BOOM! Another big BOOM! And here, my scared Kittu runs to find a peaceful and tranquil corner in our usually quiet home. The cracker ban was only on paper; Kittu will attest to that vehemently. While she was frantically searching for a corner, I was lost in her movements. Sitting and staring at her took me away from her, and I found myself sculpted as le penseur and was thrown into a deep ocean of thoughts, where just one question popped out loud, clear, and flashing; Am I too looking for a corner? A Peaceful, tranquil, no fetters, no concept of pain and gain corner?
Usually on breaks, I visit my home, pushing aside the flash and pomp of Delhi, and I step into another world. Adulting has been a breath of fresh air and yet bizarre to me, realising and answering many unanswered questions hovering in my head. Nonetheless, there are few which will I think remain unanswered forever and some will not have very satisfactory answers. Sometimes, I don’t fully know the question and the answers I look for, and I remain in a perpetual state of being hopelessly muddled.
To my mind, one thing I came to terms with beautifully, is the concept of uncertainty; impermanence is permanence. Often when I switch something, change places or things, or when people come and go in my life, I am learning to enjoy the changing process and that’s exactly what life is. Change. Even when I am sad about the process, I see the silver lining and cheer up to the fact, that I will be one day equally comfortable and content with what will come to me in my here and now.
We have often heard the phrase ‘this too shall pass’, but how many of us have thought through it and made it a tool to cope with the future? I have realised, that we humans are extremely convenience-oriented beings. Convenience is everything to us. Just like using this phrase at a time of grief and despair and not when we are brimming with positivity, success, and abundance.
The ability to be calm amidst the storm, to be present in each moment and not pile up thoughts; good or bad, is the one I need to learn because there is no way I will find my corner where I will be free of societal shackles, rewriting norms and notions. Living in the present doesn’t invoke the action of inactivity. Rather, it promotes being actively present with graceful focus on what is there right now and shuns the act of what I call ‘conveniently everywhere’. Finally, Kittu found her corner, just at the centre of the main entrance hall where the BOOM is loud and clear. She fell into deep sleep as I woke up from the dream.
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Anita Sudhakaran comes from two states, Kerala and Rajasthan and currently residing in Delhi. She is an avid reader and a lost thinker.
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It was the year 2020. When most of the world was lacking connection and normalcy, I had the privilege of being in Sri Lanka, an island that I had referred to as ‘home’ but hadn’t truly been my home since I left at the age of eighteen. Being here gave me connection with a sugary coat of ‘normalcy’. I had my affectionate family, who made lockdowns entertaining with the purchase of a ping pong table, the nightly binge of true crime documentaries and the occasional games night, including a terrible decision to play ‘Cards Against Humanity’. I had a relationship with my boyfriend in all the physical sense of the word after two years of long-distance phone calls. I had my friends who were all a 15-minute drive away. I had a flexible job where I could interact with smart and passionate coworkers, something I ignorantly thought I wouldn’t find in Sri Lanka. Add to that, countless long weekends and public holidays, mostly spent in the beach towns down south, a region brimming with excellent food options, tasty cocktail bars and magnificent sea swims – truly this was an island that brought comfort, safety and security.
But I wanted more.
This romanticised version of the pandemic years spent in Sri Lanka, while all true, evoked such strong feelings of being lost, purposeless, and devoid of self-worth. This most comfortable of comfort zones made me feel completely out of sorts and yearning for something different. Long, sleepless nights of overthinking, questioning and wondering, “What on earth am I doing here?” Did I spend four years in an exceedingly difficult academic environment and four years working in the most ambitious, individualistic, enlightening city to land up here? Did my parents really spend thousands of dollars on American college tuition for me to end up back home feeling like a failure?
The initial move back home in May 2020 was going to be temporary. I was placed on furlough from my job in London and I believed it was best to wait it out back home. I thought that once the pandemic was all well and done, which would obviously be in a few months, I’d return to London, like nothing had changed.
As I fell in deeper with the aesthetically pleasing confines of beautiful beaches in Trincomalee, the delicious home-cooked meals, the hugs from my parents, the kisses from my boyfriend, the cuddles with my little nieces and nephews, and the long weekend trips with friends, it would be an outright lie to say I wasn’t relieved when the furlough continued and ultimately, ended with the expiration of my work visa. That seemed to seal the decision. I had no way back to the United Kingdom. Sri Lanka was to be my home now.
Looking back at that time, it was like being given this Trojan horse of a cozy, tender, warm embrace, disguising claws that pierced slowly, leaking poison and disillusionment. The surrounding Indian Ocean was as confining as it was endless, as isolating as it was welcoming, as suffocating as it was refreshing.
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Scrolling through social media, I compared myself to others. And no, it wasn’t the mindless glazing-of-the-eyes watching Tik Tok or Reels but the reading-every-post-with-anxiety on LinkedIn. I compared myself to my friends in New York City, progressively moving up the ladder with impressive promotions and new six figure salaries. I compared myself to my best friends, living their lives independently, powering through their work passionately. I compared myself to peers in my graduating class who seemed to be smashing it in whatever life path they were on. And I felt thoroughly sorry for myself.
While pleased to be working with smart individuals at my WFH startup job in Sri Lanka, the lack of growth and opportunity for professional development made me itch. There were too many moments in the middle of workdays, where I laid sprawled across my bed, staring up at the fan and berating myself down a black hole. I switched between two toxic mindsets, one telling myself that I was no longer worthy of doing exciting, cutting-edge, fulfilling work and the other questioning why I couldn’t be content with all the positives that I had around me? Why did I always want more? Why did I always have this “grass will be greener” frame of mind? Why couldn’t I just ‘be’? This second mindset would set in when I heard my mum’s call to come for her home-cooked lunch of rice and curry. Wasn’t I begging for all these luxuries when I was living abroad?
While work was a huge factor contributing to my discontent, lifestyle was a secondary, significant reason. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer that everyone has different priorities and are in different stages of life and I spent a lot of time (over)thinking about my priorities. I wanted new experiences. I wanted to be pushed outside my comfort zone to do things that terrified my introverted self. I wanted to work remotely from a Greek island. I wanted to pick up Spanish again and stay in Barcelona for the summer. I wanted to take a creative writing course in Paris. I wanted to hop on a flight and visit my best friend in Munich, where she was living on a farm. I wanted the luxury of having a multiple-year multiple-entry Schengen visa which would be stamped every few months. I wanted a different passport. I wanted to go for an innumerable amount of plays, whether they were in small, 30-seater spaces with no set design or in beautiful, historic theatres where the lead actor is naked almost the entire run time (for artistic purposes apparently). I wanted to watch Jodie Comer in Prima Facie. I wanted to laugh hysterically at a live interview with the legendary Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I wanted to listen to the beautiful minds of Konkona Sen Sharma, Nandita Das and Aparna Sen discussing the perils of censorship in their films in India; watch a match at Wimbledon; find a way to go to the Berlinnale Film Festival. Enjoy the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
I wanted to do so many things.
Could I find these things while living in Sri Lanka? I convinced myself that I couldn’t.
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Recently, at my one-year work anniversary in my current job, my manager thoughtfully said, “Thank you for always striving for excellence.” While very kind words, they made me understand something I perhaps always knew about myself, without ever being explicitly told. Always striving for excellence even as a type-A young person, pushing for excellent grades, in order to go to an excellent college in the United States, and ultimately, secure an excellent job. (I’m exhausted just typing out this sentence.) And after being extremely fortunate to work with intelligent and supportive people and have challenging, exciting projects, my own benchmark for excellence kept rising.
I wanted to really enjoy my work but also be challenged by it. I wanted to learn from diverse, brilliant colleagues. I wanted to learn new technical skills. I wanted to have workshops with Product teams on developing new AI functionalities and how best to position them in the marketplace. I wanted to brainstorm with the Content team on how to best partner with a certain Tamil British-Indian actress and not feel like the token voice of diversity. I wanted the promotion and the salary bump and the senior title and the recognition and the reputation. And if not now, then it was in the five-year plan. I can say that this is what New York City does to you, but that would be a lie. It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.
All this ambition drove me straight into a brick wall, dissolving my confidence in my own capabilities. I blamed Sri Lanka. I blamed a whole country for making me feel like this.
Soon, the island was facing its worst economic crisis since independence and to watch the destruction of possibility, willpower and any minute form of political stability in real time was heartbreaking. I won’t even attempt to put into words the plight of Sri Lankans who lost almost everything, unable to access the most basic essentials of fuel, electricity, cooking oil, milk powder and medicines. By early 2022, ‘home’, an island that had nurtured me, that gave me the most special roots, that offered me safety and security, was broken. In my siloed social bubble of international school kids, foreign-educated graduates and Colombo’s upper-middle class families, I desperately wanted to get out. And so did thousands of others who did not want to waste their potential in a nation that was falling apart at the seams.
After years of only regarding Sri Lanka with fondness, I found that bitterness, resentment, and animosity towards my island nation magnified to a point where I couldn’t even hold a conversation with friends who could leave but were choosing to stay. Give me a work permit, give me a Western passport, give me a student visa, give me anything that will allow me to leave this place.
A family meeting was called when my black mood permeated through the home, along with wine, cheese, and a whiteboard to discuss my future plans — the pleasures of coming from a business family — efficient but with alcohol. My family, the ever-loving, supportive, encouraging guiding lights in my life, told me point-black, “You need to leave.” In an atypical South Asian, fashion, they said, “Do what makes you happy. Get a job or do your Masters. Travel everywhere.” My sweet parents, knowing that they would once again be empty nesters with my brother and me elsewhere, knowing that they fully enjoyed having the house full again, also recognised that their kids would be their happiest selves outside of Sri Lanka.
To have diametrically opposing emotions about the right path forward is confusing to say the very least. If I chose to remain in Sri Lanka, it would have been because three people lived there. My parents were not getting any younger and more substantially, we treasured each other. My partner and I were finally living in the same city after years of distance and savouring every moment of togetherness. And to have all three people only having words of encouragement further deepened the guilt.
But I wanted to be selfish. I didn’t want to stay because I’m a patriotic citizen contributing to the brain drain. I didn’t want to stay because I’m a good daughter or girlfriend. I wanted to leverage my resources, my experiences and most importantly, my LinkedIn, to do the impossible. A broken island meant I had to put together the pieces. For myself.
To leave or not to leave? And to which part of the world? To return back to the country where I have the privilege of residency but do I want to live in the land of mass shootings and a work-till-you-die mentality? Or to pursue an entry into the U.K. through a student visa by doing an unwanted MBA? Or to strive for the most idealistic, unrealistic scenario — a job in London?
But in that snug, tightly wrapped, a-little-too-hot Anokhi[1] blanket of a comfort zone, the decision was always clear. Maybe one day, I’ll make my peace with my ‘home’. Maybe one day, my blood won’t boil with frustration when I’m on Sri Lankan soil for more than a fortnight. Maybe one day, I will feel the affection again. Maybe one day.
Fast forward two years to the present day, sitting in my cozy flat in London, having just spent a few electrifying weeks in Greece, riding on a high from a successful partnership with a certain tech juggernaut, and preparing for next week’s launch of a new AI product, I appreciate my new ‘home’. It might not be the island I once thought I would spend the rest of my life in, and it’s a little colder and gloomier than the tropics. But the possibilities are endless once again, my dreams are daring once again, and life is feeling full once again
Nitya Amalean is an emerging writer and storyteller. She was born and nurtured in Sri Lanka, college-educated in the United States and currently, lives in London where she works for an audio media company.
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As the first rays of the morning sun arose from beyond the distant hills, their gentle touch painted the sky with hues of warm gold, igniting a symphony of colours that kissed the vast canvas of the mist-laden valleys of Chikmagalur.
Mist laden valleys of Shishila
Veiled within the ever-shifting embrace of the drifting clouds, the resolute peaks of the Kudremukh Mountains played a tantalising game of hide-and-seek with the heavens. Each passing moment held the promise of a fleeting revelation as I embraced nature’s games.
Shishila Valley
All at once, like an artist’s brushstroke on nature’s canvas, the Shishila Valley appeared from its shroud — a spectacle sending a shiver of awe through my being.
As I walked through the winding paths lined with coffee plantations, the rich aroma of the beans seemed to be woven into the very fabric of the place and filled the air to the brim. The scent, as I stepped through the intricate trails of the estate, thrilled the heart of a coffee maven like me.
Coffee plantations with varied shades of green
The emerald leaves of the coffee plants glistened with dewdrops that captured the sun’s rays, resembling precious gemstones. Each step was an immersion into a world where nature’s palette had painted every hue imaginable.
From the coffee plantations, I trekked through the unexplored trails of the long-lost Ballalarayana Fort built in the twelfth century. In the heart of the wilderness — I found myself surrounded by the rhythmic symphony of the forest.
Ballalarayana Fort trail
The dense vegetation enveloped me like a shroud of mystery, and the air carried the earthy scent of history as if the very soil held the secrets of generations. The crumbling stones and weathered walls of the fort emerged from the undergrowth, standing as silent witnesses to the passage of time. Here history seemed to come alive, the stones carrying the burden of stories now carved into every crack and crevice.
As I ascended the rugged trail, the panorama that unfolded in front of my eyes was breath-taking. Rolling hills, verdant valleys, and mist-shrouded peaks stretched out in every direction — the lines between earth and sky were thin. I felt like I was one among the clouds.
The feeling of being suspended in this vast expanse was humbling and revitalizing.
Descending from the highest peak of Karnataka, I ventured into Baba Budangiri, the sacred mountain with its mystical aura that captivated me to surrender myself to its embrace.
The shrine of Dattagiri, nestled atop the hills, stood as the tangible proof of the spiritual sanctity of the place. A small conversation with the priest from the Dattagiri shrine opened my eyes to the history behind this place. The shrine has been made to resemble a meeting place between Sufism and the Hindu Avudutha tradition.
As I humbly paid my respects, the echoes of devotees’ chants intertwined with the tranquil symphony of nature, weaving an ambience of enlightenment that seemed to touch the very soul of the surroundings.
The lake’s surface transformed into a canvas of reflection, capturing the heavens above as if they had found their home in its depths. Hirekole Lake in the evenings was a sanctuary of tranquility, a haven; where the world seemed to hold its breath, inviting me to step away from the rush of life and savour the sheer magic of the present moment.
The author at the lake. Photo provided by the author
The ambience was one of unhurried contentment as if time had chosen this place to slow its pace, allowing all the on-goers to submerge into that beautiful moment.
As I navigated the winding pathways through the dense woods, my anticipation grew with every passing curve. The whispering leaves and dappling sunlight seemed to guide me toward the elusive waterfall, the Hebbe Falls.
As I walked towards the waterfall, the distant murmur of cascading water gradually intensified, and it felt like a symphony of nature’s melody in my journey. Nature’s music, I must say.
Finally, as the foliage parted, I beheld the spectacle: a magnificent cascade of glistening white that descended like a celestial curtain. The mist kissed my skin, carrying the essence of the falls, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the timeless masterpiece sculpted by nature’s patient hand.
Hebbe Falls
In a final blaze of glory, the sun slips beneath the edge of the Shishila Valley, leaving behind a trail of stars, a full moon, and a sky that glows with the memory of its fiery embrace.
As the star-studded canopy, a symphony of crickets and the soft murmur of rustling leaves painted the air with an orchestration of nature’s melodies. It was as if the very fabric of the night had come alive, crafting a captivating masterpiece for my senses.
A myriad of stars shimmered like diamonds carelessly strewn across the inky canvas. The mountains stood as solemn sentinels, their peaks silhouetted against the night sky, seemingly whispering secrets to the heavens. A gentle breeze carried whispers of pine and earth, infusing the air with an invigorating freshness, and the faint fragrance of wildflowers lingered, an exquisite freshness that filled my lungs.
In the embrace of Chikmagalur’s undulating hills, veiled valleys, calming lakes, and tranquil panoramas, I uncovered a profound truth: the odyssey that stretches beyond familiar vistas is not merely a voyage of the body but a stirring expedition of the soul.
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Sai Abhinay Penna is a professional cricketeer and writer based in Chennai.
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Around the early ’70s, in my village home in Bangladesh, we kept ourselves far away from anything spelled “ghost or jinn.” I grew up hearing my Grandma saying, “Shh. Don’t even utter the word ‘bhut (ghosts) or jinn’ because words have power, and they might feel the vibe as an invite.” However, every Halloween is a culture shock for me after coming to Massachusetts, USA, when the celebrations of haunted houses, witches, ghosts, and spirits occur. My late Grandma might turn in her final resting place if I could message her, “Ghosts and witches are subjects of colorful celebrations, Grandma.”
Thoughts rewind to life with the villagers in Bongaon, when the fan-palm trees — taal gach — were supposed to be favourite places for ghosts and jinn. Myths held that ghosts and spirits lived as invisible souls among visible humans but liked to live on the trees. The trees they wanted to inhabit were trees standing beautiful and tall. Yet the beautiful sight was pregnant with danger. The long fonds looked like fingers beckoning passersby. The fan palm had delicious fruits called taal. The trees sent alarming vibes to the villagers. But getting the fruits from the tree was challenging and had to be done during broad daylight when ghosts were supposed to be non-active. The fan palm was not the only tree that welcomed them. The tamarind tree was also avoided, especially after sunset. Not just the trees, but their shadows spelled trouble too, and people avoided stepping in the shadows. The advice to weary souls was, “Don’t let the bhut get on your shoulders.” It seemed that the chosen place was the shoulder. It was different for the ghosts; they didn’t get into the victim’s head like other spooks.
Whenever I passed near our tamarind tree, I imagined a possessive spirit jumping down from the tree and landing on my shoulder. I would run for life faster than a deer when I passed one of them. Ghosts were known to haunt their victims for the rest of their lives if they got a chance to get on the shoulder. I ran home; I did not want to be possessed for the rest of my life.
According to the people in Bongaon, nighttime was the favourite time for ghosts and evil spirits. Starting from the late evening to the descent of darkness, no one walked without a flaming torch made from kerosene-drenched cloth on a thick stick. Much as darkness spelled fear and mystery, fire was the force to power the evil over to burn and destroy—similar to fantasy stories of modern times. In life, it seems we are connected like a spider’s web. A person suspected to be possessed by a spirit sought help from special prayers and charms. Some of the healers had harsh methods and had the victims smell burning dried chilli — supposed to clear the mind. And others sprinkled holy water around the person and the house.
Theories on haunting spilled beyond the trees and dipped below the waters surrounding my village. The water lilies in the rainy season bloomed in abundance in the swamps — haor, ponds, and the water-clogged areas around the town. The seeds and stems of the water were gastronomical delicacies for us. The stems cooked as curries and the grains got toasted over the fire. However, evil spirits and jinns were said to roam around swamps at night, and no one tried to pick these up in the dark. Growing up, I wondered if the whole thing around the evil supernatural was to keep people safe because plenty of water snakes coiled around the lily stems, and people were likely to get bitten. Often, people invented ghost stories when logical explanations failed or, perhaps, to safeguard without having to give lengthy answers.
The sweet shops and their connections to supernatural beings baffled me then and to this day. Few charming shops sold traditional deserts, like rosogolla, cholchom and kalojam; the display trays were usually well stocked. It was well known among people that if you entered the shops after the Muslim evening prayer, the Maghrib, the sweets would be gone from the trays. The good jinn were supposed to like the sweets and, on their way back from the mosque, feasted on them. Our village did not have electricity, and there was no refrigerators to preserve these. So, when fresh sweets were replaced on trays the next day, there was no explanation given for the disappearing trayful until the maghrib prayer. No customers came because they wanted to avoid jinn altogether since they could change from good to bad ones. The disappearance of the sweets at a particular time remains a mystery added to many others in my lifetime.
The people in Bongaon believed there were two kinds of jinn: good and evil. Good jinn were with the steady and truthful people who prayed regularly. If the good people, especially women, happened to walk with loose hair in the evening or night, they were exposed to danger of being possessed by the evil jinn. There were dos and don’ts, right and left, for women to keep themselves safe from evil jinn and ghosts. As far as I remember, men were almost excluded from the “wanted list” of the feared beings. How was that possible? The male-dominated society of the early 70s seemed to set boundaries for the ghosts and jinns. In the modern digital world, men and women have found some common ground, and even spirits no longer come only for female humans. Now that we have electricity, in the village scenario, women are smarter with computer skills; in reality, male dominance gets veiled. I am pretty sure the tamarind or the fan palm trees have their versions of the surreal world. However, the deep-rooted world of the spirit world still chains many, especially around the nighttime.
Nighttime and darkness seem to hold endless mysteries, and most are shrouded with danger in many cultures as they did in Bangladesh society. But was the dark so scary? Sleep at night came with dreams and nightmares. To be fair to the darkness, I would often sit on the porch and take in the night sky with its unique, moving life. The sky was never the same, moonlit or with the new moon. Clouds played hide and seek over the moon on rainy days. And the stars, their endless games of winking at me made me as happy as a child every time I looked up at them.Some nights, an owl would greet me with the “Twoo, twoo,” and I would whisper my hello back. I was sure the night bird heard me loud and clear; if it could see at night, why not hear at night, too? Whenever the owl called, thoughts winded to village childhood days, days when village myths held beliefs captive. Whenever we listened to owls’ hoot, we were urged to say, “good”, because if there were something ominous, the power of our words would take that away.
Halloween in Massachusetts digs into memories of my childhood’s haunted and ghost-ridden world in a Bangladeshi village. I was scared then, but now it’s more about exploring life. Life balances fears and hopes, sorrow and joy; between it all, ghosts, jinns, fairies, and angels hold me spellbound in real life. I relish every magical moment of it. I am not scared of witches, black cats, or ghosts that roam around my hometown during Halloween. The ghosts on the tamarind tree and the fan palm were kind to me, and I guess the evil spirits here will also be.
In my present, the black cat on the shop window, the witch on the broom, or the masked stranger are said to spell danger. There are clubs and social groups that share experiences and do not avoid them like we did back home in Bangladesh. I stand in between cultures, wondering at the reality that connects the spooks I grew up with and the ones I grew into in my adopted world.
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Tulip Chowdhury is a long-time educator and writer. She has authored multiple books, including Visible, Invisible and Beyond, Soul Inside Out, and a collection of poetries titled Red, Blue, and Purple. The books are available on Amazon, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble. Tulip currently resides in Massachusetts, USA.
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Going into work after almost a week of absence feels rather peculiar, I feel like an outsider in the city where I grew up — a city that is often referred to as my hometown. It greets me with a polite nod as a stranger would. This is the city where I spent over two decades growing up and yet today my sense of belonging seems to have dissipated in the dusty morning traffic, leaving me confused as to what makes a home. Is home the physical space that we exist in or is it the people who make a place a home?
If the definition of home is about a place I reside in, why can’t it be the dusky lonely evening that I got lost in the Tallahassee Park only to find company in the countless stars that helped me find my way back?
Or the Welsh mountains that I struggled to hike up with Chittappa — almost giving up for the steepness of the trek, constantly reminded by my aching body that I was lazy and good for nothing. Yet, the endless green hills glistening in the golden rays smiled at me and greeted me with a cool welcome hug, urging me to be hopeful for my future. Isn’t that a home for making me believe in myself once again?
Or can it be the bone chilling cold shores of the lake in the Algonquin State Park, where Anna and I greeted the new year alongside the wolves howling at the moon who seemed to be lost that night like us. We hid from the countless years that stretch before us, not knowing if there would be an end to all the craziness that we had to deal with. Is it home when you are lost and confused, yet at peace knowing that not all answers are to be found, some questions are endless quests, but the journey teaches us more than the answer itself?
Or maybe it is in the sunrise on the Vizag beach with my cousins, where we laughed and played while the cool water soothed our battle scars of rivaling parents and vengeful family feuds. Is it home where all my fears and insecurities are treated with a cooling balm and my soul is healed so I find courage to love again amidst the raging darkness that overwhelms me?
Or is it the apartment I found on the hot afternoon, walking in despair along the Whitefields road with Amma after our family banished us from living in their home? The balcony with the wise eucalyptus trees that reminded me that parents are human too. While love is not perfect, setting my boundaries and building my life independent of family can strengthen our bonds more.
Or is it home when my girlfriend opens the door with the brightest smile after a long stressful day at work, asking me how my day went? Even if we had both just spent the past eight hours getting yelled at and defeated by corporate patriarchy, she gives me the warmest hug assuring me that I am safe and with her. I don’t have to battle to be seen or heard. Isn’t it home where you always matter and your contributions are recognised, irrespective of where you live or how far apart you are from each other?
Or can it be home in the arms of my boyfriend as he cuddles me to sleep, gently calming my mind, easing away the stress. Reminding me to stay smart and channel my ever-bubbling anger, raging beneath my surface into something useful instead of drowning myself in it and getting lost. Isn’t it home where you learn to channel your strengths but there is space for your weakness and failure to co-exist, so that you learn to not get overwhelmed in the face of adversity?
Perhaps home is in the delicious fragrance of my mother’s coffee as she greets me with her loving good morning and a freshly baked pumpkin muffin, a reminder that today is a new day and ripe with unexplored opportunities. Isn’t it home where you feel supported and encouraged even when you are lost and unsure of what to do next?
Maybe I am someone who will always find a home wherever I go with the people I love. Home is not static nor confined to a physical space set in a particular time. To me it is all those experiences (and people) that help me find joy, love, courage, and strength to greet another day with a smile.
Madhulika Vajjhala has a passion for literature and exploration. She loves reading and globetrotting.
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May I be so bold as to claim that I travelled in the footsteps of Sir Stamford Raffles? That agent of the East Indian Company’s visit to Calcutta (as it was known then, and for much later, till it resumed the phonetic spelling of its original name), led him to set up Singapore as an English trading settlement in 1819. “Footsteps” would be the wrong metaphor, of course. “Seasteps” would have been accurate, since Raffles travelled to Calcutta by sea and arrived water-borne to Singapura (as it was known then). In my case, however, I arrived in Singapore sky-borne, in an aircraft that conveyed me from what was then home to what would become home. Footsteps, seasteps or airsteps, I arrived in Singapore. The year was 1984. I was 27.
Today, at 65, I remember my passage from back home to this home as if it occurred yesterday. I had worked in Hong Kong briefly in 1984 and had been exposed to life in a successful British colony that was in the throes of its return to Chinese rule. Singapore was different. It had merged with the Malaysian Federation in 1963, had separated from it in 1965, and had gone on to carve out an extremely successful space for itself in the international sphere.
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was a household word in Singapore. Not everyone loved him, but no one could deny his singular agency in having created a magnificent city-state that could sustain its independence in spite of its lack of natural resources. To arrive in Singapore was to embrace the possibilities of time.
Calcutta, too, was a historical city par excellence, but its rundown buildings and potholed streets, to say nothing of its potbellied children living on homeless streets, belied the promise of the future. To arrive in Singapore, it appeared, was to have exchanged failure for success.
That was an illusion, of course. All expatriates suffer from a global disease: They latch on to what they love in their countries of arrival by trying to erase what had loved them in their countries of departure. Take the potholed streets of Calcutta, for example. They had conveyed me to College Street on that glad day in 1974 when I joined the English Department of Presidency College. Without that first footfall in the corridors of the greats, I might never have come to Singapore, never got my Chevening Scholarship to Cambridge, my father’s university, and never won the Fulbright to Harvard. The potholes of Calcutta are not as numerous as the culturally blind allege them to be. Nevertheless, they led me on the way to be myself, wherever on earth I would ultimately be.
The way I see it, no matter how far or close wanderings might lead, one migrates ultimately to oneself. Hence, when I left my Calcutta for what would become my Singapore, I did no more than search for a version of my selfhood that would extend my material and imaginative boundaries. In the course of my journey, I discovered that the only borders lie within, borders between being and becoming. In the process of becoming by winnowing the unwanted aspects of being, one returns to a renewed if only autumnal sense of being. Time passes. One passes with it, letting go of the distant past as much as one does the receding immediate past. To live is to gather the passage of time within oneself, hoping that all borders will merge into a lasting apprehension of oneself in the expanding fullness of a single world.
Calcutta and Singapore are two sides of me. These two great imperial cities have outlived their provenance. Calcutta was once the capital city of colonial India: Today it remains the nation’s cultural capital but political power resides in Delhi (naturally) and there are at least two economic capitals, Mumbai and Chennai. This is why I, along with many of my hapless fellow-Bengalis, suffer from an incurable cultural fetish for the past. That was when the Almighty spoke Bengali – He appears to be switching increasingly to Hindi – and was busy creating top-class poets and formidable social reformers in Bengal. The divine supply of poets and composers has not ebbed but the demand-side having moved to Mumbai, many of the best composers have shifted there and to make a name for themselves. Never mind. Their names remain Bengali, and their fame spreads the vintage mystique of Calcutta like a lingering perfume in India and beyond. I feel happy for the Calcutta part of me.
Singapore, a great trading post, is a now a city-state. Statehood has allowed the nascent nationalism of the colonial era to flourish and grow into a genuine sense of political self. Sovereign Singapore was not expected to survive, but it has done so with a definitiveness that makes the prognoses of the 1960s laughable today. The national self-confidence of Singapore gives me confidence in my decision to take up Singapore citizenship in 1999. It had not been an easy decision, but I took it when I realised that I would be giving up my Indian citizenship but not my Indian-ness. My Singapore Identity Card records my race as Indian. I could keep the Calcutta part of me intact while adding to it a new Singaporean me.
So, yes, I am grateful that Raffles travelled to Calcutta to set up Singapore. Obviously, he did not do so with my fortunes in mind, but the umbilical connection that he created between the two great port cities has made it easier for me to migrate from India to Singapore. Ultimately, I have done nothing more than migrate to me.
Islands belong to oceans and seas and lakes. They are born within the deepest depths of the marine underworld like infants in the depths of their mothers’ wombs. Born often from surging volcanic eruptions, the molten lava hardens into rock. The rock is smoothed by ocean-swept sands that turn fecund over time. They are gradually populated by migrating birds who rest their weary wings and deposit seeds from which sprout rich and luxuriant vegetation. To these shingled or sandy shores, little by little, pirates, buccaneers, conquistadors, renegades, the exiled or self-exiled, slaves, missionaries and migrant workers come to explore and eventually settle.
They all come flocking to this primordial land floating in the waters of the world, birds and humans, animals too follow. Bees buzz their contentment, donkeys hee-haw, goats baa and mosquitoes whine. And yet the islands do not belong to any one of these creatures. They belong to the oceans and seas and lakes — their creators and benefactors.
Ah! The birth of an island! The centre of which rises high above those shingled or sandy shores, the dense jungles or arid scrub, where Vulcan in rampant rage had spat out smouldering rock and tongues of lava. There they now waft as if levitating from their aqueous-bed, home to a new Humanity …
Since my childhood, whenever I poured over maps my eyes would invariably fall on the islands that dotted the oceans or seas or lakes of our world. They held a more significant, a more imaginative, a stronger attraction for me, ones with which I could empathise. For Sicily was my genealogical point of attachment on those maps, a legacy of thirteen civilisations or so which had landed, settled or departed, leaving their immemorial traces both on the land, in the architecture, in our very mixed genes. Sicily is a perfect ‘officina‘[1] which I translate as the ‘melding of Humanity’ !
I day-dreamed while pouring over those frazzled maps and islands, whilst reading Jules Vernes’ MysteriousIsland and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Actually, I don’t believe that I love islands because of those novels (or any other), but they did arouse in me a sense of friendship, affection and human compassion towards islands because of the extraordinary diversity of their errant or settled communities, their many languages and customs, their manifold landscapes. Languages that have forged the hybrid compositions of Creole, forged inter-marriages, forged populations whose quotidian merges into the hybrid species of fauna and flora.
I read and read again and again the fabulous tale of Hayy Ibn Yaqzān[2] who lived on his uninhabited island amongst the plants, trees and animals, all alone in wondrous solitude, learning from them: his human qualities, his religion, his love of humanity and sympathy for every quintessential being or object that came into contact with him — be it mineral, vegetal, animal or eventually human …
Islands are bursting with nature and nature is a friend of humanity, thus islands are bursting with friendship — bursting with hybrid species … like their ethnicities and their languages. Even when Nature can become an enemy, this enmity offers islanders the possibility of strength and force through trial and error. When storms arise, they build sturdier homes. When dangerous interlopers reach their shores, they offer hospitality and eventual integration. Perilous sea creatures and beating waves against boulders demand of islanders to muster their ingenuity and imagination. To cultivate friendship, virtue ; to draw closer to one another ; to be able to live only in a way that conforms to Nature … to an island’s generous and bountiful treasures ; to befriend Nature and Humanity, for they are equal in diversity and disinterestedness.
I suddenly stopped dreaming of islands as they pinched with patriotism, narrow nationalism, circumscribed communitarianism. I stopped dreaming of islands and with my fingers touched Sicily, Cuba, Cyprus, Malta, Madeira, and the Princess Islands stringing out in the Marmara Sea. I slid them upon the island of Olkhon on Lake Baikal in Russia, the oldest and deepest in the world; an island where Shamanism, the oldest religion of the world, and Orthodox Christianity vie in relative peacefulness. There my fingers brushed against layers of civilisation, of ethnic blending, of howling winds and raging white-crested waves off boulders and high cliffs and laughing seagulls on the wing. There I heard a myriad of languages spoken by the communities of Humanity both in the public and the private domains: Greek, Turkish, Sicilian, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Russian, Arabic, Jewish-Spanish, Norman, Armenian and so on. There swelled dark secrets of mythical creatures, of legendary figures whose wild wisdom infused a shroud of enigma that piqued my curiosity towards the universal sympathy that exudes from those aforesaid islands: the fragrance of bougainvillaea, wisteria, honeysuckle and jasmine, of ossified forests laden with the ice of deep winter, of the briny sea spray of stoic rocks, of cries of fishermen at the docks and those of traders at the markets. When I lift my finger that sacred moment, that spell which has been cast upon me vanishes from my waking state …
To Sicily, Cuba, Malta, Madeira Cyprus, Olkhon and to the Princess Islands I weighed anchor and set sail on various shaped vessels — ships that cleaved the high seas or navigated the coasts. At dawn upon disembarking, the colours of the skies drip from violet to orange to red to blue. The fishermen at the harbours or docks always asked me: “How do you like it ?”
“What, the island ?”
“Yes.”
“There is no point on Earth that rivals an island,” I would always repeat in sympathetic earnest.
On shore, wherever that shore be, we would drink coffee or tea in one of the wooden cooperatives for fishermen, traders and sailors. Chickens cackled, dogs barked, seagulls laughed whilst glasses and conversation chimed out the tunes of the islanders’ community spirit: tunes chanted in many tongues, gesticulated in many forms. I broke bread and filled my glass, observing the leathern faces of these hard-working tradesmen mending their nets, fitting their poles, scraping or painting their sea vessels … accomplishing their livelihood together as a whole.
“The wind is blowing from the southeast,” a rough-looking chap declared for all to ponder upon.
“That’s rain !” shouted another with a slight nod of his head.
And then I fell asleep in my bungalow and dreamt of dancing boats and throngs of fishermen talking about their fortunes or misfortunes. Villagers living near the rising waves filled my sleep with their colourful robes or coiffeurs, their daily gestures of sympathy to both nature and humanity.
Pouring over maps filled my childhood. Fingering the points that we call islands submerged me in oceanic rhapsody. Entire archipelagos coiling from North to South and West to East pervaded my soul with the rhythmic cadence of their tides. And as the tides beat out cosmological tunes, my dreams ended. I woke and embarked on many an island adventure in Sicily, Madeira, Cuba, Cyprus, Olkhon, Malta and on the Princess Islands. Points on the map became the unchartered lands of my great middle age sympathetic adventure. I had returned to the lands of my ancestors ! Ships had bore me to those points of human sympathy, exploring fantastic landscapes, communicating in innumerable tongues. There I breathed the air of island sovereignty, simplicity, silence and solitude.
I lived happily on all those islands. And in spite of certain prejudices and intolerances, I rejoiced living with the islanders who are good, heroic, honest and fair in their daily commerce. Who earn their daily living by the sweat of their brow and by the devotion to one another, whoever be that one or other. Inside the cafés faces furrowed by wind and sun concentrated on their drink or their cards or dominoes, whilst outside, hands hardened by generations of toil and moil, mended nets, built boats, cut fish, rowed boats. I rejoiced at all those acts of universal friendship.
I lived happily, intermingling with the melded species of plants, birds and humanity — not only as a spectator, but as an actor: the spectator who observes himself acting, and the actor who perceives his observations. Like in a dream … day and night !
It seemed to me like paradise. Paradise, a word derived from the Old Persian ‘pairidaëza‘ which meant ‘enclosure, a place walled in’: walled in or enclosed by its creator — the water ! But its meaning shifted when read by the Hebrews and became ‘pardēs‘ ‘a garden’. The Garden of Eden ? Yes, a garden so pristine and divine, yet possessing that infamous apple tree of the forbidden fruit. All paradises can descend into the bowels of Hell if tempted by a slithering, sly, snaky and insidious interloper … As we shall soon see !
At present the tides of time have consumed my youth, so I have decided to write a humble meditation about my mingling amongst the islanders of so many islands, of so many archipelagoes. I see them all from the porch of my bungalow, stretching out like a necklace of pearls. A pearly necklace cast in its oceanic casket. So I write and wander upon the silent, deserted roads of the many islands that I have treaded; that I have seen, touched, smelt and tasted. The time has hence come to render homage to those islands, to the nature of those islands, to the nature of those populations.
At this point, I expect readers will retort and point out that not all islands should benefit from such a distinguished homage: How about Cyprus, and the Turkish-Greek conflict ? And Sri Lanka and the terrible war that raged between 1983 and 2010 ? Japan and England, too, big islands indeed but islands, nevertheless. Was the subjugation of Welsh, Scot and Irish not enough? No, those English islanders set out on the high seas to subjugate other ethnic communities … other islands! The first being Ireland, invaded in the XIVth century and conquered uninterruptedly by Henry the Eighth and Oliver Cromwell. The ‘de-Irelandising’ of the island, or more appropriately formulated, the genocidal ‘civilising mission’ produced exile, persecution, misery and death until the founding of the Irish Free State in 1921 and finally the Republic of Ireland in 1949![3]
Were the Japanese not content to eliminate any foreign intrusion on their precious island ? No, they set out to decimate and enslave the ethnic communities that thrived on the islands of the Pacific: Guam, Wake Island, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, the Aleutian Islands, etc. Japan’s violent and bloody imperialism during WW II, and England’s century’s long brutal colonisation have marked all our History books and memories of their so called ‘civilising missions’. Be it the imperialistic brutality in the lands of the rising sun or that of the setting, as the French say: c’est bonnet blanc et blanc bonnet ![4]
Yes, these counter examples are, alas, historically documented. Are they then accidents of history or sorrowful exceptions? I will answer that in the case of Cyprus, the Cypriots, a fine blend of Greek and Turkish ethnic commingling since the Middle Ages, with a sprinkling of English since King Richard the Lion Heart (1191), became the unfortunate victim of Britain’s ‘civilising mission’. One needs only to read Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons of Cyprus[5]to understand the sad and tragic events that erupted in the 1950s and their never-ending aftermath and continuity. Cyprus belongs neither to Greece nor to Turkey (and certainly not to Great Britain), but to the Cypriot Greek and Turk, who in turn know perfectly well that their grand island for centuries has always belonged and will always belong to the brilliant whiteness of the Mediterranean Sea! The tragedy that befell this island sprang from the combined effort of British cynicism, Greek nationalism and Turkish overweening military reaction.
As to Sri Lanka, Sinhalese and Tamils had been living together since the twelfth century, assuredly not under the most perfect idyllic neighbourly conduct, yet the intermingling populations, be they Hindu, Christian or Budddhist, carried out their daily lives without too many eruptive disturbances. It was only with the full British conquest in 1815, and their fancied game of pitting one community against another, there, favouring the Tamil populations of the island, that a slow but steady bitterness, rancour and animosity grew within the Sinhalese population. The pent-up enmity exploded as soon as the British abandoned their ‘mission’, leaving both communities in a sort of political vacuum: Who was to govern? Who was to replace the ‘civilisers’ once they decamped without preparing Sinhalese and Tamil for self-rule, as the British had always done in the benignity and magnanimity of their decolonisation? The vacant legacy they left behind was rapidly filled with ethnic rivalry, exposed to Sinhalese vindictiveness and Tamil claims to share power and land in spite of their minority status. Each community claimed their rights as the deprived community at the expense of one another, a situation so similar to the void left behind by the British in Cyprus. The dramatic events that followed became the final act in the history of Britain’s ‘civilising mission’ performance …
In these two cases, the two communities, forsaken victims of the British colonial mindset, instead of achieving ethnic unity, wallowed in the abysmal chasm of oblivion. Islands that could be paradises plunged into the throes of Hell !
To conclude, an island belongs to the vast waters that enshrine it, as its etymology translates: a ‘land’ in ‘water’. Islands do not belong to imperialists or colonialist powers ; they belong to the oceans or seas or lakes that give birth to them, to the nature that stretches its silken carpet over them, to the ethnic groups or communities that gradually settle upon them, intermingling, trading, marrying, creating together a hybrid or Creole culture worthy of any ‘continental’ civilisation. For this very reason, there should not be any dominate power on an island, or official boundaries which sever communities from one another save the natural one that has nurtured and provided for its very existence: the surging billows and silent tides of their eternal creator …
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[1]‘Factory’ or ‘workshop’ of production. It is of Latin origin
[2] An allegory written by Alī Ibn Sinā or Avicenna (950-1037) Hayy Iby Yazqān, the Bird Salāmān and Absāl interpreted and adapted by Ibn Tufayl with the same title, born in Muslim Spain in the XIIth century. See Lenn Evan Goodman, Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzān, gee tee bee, Los Angelos, CA, 2003.
[3]The slaughter of all Irish aristocrats, the prohibition of inter-marriage between Anglo-Normand and Irish and the prohibition of the Gaelic written language in 1592 were part of the English ‘civilising mission’ in Ireland.
[4]‘It all amounts to the same thing’ or ‘It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other’.
[5] Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, 1957.
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Conceived in the twilight dreams of poets, philosophers, and political activists, you blazed in the dulled and drugged minds of millions caged and enslaved in the divided and ruled subcontinent. Inspired by the Divine word, Iqbal sought your freedom in his poetry and prose, and likened you to the Shaheen— the king of birds– and exhorted you to soar to freedom. He died nine years before your birth, but his figurative verses, by design or fate, fashioned you into the shape of the sublime and magnificent eagle.
Today, perched on the peak of the Arabian Ocean, you struggle to soar. Designed to defend and fortify your power, your predatory hand claws fetter and numb your mind and movement. You stretch your neck towards the east and tilt your hooked head. Your forward-pointing eyes boasting of binocular vision are fixed towards the rising sun for a glorious future, but you are blinded by fear and greed. Your blood vessels pulses with power and rhythm but you hunch, clench your long spiked wings, unable to spread them, stroke the wind, and take your place in the skies. Immobile and unable to nurture, you attack your own — the most vulnerable and the weakest.
Agreed that your birth, doctored by a misguided and designated cartographer, was both cruel and chaotic[1] The impatient foreigner, recklessly ignoring centuries of daily human connection, the age-old water ways, and land markings, fleshed you out from outdated maps and census reports. Fearing a dangerous rebellion that brewed in the burning summer and desperate to flee the threatening chaos, the imported white-man culled and cut the eight hundred thousand square kilometres of you in thirty-six days. You burst on the world map in the muggy, sweat-drenched August of 1947, soaked in blood and roughly clumped in the likeness of Iqbal’s eagle.
But with creation, there is demise – and your birth slit a wound that festered a carnage. Within days, unprecedented violence tore neighbourhoods and communities apart. Friends-turned-foes, looted, plundered, burnt down villages and raped and hacked thousands of innocent women and children to death. Lit by the hope to reach their new homeland, fifteen million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, fled across the jagged border, but two million succumbed to death. Traumatised by your birth, you continue to kill and slaughter. Seventy-six years later, you deceive and double cross your ‘wajood ki wajah,’ your reason for existence, and with it, the spirit of your independence, idealism, and self-actualization.
Trapped in mnemophobia of suppression, you deny and desecrate the creed that your founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah gifted you, i.e., the land and its freedom. “You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of State.”[2] Did Jinnah fight for your independence to lose you to your fanatical oppression of others? Did God gift you the cradle of fertile plains, the vast web of waterways, fortress-like mountains, havens of harbours, and mines of minerals so you could abuse your own?
In the wild, your namesake, the king of birds, knows better than to turn on its young. Driven by an intrinsic parental instinct, it patches a nest high in the branches and cliffs, secure from the sight of predators. Both parents, in turn, incubate the eggs until they hatch, nest their eaglets, spread their wings to protect them from cold and heat, and tear off the hunted meat to hold it close to the beaks of their young. In face of approaching danger, the male and female defend their young aggressively. They nurture their eaglets for weeks, teaching them to hunt and survive until the little ones can fly off to seek their food and future.
A parent to over ninety-five million children, how do you compare? Millions of your young ones live and work on the streets every day. They feed off garbage dumps and stray barefoot and in rags, unprotected from the onslaught of the harsh climate and the criminals, while you guard your pastures of livestock, fields of crops, and fruit-filled orchards. Yet, you choose not to feed your children – and only a chilling low of 3.6 per cent, aged six to twenty-three months, consume a minimum acceptable diet[3].
Abused and violated every day, the children are forced into selling drugs, prostitution, and trafficking, and many succumb to accidents or fatal diseases. More than half a million of your children are raped, assaulted and killed in one year – not by anyone else, but by you[4]. Over half of the little ones do not have access to health, hygiene, clean water, food, and more than forty million minds wither out of school[5]. When they turn into criminals you blame them for their condition. You hoard your wealth inside mansions, factories, banks and vaults outside the country and shackle millions of your children to hard, gruelling and unpaid labour. There are no laws enforced to protect the children, and according to leading experts an “eighty-eight per cent are subjected to violence and physical abuse within their homes regularly”[6]. After the catastrophic floods that ravaged your lands last year, more than four million of your children continue to drink the contaminated and stagnant waters[7].
You make laws to break them, sign treaties, pacts, and MOUs to betray them, print signs, banners, and pamphlets to tear them, and host meetings, dialogues and conferences to applaud your resounding lies while a frightening number of your children perish every day[8]. Is your independence a construct of borders and boundaries to keep others out, while you molest your own? Is your independence a construct to suppress, violate, and annihilate the weakest? Is your independence a construct to kill your children? If independence profits and feeds off the flesh of others, it is only a fool’s fabrication. Like a chain, a nation is only as strong as its weakest link. When you celebrate your independence, remember that you are only as strong as your weakest – the malnourished and uneducated — forty-five percent of you. Thousands of your children will sleep shivering and starving tonight and some will not open their eyes tomorrow. One day you might not too.
Aysha Baqir is an author and activist on a mission. She founded a pioneering not for profit economic development organization, Kaarvan Crafts Foundation, in 2004 to alleviate poverty. Her novel Beyond the Fields was published in January 2019 in Singapore and 2022 in Pakistan and shortlisted for best-Debut English at the 9th UBL Literary Awards. She is an Ashoka Fellow and recipient of Vice Chancellor’s Alumni Achievement Award from LUMS. She is working on her second project.
When and how do you know when it is time to change your life, job, relationship, friends, plans or location? Keith Lyons examines the push and pull factors of change
If you ever feel trapped in a predictable, boring routine, or wake with a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right with your life, perhaps it is time to take action. But how can you decide to leave your familiar workplace, hometown, or social networks and start a fresh career, move to another place, or find new friends? And what happens if the grass isn’t greener on the other side – and it doesn’t work out?
These are the dilemmas many of us face at different stages of our lives. The challenge when we’ve got just a bit too comfortable and lazy in our comfort zone. The inner voice that whispers of incredible opportunities in other places. The gut feeling that reminds us that right here and now we aren’t living our best life.
If most Sunday evenings a sense of dread creeps up on you, and you feel you aren’t able to be your true self, maybe it is time for a change. But how can you escape the harsh circumstances of your life, whether it is your fate or misfortune, largely out of your control?
I believe there are many aspects of our lives that we can influence. We can be the architects of better lives, authors of inspiring life stories, creators of meaningful existences.
But first, we need to take stock, and clearly identify what the problem is, so we can find solutions that will work. A useful exercise is to write down all the things which are making us unsatisfied.
A list makes tangible our concerns, showing not just the things which irk us, but also providing guidance on what we are seeking on the other side. Whether it is a relationship, role or place which is the issue, it could be because you don’t feel fulfilled, engaged, valued/appreciated or inspired where you are right now.
For some, it is the negativity of the environment or culture, while others are held back from being their authentic selves by too much drama, toxicity, and hostility. Ultimately it might come to whether you like the person you are right now.
If you are shrinking rather than growing, and bending over instead of standing tall, it might be time to move on, if you can. Looking back on my life, in my late 30s my significant long-term relationship ended, and as I came to the end of a job contract, I didn’t feel in a good space, living in a damp house, feeling depressed about how things had worked out and the gloom of winter. I thought back to the last location I felt content and happy, and booked a flight to get back to a place where I’d lingered while on holiday. That move — to a place some 10,000kms away — did work out, but I had never imagined previously that I would end up moving to live and work in a very foreign, yet welcoming, country that was a world away from my mundane existence.
Let’s also acknowledge that in some circumstances, you can’t easily extricate yourself from ties, responsibilities, relationships and locations. For example, you might have duties to your family, expectations around obligations to others, or constrains on moving — ranging from financial and political to cultural and social.
Ideally, you want to find your place, your tribe. You want to be surrounded by others who understand and support you. That could mean hoping for a geographic cure, or even finding your community of peers whose values align with yours online.
The hardest part is overcoming your fears and anxieties going from the familiar to the unknown. You might have the concern that things won’t work out. Or the worry that you will never be happy, and that there is something wrong with you. That’s perfectly normal. No, there isn’t something wrong with you — this is just a reality of our existence. Change is scary.
Those who’ve made tough choices in their lives report it does take courage to put into action the difficult decisions, but once the first step is made towards a fresh start, it can be liberating and empowering beyond expectation.
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Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
I grew up on the periphery of the widely divisive Ghoti-Bangal[1] debate. I gathered, from snide remarks made by friends, that the east and the west of Bengal’s Radcliffe Line ate very differently. One disapproved of the other’s propensity to add sugar into savouries, the other complained that chillis should be garnishing and not the mainstay. Some friends were Bati— half Bangal, half Ghoti — who claimed to have the best (or worst) of both worlds. When questioning eyes turned to me, I mostly shrugged; I wasn’t sure. Inquiry changed to incredulity with “what kind of food do you eat at home?”
“Umm… just food.”
As a child, I didn’t think much of the food that was put on the table. For my mother, food was entirely functional. Everything was cooked just enough to be edible. The more items that could be served steamed or grilled, the better. Gravies were light, dals[2] were boiled, vegetables were lightly stir-fried. Bengalis typically have elaborate recipes for everything – even dhyarosh[3]can be cooked in a mustard-and-poppy-seed paste — but my mother wasn’t having (or giving) any of that. She disliked cooking and she simply wasn’t a “foodie”.
The effects of the Raj linger, even 76 years later, in the way many of us eat, speak, dress. It’s evident in our childhood reading lists and the movies we want to watch on loop when we miss home. But no matter how many variations of Egg Benedicts we’re ordering at newly opened cafes around town, food at home tends to remain dependably authentic to an era which predates invasion by the shepherd’s pie. In kitchens across Bengal, the choto maach or boro maach[4]sizzling in the pan can tell you a lot about which side of the border the antecedents of the residents lie, even if their speech patterns don’t immediately give it away.
The kitchen I grew up with refused to pick a side. Bland aloo sheddho[5], which was neither a buttery mash nor a spicy bhorta[6], sauteed borboti[7]which your average agent of the Raj would likely pass, and oven-roasted chicken (honed to perfection over the years) kept me supple and appreciative of the contents of other girls’ tiffin boxes. Our daily fish was nearly always a basic rui[8] which neither the Ghotis nor the Bangals could be moved to wage war over. Occasionally a dollop of mustard oil and a crunch of chilli to liven up the boiled dal might make my friends scream “Bangal!”, but the subtle flavours of the koshamangsho[9] from my grandmother’s recipe book waved the Ghoti banner. Every now and then my mother used the oven to bake a light sponge cake which I doused with warm custard, negating both sides in favour of the Union Jack.
What makes people Ghoti or Bangal, I once asked a friend who was shaking her head at my inability to identify with either. I was the opposite of a Bati… what did that make me? Paati[10]? My friend’s classification was simplistic — those with ancestors who hailed from East Bengal before the 1947 Partition were Bangal, those who hailed from West Bengal were Ghoti, and the two camps were violent supporters of rival football teams. I wasn’t so sure that that was all there was to it. What I was looking for, was a feeling of belonging and cultural heritage that trickled down the generations — a feeling which made younger people resonate with the traditions of either side, even in an age where an acquired love for sushi (with perhaps an extra dollop of wasabi for the Bangals, perhaps) was beginning to bind us.
My mother’s family was in Chittagong before Partition but my father’s family was mostly from Calcutta. I was told the move from Chittagong was harrowing, as it was for everyone who was uprooted from their homes. I remember my grandfather as a scowling, angry man — he might have been 17 when they fled home and managed to reach Calcutta, relatively unscathed. His father, my great grandfather, had had the foresight to arrange accommodation, exchanging his house with another which lay on the right side of the new border. The family who had vacated this house were The Khans, and we referred to them as reverentially as the rest of the country referred to Bollywood’s leading families — who had vacated their house. I envision my ancestors, terrified and exhausted from the journey, staring up at the black gates of the sparkling white house I used to visit in my childhood — three red steps leading from the small front garden into a wide verandah beyond. I didn’t know then that the tall wooden doors with stained glass panes were a hallmark of Islamic architecture, I just thought it was cool. My grandfather’s eldest brother remained a silent man throughout his life, shaken by being uprooted from his plush life in Chittagong. The second eldest brother died soon enough, of heartbreak they said, not for the loss of a woman but for the loss of land. My great grandmother spent her last days painting the scenes she remembered of rivers and lush green farmlands. No doubt the busy market road in front of the too-small-but-actually-large house in Calcutta was not inspiring enough.
What did they eat? Just food?
My mother remembers her grandmother dressing for dinner — pinning on a brooch, clasping a string of pearls around her neck — seated at the head of the table, frail with cancer. Her trembling hands would pick up the knife and fork to slowly carve the fillet of fish before her. I have memories of my grandfather doing the same in the last year of his life, struggling to arrange a bib on his shirt, snapping at the nurse if she forgot to provide him with adequate cutlery for his bowl of Pish-pash — an Anglo-Indian one-pot chicken-and-rice dish. Through my mother’s childhood, the neighbourhood, dominated by Anglo Indians and Muslims, dished out biryani for Eid and plum pie for Christmas, making both biryani and pudding-with-brandy-sauce the highlights of my youthful eating.
My great grandmother’s memories of Chittagong dinners included chicken roast and mulligatawny soup. I was eating the same every Sunday inside dining rooms which demanded that the men, like my grandfather’s mother, dress for dinner. Here, I developed a palate for butter-oozing Chicken a la Kiev and Roast Mutton with Mint Sauce where I mixed the spicy green with the onion-brown on my plate, fascinated by the contrasting flavours. I was taught to tell the fish knife from the vegetable knife (and that eating with only a fork was an abhorrence), so I didn’t drive my cutlery-obsessed grandfather, Little Lord Fauntleroy, into a fury. This weekly enacting of colonial times made “just food” at home entirely worth it for the rest of the week.
If I couldn’t stand any more of pepe diye paatla maacher jhol[11] which even a Ghoti would balk at, I’d call my father on his office landline to ask, in whispers, if he wanted to bring something home for dinner. He’d make a noncommittal sound over the phone which nearly always meant alright. Those were days I couldn’t wait to dig into dal-bhaat[12] cheered up by burrah kebabs[13] or plain old omelette served with a side of fish and chips. The additions didn’t make my mother happy; she wanted her children to be reared on roasts and grills, not softened around the middle with too many fries and Tartar sauce.
My father, who had none of the baggage of displacement, had decided early on that only a bland “Continental” diet (a cuisine reminiscent of the Raj, which still prevails in Calcutta) could keep at bay the many digestive disorders the Bengalis are prone to. Grilled fish with varying condiments was the most ordered dish of my childhood, which I watched him cheerfully douse with lemon butter sauce, convinced it was better for his cholesterol levels than deemer devil[14]. If I was lucky to have him fetch me on report-collection day, he’d take me to a restaurant near school where they served grilled fish with a creamy spinach puree, which made me see why Popeye the Sailor Man could be hooked to green leafy vegetables. Years later, unable to digest hospital food, it was his turn to whisper if I could bring something for dinner. I knew the “something” would have to be fillet of fish, grilled and served with beurre blanc[15].
Despite my mother’s efforts to the contrary, I turned out to be quite the “foodie”. I have a deep interest in eating, more so than many people who grew up with distinctive flavours at their dining table. Conversations about food will keep me riveted. Feeling flavours come together in my mouth like art will always brighten up a bleak day. My mother, who continues to eat boiled pumpkin for lunch, is bemused by this turn of events. When I left home, my functional eating habits followed me to different cities. With no patience for cooking a meal, I stocked the fridge with cartons of milk, crates of eggs and loaves of bread. My friends, on the other hand, attempted to recreate the recipes they’d grown up with, spending their weekends trying to recreate aloo posto[16]or a malaikari[17]. Since food was functional for me, I took the path of least resistance before the stove — a sunny side up served me well, because what I really wanted was a fish supreme[18].
Friends who grew up eating elaborate home-cooked meals do in fact, have less polarised attitudes to food, rarely oscillating between a craving for steamed cabbage or salmon-cream-cheese sandwich. Some days I might land up uninvited for lunch where I know the regular fare won’t be disappointing and a friend’s mother will serve an aloo jeere[19]from her Bangal repertoire, which makes the jacket potato of my youth pale, like the coloniser, in comparison.
My palate, free of both pride for my own boring larder and prejudice against a particular tradition, is perennially ready to accept the offerings from other people’s kitchens. I’ll eat anything my friends cook; I watch in wonder as they spruce up a boring boiled dal with crackling spices and I appreciate the cauliflower in the rich gravy of the kalia. Of course, when I can, I still order a chicken Forriester [20]or a tipsy pudding (it wobbles). I’m Paati in that!
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[1] Ghoti is a colloquialism that refers to people from West Bengal and Bangal are people from Bangladesh.
[20] Evolved from the French a la Forestière, which conjures up mushroom and pork strips
Ramona Sen has authored a novel, Crème Brûlée (Rupa Publications) and a novella, Potluck, (Juggernaut Books). Calcutta is the city of her soul, the backdrop of all that she writes.
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