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Review

“I am waiting to be at home; where, I don’t know yet”– Dom Moraes

Book Review by Rakhi Dalal

Title: Never at Home

Author: Dom Moraes

Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2020

Never at Home is the third memoir in the trilogy of memoirs written by Dom Moraes. The others being Gone Away (1960) and My Son’s Father (1968). This volume was first published by Penguin India in 1992. Here the author writes about his life from 1960 onwards.

The first chapter is a brief account of the phase of his life after winning the prestigious Hawthornden prize at the age of twenty. By the time he turned twenty two, Moraes already had two poetry collections and a memoir to his name. In order to earn a livelihood, he then started writing features and reviews for newspapers. In 1965, he brought out his third poetry collection John Nobody. After James Cameron impelled him to take up journalism, Moraes started travelling and for the next seventeen years he couldn’t write poetry. For someone, who from his childhood knew that he wanted to be a poet and to live in England, he spent a considerable period of his life in transit without writing any substantial poetry. Never at Home chronicles those years he was engaged in navigating the world to collect stories and interviews.

This volume is the third and final in his collective memoirs – A Variety of Absences, which take its name from the poem Absences written by him after a long hiatus from poetic fervour. The book focuses more on Moraes’ professional life as compared to his personal life taken up in his second memoir so that its prose is not as poetic or intense as in My Son’s Father but nevertheless, it is a notable piece of literary writing. It may also be deemed as a historical archive because it records some very important and interesting snippets and observations from the political world he traversed and eminent leaders he met.

The critical success of Gone Away, his first memoir, brought him writing assignments which included scriptwriting for a documentary on India. As a journalist, he covered Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem and wars in Algeria and Israel. In his mind he had always been an English poet in England and had no idea of the tribulations other immigrants faced. A BBC documentary commissioned to him made him look at the living conditions of Asian immigrants, specifically from India and Pakistan. This documentary brought him closer to the reality of being an outsider in a foreign country.

While writing articles for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Daily Telegraph, Nova and many others magazines, he met and interviewed many distinguished personalities and important world leaders but perhaps none left as deep an impression upon him as Indira Gandhi, whose biography he was later to write. The liberation of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, had made her a star in the eyes of its natives who were till then hostile to Indians. Moraes writes at length about his meetings with her, about her charismatic personality, political astuteness and her almost invincible demeanor.

His descriptions of the journalistic assignments, which took him across many countries and gave him the opportunity to bring out stories to the world, are finely detailed. His keen eye presents a balanced perspective on the stories he covered, never going too far and never delivering too less. His most important works included a story on political prisoners in Buru and on the tribal people in Dani in Indonesia, the titles of the articles being ‘The Prisoners of Buru,’ and ‘The People Time Forgot’. His Buru piece evoked a violent response in Indonesia. Moraes was banned from entering the country again. But this piece was the first one to come out from the place and the issue was picked up by some human rights organisations leading to a release of seven thousand from the imprisoned ten thousand people. This, if anything, is a proof of the important voice he had become in journalism.

Although, Moraes’ work kept him busy in the world but he could somehow never get rid of the images of his traumatised childhood. As in the case of his second memoir,here also he writes considerably about his fear of confronting his mother. The accounts of his meetings with her are laced with the anguish and anxiety he had experienced in her presence always. Except his mother, all the other women in his life are only addressed in passing. He never dwells much upon his relationship with either his second wife, Judith, mother of their son Francis, or with his third wife, Leela Naidu. In comparison, his association with his friends and work colleagues occupy more space in this memoir. His regret for not becoming the father he thought he was when he wrote My Son’s Father comes perhaps due to his inability to express what he felt before others, including his family.  

Moraes picked up journalism as a vocation to earn a living but it brought him closer to real life. His punctuated visits to India, whether to write on Naxalbari movement, to meet Indira Gandhi, King of Sikkim or to explore Rajasthan, led to an increased understanding of the country of his birth. Nonetheless, he was never at home in India or in the country he had adopted as a youngster.

The disquiet that marked his life is perhaps most poignantly conveyed in this line towards the end:

“I am waiting to be at home; where, I don’t know yet.”

As he settled in the country of his birth, after all the travelling, his muse did eventually return to him. The various absences – of a mother, a father, his friends from the youth or his son — at different times in his life and their memories, continued to haunt him. Yet this memoir ends with a hopeful note. In author’s words, “the best thing to do is to preserve some form of balance on the constantly moving ground tectonic plates of this planet.”

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Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ . She lives with her husband and a teenage son, who being sports lovers themselves are yet, after all these years, left surprised each time a book finds its way to their home.

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

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Review

Resonating Diversities that Unite

Book Review by Gopal Lahiri

Title: Resonance- English Poetry from Poets of Odisha

Editors: Chittaranjan Mishra, Jaydeep Sarangi, Mona Dash

Publisher: Author Press, 2020

Poetry to many of us, appears as a process of illumination– as much for the poet as for the other and connects one person to another, one time to another. ‘Resonance’ the collection of English Poetry from Poets of Odisha explores the modern narrative; and a meditation on literary form, and how the modernist poem might look through a contemporary lens.

It is to be mentioned that in the last three decades, Indian Poetry written in English language has progressed considerably. English Poetry from Poets of Odisha is no exception. The diverse styles and uninhibited approach, the magical word-play and the innovative ideas of the poets of Odisha have expanded the Indian English poetry province to a large extent.

Chittaranjan Misra, Jaydeep Sarangi and Mona Dash, the editors of this poetry collection, in their Introduction have elucidated, “The sense of location that the Odia English poets construct are not in consonance with idolatry centred on nationalism or regionalism based on bigotry. It is about cultural specificity refracted through poets’ sensibility and power of fashioning imagery.”

Poetry, too, has the power to transform. This fascinating collection includes English poems of thirty-two Odia poets and explores many things in life that is extensively rephrased. It is a book that invites readers to share the poet’s vision of experiences: sorrow, pain, love, desire, joy, longing, the exposure to art, and transience.

The collection contains a polyphony of voices and language and imagery that draws at times from sources as various as the Hindu scriptures and folklores. It evokes the complex multiplicity of Odisha’s cultural landscape, a result of the states long history of culture, heritage and migration. Many of the poems’ opening lines immediately grab your attention and you feel recontextualized, born anew.

Professor Himansu S. Mohapatra has rightly pointed out the intricacies of the choices based on language and identity, “Odia-English poetry does not disappoint here. Poets from Jayanta Mahapatra and Bibhu Padhi to Shanta Acharya and Rabindra K. Swain have paid attention to the diction of their poetry. They have perfected idioms which are supple and resonant.”

Jayanta Mahapatra, the iconic poet from Odisha has observed, “I don’t think there is one India, Odisha is one India, Bengal is another. Maharashtra, Kerala, Kashmir– all these are different Indias. It is easier to relate yourself to a particular region than to talk about the whole of India as a construct.” His solitary poem ‘The Road’ in this book, has reflected an honest examination of language, gravities, crosscurrents of time.

Eternally thirsty the road has freed itself

From the pull of the earth and the empty garden

Of graves But its spirit is heavy

With reasons for killing one another.

Bibhu Padhi is another outstanding poet from Odisha. His poems are always marked with quiet wisdom, cadence and elegant images. Deploying the qualms and opacities of language, he attempts to construct bridges of meaning that might at any time prove deceptive. He has an eye for the vivid image, allowing him to bring nameless island into sharp focus as in the following poems,

‘Everything stays.

Nothing moves.

And there is only this fear

of being pushed towards

a nameless island I quietly left

without being noticed, long ago.

—‘Finding and Losing’

or

perhaps someone lean and weak

is struggling with life, with death,

in an island of his own.

— ‘Night Sounds’

Shanta Acharya is among the most acclaimed poets of Odisha whose works have been published worldwide. There are several jewels in ‘Vigil’ that everyone should read and the poem is a poignant familial recollection evocative, in its conciseness and detailed imagery.

I half-dream though half-awake

Of you in exquisite colours,

Rich hues of maroon, golden, purple,

Memories quivering like fanned tails of peacocks.

—‘Vigil’

With astonishing maturity, Prabhanjan Kumar Mishra weaves together contents, images, and stories with ease and his finely carved, magical poems invite the readers into the quarter of inwardness. ‘Konark by Night’ is a gem of a poem that veer towards the poetic equivalent of stone art that matches like the snapshots of nightly intimacy and the rise of the legend rooted in culture specificity.

Tonight we put our souls together

to sculpt the legend again

out of the dark’s flesh

attune our desires

to the body’s waves and stones,

and plant a seed lovingly

to take back home

a souvenir, joyous and poignant’

Rabindra K Swain’s poems are marked by a firm technique and sense of distancing. The poet is often able to find ideas and meaning and manages to find images suitable to the task of telling that this is the human life. It is the permeability in his poems that absorbs the words and sentences and the measurement of ease in the flow is strikingly evident.

It sensed your despair

and dropped its quills.

failing to get its hint you sulk and then wilt.

dawn is petals; dawn is quills.

—‘What you Miss’

Chittaranjan Misra is one of the most compelling poetic voices from Odisha and his poems often interrogate the difference in the society. At times, they are moving and wise, going beyond the mere philosophical questioning of life. The following poem validates the poet’s curiosity and the fineness of his words.

I am fluid, a solute

Waiting to be dissolved

To lose all bodies

To lose all beings

–‘Self’

Jaydeep Sarangi is a well-known bilingual poet. His poetry is assured and he uses language with a wonderful ease and elegance. His work has always retained intimacy, longing and directness. He writes from life, rarely relying on anything else. That’s what makes his poems so immediate – the life is there while he writes.

my forgotten chapter of memory

Sculpted on the walls of Kanakdurga temple

My lines are straight

Arrows fixed up, DNA stitched

Odia veins spark.

–‘Love and Longing at Jhargram’

Mona Dash combines disarmingly plain diction with a familiar quirkiness. It is true that there is no sentimentality and her poems have a quiet acceptance.

The words nestling in my heart

Released in my breath go

Missing.

I hold up my hands

In the air, to find the very air is

Missing.

–‘What is lost’

There is a productive oddness to Durga Prasad Panda’s poems, finding surprise and profundity in unpicking objects, phrases and words. On the whole his writing is both rare and laudable for attempting to balance the openness with acumen.

I live in the city

Of snakes.

In my courtyard lies a snake.

From above the door hangs a snake.

On my bed stretches flat a snake.

On my rooftop sunbathes a snake.

From within the skull’s eye sockets

Winks a snake.

–‘Snakes in the City’

Chinmay Jena’s beautiful poems featured in this collection are remarkably fluent, lyrical and assured. The poet strikes the balance between silence and word in a seamless manner.

I see the flakes of apathetic clouds

Mirroring myself

Drift in the northerly wind

The moment prepares me

For yet another tryst with winter

–‘October’

In Nandini Sahu’s poetry, there is an urgent passion for the language. She dissects the world with a wondering discerning eye. Her poems in this collection is deep, engaging and sharply articulated.

Who says death is the only truth?

See, your body of fog is still seated on the throne.

You still shine in the firmament of stars.

–‘Who says Death is the Only Truth?’

Mamata Dash is always in control of weaving words and images. So many lines in this poem shimmer with somewhat ironic discovery — a straightforward gazing-down at intimacy and closeness.

Remember that day

I created a beehive for you

From my nerves, senses and veins

And hung it

On the bench of a tree nearby your window.

–‘The Letter’

Prahallad Sathpathy’s ‘Eternal Verse of Love’ reflects a landscape of elusive words. His love poem feels intensely familiar yet disquietingly inexplicable,

‘Your lips give birth to poetry

When my lips touch yours

Your eyes become a torch when my words fumble in the dark

I bite your earlobe and feel the sensation of poetry’

–‘Eternal Verse of Love’

Ramakanta Das’s poem appears to be more incandescent, emotive and assured in simplest forms, not wrestling with grand themes and contents.

‘A silhouette of greenery

Laced with a silver lining

Visible to me from horizon

Throws distinct hints of a sprout-tender dream’

–‘Hints of a dream’

Deba Patnaik, Saroj Padhi, Shankarshan Parida, Shruti Das and a few other poet’s works are also featured in this collection, extending the vistas of English Poetry and they are certainly worthy of notice.

There is no denying that the contemporary Indian English language poets make themselves heard in recent times. Here is a luminous collection of poems from Odisha intent on expanding poetry’s sphere. The voices are always in harmony while exploring the inner landscape of life’s promise, locale and unpredictable strangeness. One of the pleasures of this book is in the shifts of tone that reflect each poet’s sensitivity to his or her inspired form and the creative content without any regional bias. A delightful anthology revelling in the diverse similarities!

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Gopal Lahiri is a Kolkata- based bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 21 books published mostly (13) in English and a few (8) in Bengali, including three joint books. His poetry is also published across various anthologies as well as in eminent journals of India and abroad. He has been invited in various poetry festivals including World Congress of Poets recently held in India. He is published in 12 countries and his poems are translated in 10 languages.

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

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Review

In Quest for Peace: The Other Side of the Divide

Book Review by Debraj Mookerjee

Title: The Other Side of the Divide – A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan

Author: Sameer Arshad Khatlani

Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2020

Journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s maiden book, The Other Side of the Divide – A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan, published end February 2020, seemed to, at the outset, suffer the fate that the India- Pakistan relationship has continually suffered – whatever could go wrong, did! COVID19 almost did the distribution of the book in. But like the legendary resilience of the people of the subcontinent, and because of the inherent quality of what his intrepid journey into Pakistan was able to produce, the book made it through alternative channels, and is sure to be talked about for many years to come.

Khatlani, a Kashmiri, is a Delhi based journalist. More than his bio, it is the dedication that caught my eye, “For my son, Orhan Ahmed Khatlani, and kids of his generation. May they grow up to live in a peaceful and prosperous South Asia free of bigotry and conflict.” Wonderful words! Also written with sincerity. As you read deeper into the book you understand one thing about the author: That he is a young journalist cut in the traditional mould, the type that is fast disappearing in an increasingly polarised world. The intrepidity of perusal and perusal, the cultivation of people across political and cultural divides, the search for objectivity and truth, the erasure of one’s own biases, and the courage and resilience of conviction that forces one to take positions when push comes to shove marks out an honest journalist. Khatlani ticks all these boxes. 

To be frank, the book suffers from many editorial glitches and unnecessary typos, like this line by way of example: “Not surprisingly, the country (Pakistan) comes across as a hopelessly dark land because to its (sic) portrayal in the news media …”. The word ‘due’ has been carelessly substituted by the word ‘because’, rendering the sentence nonsensical. Enough to put me off and set a wrong note to the reading experience. But as I entered the heart of the book, even as Khatlani dived deeper into the other side of the divide, I realised nothing, but nothing could take away from the richness of the information it was unearthing, the depth of its historical exploration, the breadth of the issues and the personalities it was reaching out to, and most importantly, the chord of personal reflection and poignancy it was touching. 

The last point is important. Pre-Partition, the author’s grandfather, of limited means, had fled the oppressive feudal rule of the Dogra king to seek a better life in Lahore. Ultimately, due to pressing circumstances the patriarch returned to Kashmir before 1947. Lahore always had a strong Kashmiri presence. These were people who abandoned the oppressive taxes and strong biases of the existing rulers in Kashmir to seek a better life elsewhere. This was a world when the Hindu rules of Kashmir were oppressing its Muslim citizens. Many ‘Punjabis’ settled in and around Lahore were of Kashmiri origin, though they now primarily spoke Punjabi or Urdu and had little of the Kashmiri left in them.

In fact, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s iconic politician traces his roots to Kashmir, though his family settled in Amritsar a long time back, and from there moved to West Punjab. The interlocking of the writer’s personal narrative with that of a general observation about a rather little known socio-cultural reality, and the search for those lanes where his grandfather might have roamed especially in the now drastically altered Anarkali  Bazaar, present a storyline that is extremely catchy. 

The conversational style (after all he is a journalist) comes off easily, as does the South Asian predilection for digressions when names and places are evoked. One name dropped becomes the point of departure to connect events and places from far away. One set of friends introduces him to another. Then the second set introduces new facets to his story, which essentially is to write deep pieces for the Times of India, datelined Lahore, as part of the ‘Aaman ki Aasha’ (the ‘hope for peace’ drive between India and Pakistan, during the last Congress Government) initiative. The excuse for the journey is to cover a Punjabi cultural event. Though to be honest there is enough mention of the Punjabi language and cultural predilections to justify the excuse!

As you read further into the book this particular aspect of the style quite catches you. What earlier might have appeared unnecessarily digressive, grows into you and you begin to realise this story could have been told no other way. The frenetic swamping of emotions, the bitter regret of missed opportunities, the cornucopia of details that mark the stories of both separation and oneness are as fervent as they are insistent – they can only be told breathlessly if they are to be shorn of artfulness. The writer must at times bow before the sentiments of the storyteller. The story is often so powerful that it almost takes over the storytelling. This is said by way of praise. When you have the book in your hands you’ll understand exactly what is meant herein. 

Khatlani’s book is modelled around his discovery of Lahore and its people. Each discovery follows the hub and spokes theory. Every discovery is the hub. And the stories that emanate from these hubs are the spokes. In this he touches all the right chords. There is the Bollywood connection, the history of the army and its ubiquity in Pakistani life, the cricket connection, the stories of shared miseries and standout acts of personal friendship, there is the story of alcohol and conservatism, the liberals of Pakistan and their sentimental pro-India politics, and the special story of minorities, especially the Sikhs.

These stories slip in and out of the ten chapters, and in no particular order. In each of these particulars, Khatlani shapes his narrative with great background stories, provides rich historical accounts, and at times manages searching insights into the intricate sentiments that guide the existing reality between the two nations.  

The Other Side of the Divide is an important intervention at a difficult time. The dateline is 2013 when things were better. Better despite the numerous setbacks, not in the least the attack on Mumbai in 2008 November, or the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers outside the Gaddafi Stadium in 2009.

In 2020 another world has overtaken us. We inhabit a world that is shriller than ever before, a world in which India is fast giving up its secular and liberal credentials, and instead turning sharply right. As some have observed, new Pakistan looks more like old India, and unfortunately, new India like old Pakistan. Bearing the cross of a fractured history we continue to inherit each other’s loss. Amidst this, Khatlani’s book is an invaluable source of solace and possibilities.

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Debraj Mookerjee has taught literature at the University of Delhi for close to thirty years. He claims he never gets bored. Ever. And that is his highest skill in life. No moment for him is not worth the while. He embraces life and allows life to embrace him.

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

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Dom Moraes: ‘A piece of childhood thrown away’

Book review by Rakhi Dalal

Title: My Son’s Father

Author: Dom Moraes

Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2020

Dom Moraes (1938–2004), poet, novelist, and columnist, is seen as a foundational figure in Indian English Literature. In 1958, at the age of twenty, he won the prestigious Hawthornden Prize for his first volume of verse, A Beginning, going on to publish more than thirty books of prose and poetry. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for English in 1994. He has won awards for journalism and poetry in England, America, and India. He also wrote a large number of film scripts for BBC and ITV, covering various countries such as India, Israel, Cuba, and Africa.

“Between his Englishness and Indianness, the scales tipped to English.”

Wrote Stephen Spender in the Sunday issue of The New York Times on August 10, 1969 while reviewing My Son’s Father by Dominic Frances Moraes, an autobiography which was first published in 1968 when the author was only thirty years old. Spender’s observation came in view of the situation faced by writers of Indian origin writing in English in those times. He considered it fortunate that Moraes was brought up speaking English and not Hindi.

It is true that being born in an English-speaking Roman Catholic family of Goan extraction, the language came naturally to him and his affinity for literature sprung from his spending much time on reading books borrowed from his father’s library. Once he knew that he would be a poet, the decision to make England his home came logically to him. At one place in the book he writes:

“England, for me, was where the poets were. The poets were my people. I had no real consciousness of a nationality, for I did not speak the languages of my countrymen, and therefore, had no soil for roots. Such Indian society as I had seen seemed to me narrow and provincial, and I wanted to escape it.”

In this autobiographical account, a prominent role is given to the tussle in his mind, that kept him connected to his roots. This struggle, emanating from the memories of his early childhood years spent with his family and his relationship with his parents, is also the subject of this book. Interestingly, after this book was published in 1968, Moraes returned to India after spending nearly fourteen years of his life in England.

The book covers the period from his early childhood to when he became a father himself. The autobiography is divided into two parts with six chapters each. The first part titled ‘A Piece of Childhood’ covers the first sixteen years of his life with his parents. The second titled ‘After So Many Deaths’, deals with his own life, from leaving the house for London for further studies until he finds his place in the World. The thirteenth chapter is the Epilogue.

The name for first part is taken from these lines by David Gray, quoted on the title page:

Poor meagre life is mine, meagre and poor:

Only a piece of childhood thrown away.

In the first part, the choice of title reflects the content. For, it essentially deals with his troubled childhood years with a mother suffering from mental illness. He writes about witnessing the first signs of illness in his mother, about how his love for her first turned into indifference, then into anger and then cruelty with the passing years which were marked with increased incidents because of her illness which sometimes also posed danger to him and everybody around. Later when his mother was institutionalized, he blamed himself for it. However, it was the time spent with his father, reading, travelling and journaling, that made him turn to writing verses and to opt for living in London.

The narrative is enlivened by the keen and observant eye of a poet which missed nothing, whether it was the unsettling feeling of missing his father when he was a war correspondent in Burma or the joy of witnessing the beauty of nature. At such places, his poetic sensibility charms the reader and turns the reading experience into a joyful ride. His prose is lucid, interspersed with vivid imagery but with such a restrain that not a single word ever seems out of place.

Behind our flat was the Arabian Sea, an ache and blur of blue at noon, purpling to shadow towards nightfall: then the sun spun down through a clash of colours like a thrown orange, and was sucked into it: sank, and the sea was black shot silk, stippled and lisping, and it was time for bed.

The second part deals with his life at Oxford. His associations with poets like Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden and Allen Tate. He vividly portrays the English Literary scene of 50s London, bohemian life at Soho, his meetings with the likes of David Gascoyne, T.S.Eliot, Beat poets and Francis Bacon. He writes about his love affairs, about the kindness of Dean Nevill Coghill who always saved him from troubles at Oxford and about David Archer of the Parton Press who published his first poetry collection, A Beginning, which won him the prestigious Hawthornden Prize at the age of nineteen. But despite all this, he felt divided in his mind. Once while visiting parents of his friend Julian, he felt nostalgic.

It was a long while since I had been in contact with family life: it seemed familiar but distant, but snuffing at it as warily as the dachshunds sniffed at me, I felt a deep nostalgia for it. I thought for the first time in weeks of my mother and father and remembered the exact smell and texture of an Indian day. Driving back with my friend through the green and familiar landscape of my adopted country, I felt suddenly, and to my own surprise, a stranger.

Though he had put down his roots of work and friendship in London, where he knew he wanted to stay but there were moments, according to him, when some invisible roots pulled him to country of his birth. It was only around his twenty first birthday, while visiting his parents, he realised what it was. In a conversation with his mother, both of them wept in close embrace and suddenly he felt his troubles vanishing away.

I left India at peace with myself. Something very important to me had happened: I had explained myself to my mother, there was love between us, the closed window that had darkened my mind for years had been opened, and I was free in a way I had never been before.

The last chapter, ‘The Epilogue’, shows a thirty years old Moraes, a father to a newborn, finalising the manuscript of this book. For some reasons it doesn’t include his life events from the age of twenty one to thirty. As the ‘Epilogue’ closes, we see a father, pleased with his life, binding together the pages so that if his son reads them one day, he understands his father as the person he was.

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Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ . She lives with her husband and a teenage son, who being sports lovers themselves are yet, after all these years, left surprised each time a book finds its way to their home.

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

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A History of Desire in India

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Infinite Variety – A History of Desire in India

Author: Madhavi Menon

Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2018

Taṇhā in Pali or trishna in Sanskrit roughly means desire, thirst, longing, and greed. Whether physical or mental, taṇhā is an important Buddhist concept found in early texts. Out of the four ‘Noble Truths’, the Buddha identified taṇhā as a principal cause in the arising of dukkha (suffering, pain, dissatisfaction).

Take no notice of what ancient Indian texts said about desire; look at this stupendous book that portrays the notion of desire whilst bringing out its myriad colors. Part of queer theory, it travels across the subcontinent in the hunt for diverse manifestations of desire.

Madhavi Menon’s Infinite Variety – A History of Desire in India is a rebellious account of desire and is full of astonishing analyses and insights. Menon – professor of English at Ashoka University – writes on desire and queer theory with panache. She has authored a number of books resembling the subject: Wanton Words: Rhetoric and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama; Unhistorical Shakespeare: Queer Theory in Shakespearean Literature and Film; and Indifference to Difference: On Queer Universalism.

Pleasant and edifying, the book, as the blurb says, “reveals not purity but impurity as a way of life. Not one answer, but many. Not a single history, but multiple tales cutting across laws and boundaries.”

“In Bhakti poetry, Radha and Krishna disregard marital fidelity, age, time, and gender for erotic love. In Sufi dargahs, pirs (spiritual guides) who were married to women are buried alongside their male disciples, as lovers are. Vatsyayana, the author of the world’s most famous manual of sex, insists that he did not compose it for the sake of passion, and remained celibate through the writing of it. Long hair is widely seen as a symbol of sexuality; and yet, shaved off in a temple, it is a sacred offering. Even as the country has a draconian law to punish homosexuality, heterosexual men share the same bed without comment. Hijras are increasingly marginalized; yet gender has historically been understood as fluid rather than fixed” – the book says it all in splendid details.

Written in an impeccable style, the approach is spanking new and commonsensical. What enhances the beauty of the book is that the author plots a route through centuries, geographies, personal and public histories, schools of philosophy, literary and cinematic works. It meanders through contemporary studies on sexology, dissects Bollywood films based on the subject, depicts symbols, and even juxtaposes the object of desire with yoga, philosophy, and commonplace events.

While Menon examines the numerous faces of desire in the Indian subcontinent, for the most part, we are exposed to amazing tales and factoids dug out from enormous archival material and public spheres. The study ranges from the erotic sculptures of the Khajuraho temple to the shrine of the celibate god Ayyappan; from army barracks to public parks; from Empress Nur Jahan’s paan to home-made kohl; from cross-dressing mystics to asexual gods. It shows us the connections between syntax and sexual characteristics, between mane and warfare, between self-restraint and gratification, between love and death.

Loaded with factoids and figures and with a spiky introduction, the book is neatly divided into twenty long chapters –- desire in education, desire in suicide; law and psychoanalysis, desires among bhabhis (sisters-in laws) to grandparents, desire in celibacy, desire while dating and make-up et al.

The work is phenomenal –- both because of the subject and the approach. That an entire book could be written on ‘desire’ is inspiring. But more important is the way it has been conceived. There is an element of gracefulness, lucidity, and enchantment as one flips through the pages. No one who has a desire can afford to fail to notice this meticulously-researched book.

Together with germane photos to buttress her argument, Menon’s book pivots around   texts, oral traditions, schools of philosophy to exhibit   the sub-continent’s nebulous, many-sided, and rich tradition of desire. Her deft handling of the theme and narrowing it down into a single book is truly commendable.

Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India is deeply insightful, across-the-board, and stimulating.

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Bhaskar Parichha is a Bhubaneswar-based  journalist and author. He writes on a broad spectrum of  subjects , but more focused on art ,culture and biographies. His recent book ‘No Strings Attached’ has been published by Dhauli Books. 

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

 

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Review

Vignettes of Bengal

Book Review by Gopal Lahiri

Title : One Dozen of Stories

Author: Naina Dey

George Steiner says, ‘Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence’. In her fascinating book titled One Dozen Stories, Naina Dey captures the shades and tones of Bengali short stories written by well-known storytellers into the folds of English language and gives it her own distinctive stamp. One can not only see Bengal in her words, but also can smell it, feel its very texture.

Sanjukta Dasgupta, the eminent writer and academician, has rightly said, in her Foreword, “The translator of the twelve short stories in this collection has exhibited both sense and sensibility in her selection of the short stories originally written in by some of the best storytellers of Bengali fiction. Naina Dey’s training as a literary critic and translator become obvious as the authors, whose short stories that have been selected for translation cover a wide trajectory.”

Short stories, can also be a welcome diversion from the barrage of images we’re often submitted to in long narratives. The writers feel sometimes it’s worth showing less and hiding more and that is the essence of the short story. Through the power of observation, Naina Dey takes hold of the essence of the stories “each equally griping in intensity” and gives it to the reader with a power that is, paradoxically both strange and familiar. She portrays the influence of images and their seductiveness and their complexities as depicted in the original with expressionist clarity and feelings.

One Dozen Stories includes translation of selected stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay, Ashapurna Devi, Narendranath Mitra, Suchitra Bhattacharya, Nabakumar Basu, Anita Agnihotri and Esha Dey.

The twelve stories offer astounding depictions of desire, dream, love, belief and the power of the natural world and the translator tracks the inner monologue of an impoverished world with skill and purpose. There is no dream fog about these stories. There is no slapdash, no satire, no postmodern signs and flashes either.

Naina Dey has mentioned in her ‘Introduction’, “Edgar Allan Poe, considered the father of the short story and its first critical theorist had defined what he called the prose tale as a narrative which can be read at one sitting from half an hour to two hours, and is limited to ‘a certain unique or single effect’ to which every detail is subordinate.”

The stories in this collection are appealing in their richness and variety, in the sharpness of their perceptions and the clarity of even their complicated psychological unpicking and above all in their stylistic forms.

Tagore is a master storyteller and his stories are associated with events of our life that touched. Dey has selected two poignant and powerful short stories of Tagore. In ‘Shesh Puroshkar’ (The Last Reward), Tagore excavates the flaws and examines the truth to heal wounds and reward thereafter. The settings feel fresh because the author refuses to draw on worn-out descripted tropes with a thing of shreds and patches.

 ‘Streer Patra’ (The Wife’s Letter) is a landmark short story in Bengali literature.In the life of poor Bindu, Tagore has infused portrait of several generations of tortured and exploited women in Bengal. The deprivation and the denial are all encompassing. The protagonist, Mrinal, unearths the suppression that women undergo and renounces the injustice meted out to the young girl Bindu. Mrinal leaves her house, as a mark of protest at the atrocities against the women and becomes a free woman at the end.

“You had cloaked me in the darkness of your customs. Bindu had come for an instant and caught sight of me through the hole in that veil. With her own death, she had ripped at the end my veil from top to bottom. Today I emerged and saw that there was hardly any place where I could keep my pride. Those eyes that had beheld and loved my neglected beauty, now look at me from the entire sky. Mejobou is dead now.’”(Steer Patra)

For readers looking for a more interesting story with twist at the end, ‘Chor’ (Thief) written by Narendranath Mitra, an accomplished short-story writer, shows the relationship between two enigmatic characters who embark on unusual life path; the husband, a kleptomaniac, compels his innocent wife to steal. The story shows pleasure cannot sustain either itself or any meaning.

“Today Renu was truly her husband’s worthy consort. This was what Amulya had been wishing for all these days. Today was his day to rejoice. But Amulya was frozen stiff in his wife’s tender embrace. It was as if every beauty, every charm had disappeared from this earth. And those familiar arms which encircled his neck were not the bangle-laden slender arms of a beautiful young woman- they had become loathsome, defiled.”(Chor)

Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay’s ‘Puimacha’ (The Spinach Vine) is a captivating investigation of the life. The author depicts human fallibility and the tragic ending with the untimely death of Khenti, the eldest daughter of Sahayhari. Families dissolve through vagrant desire and inner disconnection. Relations between mother and son becomes insensitive and fail to cohere at times.

The depiction of a family’s routines, rituals, and idiosyncrasies in the midst of rule is reflected in Ashapurna Devi’s deft and gripping story ‘Chinnamasta’(The Severed Head). The power of apprehension and its scaring presence is a theme of the story. The broken down, disheartened, surging negative energies emanating from the Hindu widows, echo through the story.

“In the women’s circle, the newly widowed wife’s fare held the same interest as the manners of a newly-wed bride… Frequently therefore, one found Kanaklata, the eldest of the Lahiri wives, Monty’s mother, appearing at opportune moments at Jayabati’s house.” (Chinnamasta)

Nabakumar Basu’s ‘Faydaa‘ (Gain) grapples with harsh effect of generation gap where everyone is under suspicion and the artificiality of the modern life especially while staying abroad. Lives are shaped by ordinary neglect: of spouses, of children and of selves.

Esha Dey’s three stories ‘Anya Jagat Anya Nari’ (Another World, Another Woman), ‘Lapis Lazuli’ and ‘Satilakhi‘(A Devoted Wife) centre on the beliefs and variances in life laced with humour and warmth. Her stories are delicate, unfixed and evanescent. These qualities render it an exclusive place among the narratives and reflect on a way to attain a life without boundaries.

Suchitra Bhattacharya’s two stories are all about the power of life sketches, their lightness and complexities as well. In ‘Atmaja’(The Son), the mother and son relationship being at once compulsive and embryonic, and the mental and physical disentanglement is suggested in unsettling details. It is poignant and the ending is tragic. ‘Ashabarna‘ (Discrimination) portrays the hollowness of the middle-class life with dark undertones of class difference.

In ‘Ranabhoomi’ (Battlefield), Anita Agnihotri conjures a natural chemistry from the start with the historical context of the battle of Plassey and the emblematic mango tree and keeps the dramatic tension till the end. The writer is especially good at capturing its longings while the historical, the political, and the personal overlap within society are clearly evident in the story.

“No one remembers, no one remembers anything. Place, history, time…they themselves get entangled in the web of antiquity and remain silent covered with dust.

Abraham will remember. His mother’s anger, his sister’s ill-humour, his wife’s tears and keep them hidden in his breast like the mango tree struck by the cannon-ball!’(Ranabhoomi).“

Translation from one language to other always poses a challenge to convey the nuggets of nuances of the original language. The key to the translation is the choice of words and the need of transporting the soul of the culture into another language. Dey finds her vein of expression by attending to the miniscule details and offers new areas that goes beyond the prevailing.

One Dozen Stories is striking, impressive and of significance even now. The readers will feel the desolation and misery and the sweat and tears that run through the stories. The cover page is impressive. This immensely readable book offers us the chance to escape into a world that is worth a revisit.

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Gopal Lahiri is a Kolkata- based bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 21 books published mostly (13) in English and a few (8) in Bengali, including three joint books. His poetry is also published across various anthologies as well as in eminent journals of India and abroad. He has been invited in various poetry festivals including World Congress of Poets recently held in India. He is published in 12 countries and his poems are translated in 10 languages.

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

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Review

Bridging Continents through Poetry

Book review by Madhu Sriwastav

Title: Bridging Continents: An Anthology of Indo-American Poets

Edited by Sharmila Ray and Gopal Lahiri.

Bengali Translation Tanmoy Chakraborty.

Published by: Zahir Publication.

Bridging Continents: An Anthology of Indo-American Poets, edited by Sharmila Ray and Gopal Lahiri, veteran poets and critics with numerous anthologies to their credit is not a run off the mill anthology. It’s a carefully crafted volume comprising thirteen well-known Indian English Poets along with eleven renowned contemporary American Poets. That’s not all, it comes with a translation of these poems at the end of the book, on the reverse, in Bengali by noted poet Tanmoy Chakraborty.

The compilation of living poets is to make the reader dwell on the present, be in the moment across continents, poetically. Contrary to tradition this book doesn’t have a foreword. It begins with  ‘Let’s Talk’, a dialogue between the editors Sharmila Ray and Gopal Lahiri, putting forward the poetic intention of the book through a light conversation to give readers a free hand without the direction imposed by a formal foreword: “whatever meaning they come up with will be theirs entirely,” says Sharmila Ray. Gopal Lahiri adds, “I want our readers to be more of a free spirit and enjoy reading with an open mind”.

The editors seem excited in offering something unique. Poets featured in the anthology have been chosen by the editors. Browsing through the book, reading snippets of poetry geographically apart yet united by the richness of texture, one notices certain common grounds which unite mankind across the globe by the similarities in afflictions but their responses vary depending on their diverse cultural lores. The anthology posits both the uniformity and the uniqueness in human conditions across the globe from India to America and the poetic responses of contemporary poets towards common issues but coloured with their individual experiences.

With environmental crises affecting people worldwide, Indian and American poets alike poetize on it. Andrea Witzke Slot expresses her deep empathy with nature with a tone of foreboding in ‘The Time-Being of Oak’.

Hear the branches reverberate. See the mud soften like grief beneath our feet, where ropes of roots, push onward, ripping through steel pipes, cracking foundations, tearing up roads and pavements and fields sown with aversion and hate.

Kashmiri Poet Ayaz Rasool Nazki in ‘Morning at A Dying Lake’paints a pristine image of a mountain lake, shrinking and its flora and fauna gasping for life:

In the mountain sockets

Still laced with

A blemish of deodar trees

Sunil Sharma in ‘Water Dear’ uses very urban images to startle and shock the reader out of apathy:

The rationing is on, in tony neighbourhoods. One day, for one-hour only.

The fat women hoard it like gold

Terrorism is another common enemy tearing lives apart. ‘Bombs’ by Rainer Schulte versifies devastation:

 Bombs

turn dreams

 into unending screams

Its echoes are heard in ‘Time of Death’ by Rasool who aptly depicts desolation in a terror-struck zone:

Moth had written an epitaph

On the petals

On the marble panel

No one came to read it ever

No one came to light a candle

There was no mourning in death

In a world rife with disunity and discord, sensibilities of the poet cry to reach out, hold hands, cross bridges. Heath Brougher’s free verse ‘Invitation’ makes an urgent call:

I say the time

Is nigh to cast off these antiquated shackles

And free ourselves by taking a step forward.

I say we must cross the boundaries

Jaydeep Sarangi’s ‘True Indian’is a rhetoric on a quintessential secular Indian highly significant in the troubled times:

I see a rose

I gather lotus

I visit churches

The Indo-American poets do write about love, the most primordial emotion or the lack of it though their perspectives differ. In Gjeke Marinaj’s ‘Twenty-Four Hours of Love’ personal emotions beautifully coalesce with nature:

Twilight had sensed our need to seek out a hiding-place somewhere

It melted everything down to the color of chocolate,  which ends with a chic modern image:

“New evening and undid the top buttons of her black shirt;

And for us she hung on her neck the moon washed in gold”.

Parneet Jaggi’s ‘Love Transforms’ dwells on the feeling of love and its deep inner nuances:

“Eyes shut themselves to open to subtler visions

Ears turn inward to a wordless world,

Mind waits not for the lover to appear and make love”.

Whereas Sharmila Ray writes about her inability to write on love in a devastated and disillusioned world –‘I’ve forgotten how to write a love poem’.

For those of us fed on English poets Sanjukta Dasgupta’s ‘If Winter Comes…’ stands out as a marker of an Indian winter to be cherished as opposed to its western avatar:

“Winter is our season of feasts and fairs

 “We do not long for spring in winter”

“Of kash flowers in autumn

Till winter makes the jaggery drip”

There are poems by Dah Helmer weaving fairy tale characters in its tapestry to tell tales as well as poems that braid Indian and Western mythical characters by, Sunil Sharma and Sharmila Ray. Horrors of history are revisited in Gopal Lahiri’s ‘Jallianwallah Bagh Muse’ making it a living presence:

In the evening memorial lights are falling on the wounds 

Empty gaze of water is still misty, still hazy

Mandira Ghosh’s poem blasts into the sun’s periphery, deconstructs human body into atoms yet sees a solar eclipse and prays to the sun:

“Oh Sun! Purify us

Pardon our sins”

Vinita Agarwal’s ‘She wolf’remindsone of Blake’s ‘Tyger’, a pithy image shouting out the state of Indian woman:

 She has scented the wolf in her

uprooted the fake pews of pious womanhood…a fight for dignity

a sheet of self-esteem, an iron caress

 ‘Credit Cards’ by Rainer Schulte warns of the dangers of digitization balancing on the verge of spirituality. Pradip Biswal’s ‘Nero isn’t dead’ echoes the feelings of every man across the globe subject to governmental apathy. Time and space restrict the unravelling of the myriad hues in this collection which entice exploration.

Tanmoy Chakraborty has translated all the poets to introduce them to the Bengali reader as a teaser. However, his translations engage the critic into the processes of translating, word for word or transcreation and more so because arguments are rife about the translatability of poetry. “Poetry is what gets lost in translation,” claims Robert Frost whereas Voltaire says “It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?”

In a translation of ‘Between my country and the others, as ministry’, he translates ‘forget -me-not blues’ as ‘oporajita’ a blue Indian flower, this can be seen as an attempt to adapt the culture into the target language.  However, ‘Twenty-four hours of love’, does lose out on the sophistication in the image of night unbuttoning her shirt to hang ‘a moon washed in gold‘. But these could be seen as lost in translation — in transposing in words from a culture unfamiliar with the gestures of another culture. Bengali readers though can get an idea of the range of contemporary poetry being written in English across the globe.

The Anthology invites a detailed reading and exploration. It deserves a place in any poetry lovers’ bookshelf, for bringing in so many poets from across the world with diverse cultures in one place and offering the reader an eclectic and arresting read.

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Madhu Sriwastav is an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of English at Bamanpukur Humayun Kabir Mahavidyalaya. She is based in Kolkata. She is an academician, poet, translator, critic, reviewer and short story writer. Her articles have been published in National and International journals. She is a performing poet and has performed on various National and International platforms such as Guntur Poetry Festival, ISISAR Poetry Festival, Apeejay Kalam Literary Festival etc. She has published her poems in various prestigious National and International journals and anthologies such as The Vase, Setu, Glomag, OPA, Amravati Prism, Culture and Diversity etc.

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

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Review

‘God is a circle whose centre is everywhere’

Book Review by Dustin Pickering

Title: My Poetic Offering

Author: Manab Manik

Publisher: BooksClinic Publishing, 2019

Manab Manik’s My Poetic Offering is clearly an invocation to the Divine. Manik seeks the bosom of the Eternal Lord present in all religions and poetries. In this delightful and unpretentious presentation of sonnet-styled verse, the poet reminds us that divinity is not a fruitless quest. To seek the divine is the heart of poetry itself and the poet in these verses makes it abundantly obvious that he is presented with divinity in his soul. Edgar Allan Poe writes in The Veil of the Soul that the definition of art is “the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul”.

These verses are formal in character and not for the frivolous minds. These poems are not for indulgence but rather for enlightened thought. He writes in the opening poem ‘Prayer to the Almighty’:

Oh Lord! I have a simple prayer to thee,

I pray to thee,

I pray to thee,

Not for my own happiness and peace,

But for those,

Who remain in darkness,

Who are half-fed, unfed, and badly dressed.

The composition style is direct, formal, and delightful to read. Manik’s verses often are intoned with Wordworthian splendour in the “tranquil remembrance of emotion” to paraphrase the famous statement.  

Wordsworth writes a seeming reflection on the thought in ‘The Solitary Reaper’. He writes

“Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!”

Manik seeks in solitude to enrapture himself around the question of divinity. These verses are not so much seeking, as expressing what is already found by the poet. God becomes a teacher and muse as in poems such as ‘Thorny Way of Thy Life to Immortality’ where the poet writes this sublime verse: “In my mind’s eye glows and glows thy life and thorn, / Leaving bloody foot-prints thou invent a wise morn.” Nature is seen a book in several poems such as ‘Thy Inspiring Eternal Voice’ and ‘Shining Pages of Thy Life-Book’.

The inspiration for My Poetic Offering is not the crowd of believers. Manik writes to the earnest seeker, but his work is consecrated to the power of God, and to God Himself in the most eloquent of commendations. We do not read about the poet in My Poetic Offering. This collection is not confessional and does not intend a social message. It is what it claims to be on the cover: an offering to God through poetry.

However, we question throughout how the poet comes to know God. Does he provide any clues?

Life’s indeed a pamphlet, not a great book tho’,

Its pages can be turned o’er and gone thro’ at one go.

But the pages of thy life-book’ll ne’er end and stop

Thy book neither white ants nor Time can tear and chop.

By invoking Nature as the presence of white ants, the poem endears the reader to a sense of gentleness and eternal love. Even the smallest creatures are life’s guidebook. However, something eternal and essential to life exists in the Beyond. The poet indicates eternity can be perceived through Nature.

With these notes, do we even conclude the poet knows God? In what sense does the poet know God? We understand through the lines of verse that the writing speaks for itself and is a consecration to divinity. However, we cannot assess how the poet concludes God actually exists. We can only surmise this through his eloquent and dedicatory verse written in passages such as:

The stars, planets, satellites’re lone in cosmic address,

But in my mind’s cosmos thou art crowned with laurel headdress.

(From ‘My Apollo’)

The individual mind grasps intuitively, or through faith, what is not revealed. Within each person, there is a universe; as microcosms, we contain infinitely small things within us.

Manib Manik is not a seeker himself but appears to one who is found. It is written in the Bhagavad Gita that, “Maya makes all things: what moves, what is unmoving. / O son of Kunti, that why the world spins…” and Jesus Christ speaks to the crowd thus, “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.” (Matthew 6:28, KJV)

When someone is curious and lacks conceit in God, the Creator may make His presence known. However, it is a choice of the poet to use his gift to acknowledge the beautiful God within us all. In his designations and mythical allusions, Manik completes the circle of what we call divine humanity. St. Augustine wrote, “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.” These poems express heady and highly refined sentiment toward God. With such spiritual fervour does the poet write that the reader may only listen to what he or she already intones within the soul.

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Dustin Pickering is the founder of Transcendent Zero Press and editor-in-chief of Harbinger Asylum. He has authored several poetry collections, a short story collection, and a novella. He is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2018. He is a former contributor to Huffington Post. 

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

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Review

Pearls of a Strawberry Moon: Mystic Journey of an Awakened Self

Book review by Keshab Sigdel

Title: Pearls of a Strawberry Moon

Author: Monalisa Dash Dwibedy
 

Monalisa Dash Dwibedy’s Pearls of a Strawberry Moon is not an ordinary collection of poems that only records the mundane realities of our times, our successes and failures, or our memories and hopes for the future. The poet meditates on the world around her, grows, and allows her awakened self to introspect objectively. She provides us with a yogic view of the world; not renunciation but an evaluation of the self and makes herself a witness to the demolition of her own ego.

In the times when poetry has been reduced to mere narratives of our own experiences, Monalisa has made it a vehicle for a serious purpose: search for wisdom

Everyone is subject to the pain and pleasure of their own life experiences. But they are not poetry in themselves. Churning those experiences for the realization of the ‘truth’ is what makes poetry. Monalisa has demonstrated herself as a meticulous observer of both the outer and the inner world. 

She has divided her poems into three thematic sections: ‘Life’, ‘Lament’ and ‘Miracles’. The poems in the life category describe the human endeavour to seek happiness. They portray life in its totality. Verses in the second category ‘Laments’ include the ones of sufferings, regrets and failures. The last category, ‘Miracles’, covers the future, an alternate reality as perceived by the poet. All these poems are woven by a single thread of reflexivity of an awakened self.

The first poem in the collection,’My Life in Two blue Suitcases’ is a testimony of the poet’s divided self between the promises of the far-off lands and the warmth back home:

When the distant tracks call me,

Opening their arms,

I walk out of my comfort zone,

To embrace red-dusted earth and blue skies.

….. 

Staring far along the open roads,

As long as the sun shines upon me,

I try not to look back,

So many lives,

So many places,

Unseen.

There are millions of people who have left their birthplaces for better opportunities, but they have never been sure if that was really what they wanted. A perpetual desire to belong to the past continues to haunt their existence.

In ‘Soul of a Forest’, the poet tries to observe what is forgotten and neglected, the unseen. It is that unseen that has protected the seed of our life; that has nurtured the fragrance and the light we crave for. When she roams in the wilderness of the jungle, she finds darkness all around. But darkness is not the end. She reveals she knew that “the forest had a soul”.

In ‘A Butterfly’, the poet tries to find an answer to the question: what is the ultimate truth? The butterfly showcases an analogy of transformation from a caterpillar to flying wings! Change is the essence of existence. Being is not remaining static but transforming—probably for a higher goal. She writes:

A caterpillar to a butterfly,

Evolve through the dark,

I will gift my wings,

Kiss the sun.

Human beings are the slaves of their own ego. Our conscience is dictated by our ego. It is only when a great inspiration drenches us with all its compassionate blessing, we forget the ego. The real bliss is in surrendering the ego. ‘In Presence of the Master’, the poet creates an oxymoron to present this difficult passage of spiritual growth where the “surrendering of ego” becomes the most “ego-satisfying”:

Time stands still,

I melt in his presence.

Surrendering remnants of ego,

Was never so ego-satisfying.

The poet has tried to expose the limitations of human beings in ‘To the Atlantic’. In the poem, man’s vulnerability to nature is described in this way:

To the mighty ocean! We raised a toast

Roaring afternoon waves

Silenced our chorus,

The sea mocked and waves laughed

Watching us lose our thunder.

 ‘Let Me Unlock’ appears to be a romantic poem on the surface. But diving deep, we find out that it echoes the importance of independence and freedom of expression.

My love is locked,

In the vast vacuum of your heart,

Unable to find expressions.

The poems in the thematic section ‘Miracle’ resonate the poet’s expectations. In ‘A Thousand Love Affairs’, the poet expresses her unconditional love to the human and non-human. She loves them without purpose, with no expectations for any return: “My heart blossoms as it does not know heartbreak, despair or dark abyss.”

‘The World Goes Blind’ has the poet imagining that the universe has stopped and the world’s reverses from darkness to light. This reflects the poet’s sensitivity towards the darkness of inhumanity that prevails in the world. And she sincerely wishes to reverse it. Another poem, ‘A Speck of Dust’, is a meditation on how a seemingly insignificant dust speck is the source of magic for nature’s worldly manifestation.  

‘Strawberry Moon’, the titular poem shows that the moon is eternal but is hung on its axis and man is transient and craves for the eternal. This incongruous juxtaposition of the moon and man provides us an opportunity to contemplate our lives – our desires and the reality we are destined for.

‘Fall’ tells the story of a season that undoes nature’s artistry. Everything has a limit; even creativity and construction. The old has to be demolished so that it makes place for the new. Everything has its time.

 ‘Niagara’ is a mystic poem where the poet imagines transforming herself into water droplets to immerse with the vastness of water:

How I can become one with the magnificent, majestic nature

Until I transform myself into a drop of water?

 ‘Goodbye’ brings forth the eternal struggle between the worldly ego and the awakened self. The first is merely a role player without knowing that she is a role player. The awakened self is a conscious witness. The poet wishes to bid goodbye to the unconscious self.

The last poem in the anthology, ‘I Set My Soul Free’ is, if not a declaration, at least a reflection, on the inner desire of the poet. The poet continues to live in her bodily form. Free soul is a metaphor of liberation — not only her personal social freedom, but freedom from desires.

A sincere delving into Monalisa’s poems clearly suggests the range of her imaginative horizon and poetic craftsmanship. I feel privileged to write my feelings for her poems. I invite the readers to have a go at them.

Keshab Sigdel is a poet, translator and critic based in Kathmandu. He is also the International Coordinating Committee Member of World Poetry Movement (www.wpm2011.org). He teaches poetry at Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University.

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Review

Unbecoming: A Woman’s Journey to the Future

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Unbecoming: A Memoir of Disobedience

Author: Anuradha Bhagwati

Publisher: Atria Books/ Simon & Schuster Inc.

“After a lifetime of buckling to the demands of her strict Indian parents, Anuradha Bhagwati abandons grad school in the Ivy League to join the Marines—the fiercest, most violent, most masculine branch of the military—determined to prove herself there in ways, she couldn’t before. Yet once training begins, Anuradha’s G.I. Jane fantasy is punctured. As a bisexual woman of color in the military, she faces underestimation at every stage, confronting misogyny, racism, sexual violence, and astonishing injustice perpetrated by those in power; “says the blurb.

“Pushing herself beyond her limits, she also wrestles with what drove her to pursue such punishment in the first place. Once her service concludes in 2004, Anuradha courageously vows to take to task the very leaders and traditions that cast such a dark cloud over her time in the Marines. Her efforts result in historic change, including the lifting of the ban on women from pursuing combat roles in the military,”marks the blurb.

Unbecoming – A Memoir of Disobedience by Anuradha Bhagwati is a rare and indefatigable memoir by a former US Marine Captain. She chronicles her journey — from a dutiful daughter of immigrants to a radical activist affecting historic policy reforms.

New York-based Writer, yoga and meditation teacher, founder of  Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) —  which brought national attention to sexual violence in the military and helped overturn the ban on women in com­bat — Anuradha is a regular media commentator too  on issues related to national security, women’s rights, civil rights, and mental health, and is the recipient of numerous awards.

1975-born Anuradha’s parents, Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai, are renowned economists. While her parents were trying to assimilate in a country where their intellect did not protect them from racism, she grew up in a predominantly white America. 

Recounts Anuradha in this three-hundred -and -odd page memoir: “I had always been my parents’ little girl. Their only child, for some reason. I was shy in front of people and terrified of being in groups. I listened to Mom and Dad completely. Because they had a lot to say, I did a lot of listening. Mom met Dad in Boston when she was in graduate school at Harvard and he was teaching at MIT. They were both economists. This all meant nothing to me except that they were always going to the office or on their way to conferences.

“I remember flashes. Mom wore saris and a red powdered bindi on her forehead, and Dad made me a mug of hot chocolate with Hershey’s cocoa powder and milk for breakfast. Sometimes he and I sat together before sunrise in the quiet house while I sipped my cocoa through a plastic straw and he listened to the morning news on a tiny black-and-white television set.”

The memoir is objective: “My father was constantly being told he was brilliant, and he believed it. When we walked through airports on trips to India, random men would stop before him and bow. Dad loved these moments. Mom hated them. But for all of Dad’s fame, he never seemed settled.”

She side-splittingly writes about her father who never made it to the Nobel Prize:  “It is a testament to my family’s strange narcissism that I knew what a Nobel Prize was when I was a toddler. My parents referred to it as ‘The Nobel’, and the consensus was that Dad had been robbed. Every September I witnessed my parents’ tortured theater as they tossed the names of potential winners around the dinner table. Each year when Dad was passed over for one of his colleagues, I would ask him gingerly how he was. He delivered the only line that ever made him feel better. ‘Oh, I’m fine. Even Gandhiji didn’t win a Nobel.’”

Anuradha’s voice as an émigré and her Indian experience makes for wonderful reading. It is audacious: she writes about her own flaws and that of her parents. It is about the inevitable love for one’s parents unlaced by hero worship.

Her mother was a pioneer in her field. Her father quit his job at MIT to support his wife when she got tenure in Columbia University. “My mother had been through so much,” she says. “She was really shamed when she was in India and was in an abusive marriage that was not her fault. So, she came to the US to start a new life. She had been keeping this traumatic incident from me and (trying to) reinvent herself.”

Years later, Anuradha encountered similar systemic sexism in the Marines. It was her mother’s experience that helped her find the courage to support others. “I was in command of 400 troops at one time. It was a lot of responsibility,” she says in the book. “When there was someone who was sexually harassing the women in my unit, it was my moment of reckoning. My mother gave me the courage to stick up for myself and these women.”

The narrator is a lot frank when she says, “Every Indian family seemed to have a story about a handsy Indian uncle or neighbor. Stories about sexual violence were told in whispers if they were told at all. Without any talks about birds and bees, I had no way of knowing the difference between sex, love, and violence. I had to find out on my own.”

Reminisces Anuradha in this enthralling auto-biography about her school days: “At thirteen, Bianca was one year older than me, and very thin, with budding curves around the hips. She wore shoes that adult women wore, with tapered toes and heels. Her jeans fit closely to her legs. I could spot Bianca in a crowd of kids by her bright-red lipstick. It drew out the green in her eyes and the dark brown in her hair. Bianca was some kind of Italian goddess, and I would never look like her.

“Bianca was crying this morning, and our teachers had surrounded her. Mascara was dripping down both of her cheeks. She had a complexion that was beyond white. It was the kind of porcelain I saw in museums, where security guards warned us not to touch anything. A face like Bianca’s inspired great art, and grave concern. The news reached us like the telephone game, from one child’s seat to the next. On her way to school, a strange man attacked Bianca, touched her in some harmful way. Bianca was still crying audibly, surrounded by a ring of adults.”

The memoir is gripping and powerful for precisely two reasons: first, about growing up in America as an Indian; and second, the relationship with her parents. In a deeply conservative household, when she discovered that she was bisexual, her mother threatened to kill herself if she did not end it then.

Unbecoming addresses the proverbial dilemma of confronting traditional expectations as a South Asian daughter. The book is an insightful story about a daughter of immigrants who tries to find her place in the country of immigrants while enduring racism, homophobia, and sexism. It tells the story of how she finally finds the courage to become an activist to “change the landscape of America to make it safer for women and children.”

The memoir is a veritable account of indomitable spirit “grappling with the timely question of what, exactly, America stands for.” It is about one woman who learned to believe in herself in spite of everything. It is the kind of story that will light a fire beneath you, and inspire the next generation of doughty female heroes.

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Bhaskar Parichha is a Bhubaneswar-based  journalist and author. He writes on a broad spectrum of  subjects , but more focused on art ,culture and biographies.His recent book ‘No Strings Attached’ has been published by Dhauli Books. 

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