two-time finalist of The Montreal International Poetry Prize and the recipient of the CWIT fellowship at LAF and UWTSD.

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

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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