Title: The Fragrance of Rain: A Brief History of the Monsoon
Author: Stephen Alter
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Stephen Alter has long established himself as one of India’s finest chroniclers of landscape, memory, and the natural world. In The Fragrance of Rain: A Brief History of the Monsoon, he turns his attention to the phenomenon that has shaped the subcontinent more profoundly than perhaps any other force of nature—the monsoon. The result is a richly textured work that combines travel writing, environmental history, natural science, and cultural reflection into a compelling narrative that celebrates India’s most anticipated season.
At its heart, the book is a journey. Alter traces the progress of the monsoon from the southern coast of Kerala through the Western Ghats, the forests of Goa, the plains of North India, and the mist-covered hills of Mussoorie. Yet this is not merely a geographical expedition. It is also an exploration of the countless ways in which rain has influenced the lives, livelihoods, imagination, and history of the people of the Indian subcontinent. The monsoon emerges not simply as a weather system but as a civilisational force that has determined agricultural cycles, guided maritime trade, nurtured ecosystems, inspired artistic expression, and shaped political destinies.
A key strength of the book is Alter’s ability to weave together diverse strands of knowledge without losing narrative momentum. He moves effortlessly from meteorology to mythology, from ecology to economics, from history to literature. Readers encounter perfumers in Kannauj who preserve the scent of rain in tiny bottles, fishermen who read the skies with remarkable precision, scientists tracking elusive amphibians and glowing fungi, and artists whose works reflect humanity’s enduring fascination with clouds and storms. These encounters lend the book a vibrant human dimension and prevent it from becoming a purely academic study.
The prose is among the finest aspects of the work. He writes with the sensitivity of a naturalist and the observational acuity of a seasoned traveller. His descriptions of rain-laden landscapes are evocative without becoming sentimental. Whether portraying the first monsoon clouds gathering over the Arabian Sea or the dense mist enveloping Himalayan ridges, he captures the sensory richness of the season with remarkable clarity. Readers can almost smell the damp earth, hear the distant thunder, and feel the coolness that follows a long spell of summer heat.
The title itself points to one of the book’s central concerns: the emotional and sensory experience of rain. Alter understands that the monsoon occupies a unique place in the Indian imagination. It is a season associated with longing and fulfilment, romance and renewal, abundance and uncertainty. Across centuries, poets, musicians, painters, and storytellers have celebrated its arrival. The author explores these cultural representations with insight, demonstrating how the monsoon has become a recurring metaphor for transformation, desire, and hope.
At the same time, The Fragrance of Rain does not romanticise its subject. Alter acknowledges the monsoon’s unpredictability and its capacity for destruction. Floods, landslides, crop failures, and storms are integral to the story. As climate change intensifies weather extremes, the monsoon has become increasingly erratic, raising urgent questions about environmental sustainability and human resilience. Without becoming alarmist, the author highlights these concerns and encourages readers to appreciate the delicate balance upon which ecosystems and communities depend.
The book also succeeds as a work of environmental writing because of its deep attention to biodiversity. Alter’s fascination with wildlife and natural habitats is evident throughout. His encounters with rare species and fragile ecosystems reveal a world that thrives because of seasonal rainfall yet remains vulnerable to ecological disruption. These passages add depth and reinforce the idea that the monsoon is not merely a climatic event but a life-giving process that sustains countless forms of existence.
The Fragrance of Rain is much more than a history of weather. It is a meditation on nature, culture, memory, and belonging. Stephen Alter has produced a work that is informative, beautifully written, and deeply engaging. By blending personal observation with historical and ecological insight, he reminds us that the monsoon remains one of India’s most powerful and defining experiences. Like the season it celebrates, the book is refreshing, nourishing, and lingering in its impact—a rewarding read for anyone interested in India, nature, or the intricate relationship between climate and civilisation.
Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
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There is a cartographic trick that India plays on the careless observer. Place a finger on Goa, cradled in the lap of the Western Ghats where the Mandovi meets the Arabian Sea. Now drag that finger clean across the peninsula — past the Deccan plateau, past the red laterite and the black cotton soil — until it arrives at Odisha, where the Mahanadi fans into the Bay of Bengal. The distance is vast. The terrain changes several times over. And yet, when you finally arrive, you feel, inexplicably, that you have not travelled at all. You have merely walked from one room of the same house into another.
Goa and Odisha are India’s fraternal twins, stationed like sentinels on opposite coasts, facing outward toward different oceans but turning inward toward an almost identical soul. They share no border, no common neighbour, no obvious historical corridor. And yet their resemblances are so startling, so layered, that they make a quiet mockery of the assumption that east and west shall never meet. In this country, at least, they have been meeting all along.
The Plate That Speaks First
Begin where all honest cultural inquiry must begin — at the table. In both Goa and Odisha, the grammar of a meal is written in two words: rice and fish. The xitt-kodi of a Goan Catholic household — rice with fish curry — is a mirror image of the bhata-machha that anchors every Odia thali. The curry leaves may change, the tamarind may yield to kokum, but the fundamental covenant between grain and sea remains unbroken.
Both states worship the coconut with equal fervour. It thickens their gravies, sweetens their desserts, oils their hair, and thatches their roofs. And in both places, the humble samosa — that deep-fried triangle of spiced potato — enjoys a curious and disproportionate celebrity, sold at every bus stand, every temple gate, every rain-drenched evening stall, as if it were the official snack of the coastline itself.
Weavers of Light
If food is the first language, cloth is the second. Odisha’s handloom tradition is among the most sophisticated in the world. The Sambalpuri ikat, with its geometric precision born of a tie-and-dye technique older than memory, is a textile that calculates like mathematics and sings like poetry. The Bomkai of Ganjam, the Kotpad of Koraput — each weave carries a district’s autobiography in its warp and weft.
Goa’s handloom heritage is no less poignant. The Kunbi saree, woven by the indigenous Kunbi community in checks of red and maroon, is a garment of earthy defiance — a refusal to vanish beneath the weight of colonial and commercial textile culture. In both states, the handloom is not an industry. It is an act of inheritance.
The handicraft traditions run parallel with uncanny symmetry. Odisha’s Pattachitra — those luminous scroll paintings rendered on cloth with pigments drawn from stone, earth, and lamp-black — find a philosophical cousin in Goa’s azulejos-inspired tile art and the painted terracotta work of its hinterlands. Odisha’s silver filigree from Cuttack, those impossibly intricate webs of metal that seem to have been spun by patient spiders, speak the same aesthetic dialect as the filigree and brass work of Goan artisans.
Temples, Tides, and the Slow Pulse
Both states are drenched in divinity. Odisha shelters the Jagannath Temple of Puri, whose Rath Yatra rolls through the world’s imagination every year, and the Konark Sun Temple, a stone chariot frozen mid-gallop toward the dawn. The Lingaraj Temple of Bhubaneswar presides over a city that was once a forest of a thousand shrines. Goa, often misread as merely a beach destination, guards some of the oldest Hindu temples in western India — the Mangeshi Temple, the Shanta Durga Temple, the Mahalasa Narayani, the Tambdi Surla — alongside the Basilica of Bom Jesus, where the remains of St. Francis Xavier lie in baroque silence. In both states, the sacred is not a Sunday affair. It is the air.
And then there is the pace. Both Goa and Odisha move at a tempo that the hyperventilating metros of India find baffling. The Goan susegad — that philosophy of contented ease — is a first cousin of the unhurried dignity with which Odisha conducts its daily life. Long before the global “slow living” movement became a wellness-industry buzzword, these two states had been practising it for centuries, not as aspiration but as instinct.
Songs in Different Scales
The musical traditions reveal yet another layer of kinship. Odisha gave the world Odissi — both the dance and the music — a classical tradition of astonishing fluidity, shaped by poets like Jayadeva, whose Gita Govinda remains one of the supreme lyric achievements in any language. The folk traditions — Dalkhai, Gotipua, the tribal Dhemsa — pulse with a rhythmic vitality that no concert hall can contain.
Goa’s musical soul lives in the Mando, a slow, swaying ballad of love and longing born from the encounter between Konkani sensibility and Portuguese fado. The Dulpod, faster and more festive, is its playful sibling. And beneath the tourist-facing trance and EDM, Goa’s folk traditions — Fugdi, Dhalo, Dekhni — carry the same rooted, communal energy that Odisha’s village squares have known for generations.
Goa’s Tiatr and Odisha’s Jatra are born of the same impulse — raucous, deeply local theatre traditions that turn village squares into stages, blend music with social satire, and have for generations served as the people’s newspaper, courtroom, and concert hall rolled into one.
The Literary Mirror
The literary parallels are quietly profound. Fakir Mohan Senapati, the father of modern Odia literature, wrote Chha Mana Atha Guntha — a searing, ironic novella about land, power, and peasant dispossession — in the 1890s. Across the map, Goa’s literary tradition in Konkani, shaped by figures like Bakibab Borkar (the poet-laureate of Konkani verse), Ravindra Kelekar, and Damodar Mauzo, has grappled with similar themes of identity, colonial memory, and the tension between tradition and modernity. Odisha’s Pratibha Ray and Goa’s Mauzo — both Jnanpith laureates — wrote in languages the literary mainstream often overlooks, yet carved from Odia and Konkani respectively a body of work so luminous that the nation’s highest literary honour had no choice but to find its way to their doors. Both literatures are enormous in depth and criminally under-read outside their states.
Even the economies rhyme. Both states sit on vast mineral wealth — iron ore in Goa, iron ore, bauxite and coal in Odisha — and both have built significant chapters of their economic story on extraction. Mining has been, for decades, a genuine engine of revenue and employment. But prosperity extracted from the earth exacts its own price. Both states have watched hills reshaped and rivers thickened with slurry, and both have grappled with the same difficult question that every resource-rich society must eventually face: where does sustainable use end and irreversible damage begin? The Dongria Kondh resistance in Odisha’s Niyamgiri hills and Goa’s prolonged civic movement against unregulated mining are stories of communities recognising that the wealth beneath their feet should not come at the cost of the world above it. In both states, the mandate is the same: to mine responsibly, restore what can be restored, and find an economic imagination that honours both the ledger and the landscape.
Stone, Laterite, and the Architecture of Belonging
The buildings of Goa and Odisha could not, at first glance, look more different. Odisha’s architectural glory resides in the Kalinga style of temple building — a tradition that flowered between the sixth and thirteenth centuries and produced some of the most breathtaking sacred structures on the subcontinent. The Rekha Deula, with its curvilinear tower soaring heavenward, the Pidha Deula, with its stepped pyramid, and the barrel-vaulted Khakhara Deula — each is a masterclass in proportion, carved from sandstone and laterite without a drop of mortar, held together by iron dowels and the sheer precision of stone cut to stone. The Lingaraj Temple rises a hundred and eighty feet; the Sun Temple at Konark was conceived as a stone chariot for Surya himself.
Goa’s architectural signature, meanwhile, is the Indo-Portuguese house — the balcão-fronted villa with its oyster-shell windows, its Baroque churches, its colour-washed facades in ochre and cerulean and terracotta. Where Odisha built upward in devotion, Goa built outward in conviviality.
And yet the kinship runs deeper than surface style. Both traditions are rooted in laterite — that rust-red, iron-rich stone quarried from the earth itself — and in an instinctive dialogue between structure and climate. Goan houses, whether Hindu or Catholic, were designed around the monsoon: thick laterite walls to absorb the heat, sloping roofs of Mangalore tile to shed the deluge, courtyards to channel light and air. The traditional Hindu house in Goa, with its rajangan (courtyard) and its Tulasi Vrindavan (holy basil) at its centre, is an inward-looking sanctuary not unlike the courtyard homes of rural Odisha, where domestic life orbits an open-air heart and thatched or tiled roofs slope against the same seasonal fury. In both states, the house is not merely shelter. It is a cosmology — oriented by Vastu[1], shaped by rain, and built from the very ground on which it stands.
The Sacred as Daily Bread
Spirituality in Goa and Odisha is not a compartment of life; it is the wallpaper. In Odisha, they say Bara Masa re Tera Parba — thirteen festivals in twelve months — and this is not hyperbole but arithmetic. From Rath Yatra to Raja Parba, from Nuakhai to Kumar Purnima, the Odia calendar is a procession of devotion, agriculture, and communal joy so tightly woven that one cannot tell where worship ends and daily life begins. The festivals are tied to the rice cycle — seeding, sowing, harvesting — so that the act of farming itself becomes a prayer. Odisha is a land where Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism have coexisted and cross-pollinated for millennia, leaving behind the cave monasteries of Udayagiri and Khandagiri, the Buddhist stupas of Ratnagiri and Lalitgiri, and the Shakti temples that dot the landscape like exclamation marks of feminine divinity.
Goa answers with its own brand of sacred pluralism. Here, Hindus light candles at the Basilica of Bom Jesus, and Catholics offer prayers at the Shantadurga temple at Fatorpa. The feast of Our Lady of Miracles gathers both communities under the same roof, exchanging oil and candles between church and temple as naturally as neighbours exchange sugar. The Zagor celebrations and the Shigmo festival are not Hindu events attended by Christians out of politeness; they are Goan events, full stop. In both states, religion is not a doctrine to be debated but a rhythm to be lived — embedded in the morning’s first lamp, the evening’s last bell, and every meal served between.
The Farmer and the Monsoon
Rice is not merely the staple food of Goa and Odisha; it is the organising principle of their rural civilisations. In Odisha, paddy covers nearly seventy per cent of cultivated land, and the entire social calendar revolves around its seasons — Akshaya Tritiya marks the seeding, Raja Sankranti the completion of sowing, Nuakhai the first tasting of the new harvest. The traditional beushening method — broadcasting seed and then tilling post-emergence — speaks of a farming intelligence shaped by centuries of reading the monsoon, the soil, and the floodplain.
In Goa, the ingenuity takes another form: the Khazan system, an ancient network of bunds and sluice gates that reclaim low-lying coastal land from the tides, allowing farmers to cultivate salt-tolerant rice varieties and rear fish and prawns in the same fields. It is an act of ecological engineering so elegant that modern agronomists study it as a model of sustainable land use.
Both states grow coconut, cashew, and areca nut alongside their paddy. Both rely overwhelmingly on the monsoon — Odisha’s irrigation covers barely a third of its cultivable land, and much of Goa’s paddy is rainfed. Both are lands of small and marginal farmers, where the average holding is modest and the relationship between cultivator and earth is intimate, personal, and unmediated by large-scale mechanisation. And in both states, a quiet revolution is underway: Odisha’s Millets Mission and Goa’s growing organic farming movement are attempts to reclaim indigenous crop diversity from the grip of high-yield monoculture — to remember that the land, like the people, thrives best when it is allowed its full vocabulary.
The Playing Field
In a nation drunk on cricket, Goa and Odisha are the two states that have had the audacity to fall in love with other sports. Goa is India’s football heartland. The game arrived with an Irish priest in 1883 and never left. Clubs like Salgaocar, Dempo, and Churchill Brothers have won national titles; six Goans have captained the Indian football team. During the FIFA World Cup, Goan streets erupt into a carnival of flags and giant screens, and the village tournament — barefoot boys on a laterite pitch — remains as sacred as Sunday Mass. Football in Goa is not a sport. It is an identity.
Odisha’s sporting soul beats to a different drum — the hockey stick. The state has produced legends like Dilip Tirkey, Amit Rohidas, Sunita Lakra, and Deep Grace Ekka, and became the first state government in India to sponsor the national hockey team. The Birsa Munda International Hockey Stadium in Rourkela, which hosted the 2023 World Cup, is a monument to Odisha’s commitment. But what unites both states is not the particular sport but the underlying defiance: a refusal to accept cricket’s monopoly on the Indian sporting imagination.
Both states also share a love for traditional and community games — Kho Kho and Kabaddi[2] are played at village festivals in both, and both have ISL football franchises (FC Goa and Odisha FC) that draw passionate, roaring crowds. The playing field, it turns out, is yet another room in the same house.
Rivers, Mangroves, and the Shared Ecology
The ecological parallels between these two states are no less striking. Both are coastal, riverine, and monsoon-fed. Both shelter significant mangrove ecosystems — the Khazan mangroves along Goa’s estuaries and the Bhitarkanika mangrove forests of Odisha, one of the largest in India. Both are biodiversity hotspots: Goa’s Western Ghats forests are a UNESCO heritage site, while Odisha’s Simlipal and Satkosia reserves harbour tiger, elephant, and crocodile populations of national importance. The Olive Ridley sea turtles that nest on Odisha’s Gahirmatha beach have cousins that occasionally visit Goa’s Morjim. Both states understand, in their bones, that the sea is not merely a border but a livelihood, a deity, and a defining force — and that the mangrove, the estuary, and the fishing village are not the periphery of civilisation but its very foundation.
And then there is the matter of diaspora. Both Goa and Odisha are states whose people have scattered across the world yet remain fiercely tethered to home. The Goan communities of Bombay, the Gulf, the UK and Lisbon mirror the Odia communities of US, Europe, Surat, Hyderabad, and beyond. In both cases, the expatriate carries the cuisine, the festival calendar, and the mother tongue like a portable homeland — and returns, without fail, for the annual feast or the harvest celebration, as though the umbilical cord to the village were made not of flesh but of something altogether more durable.
Goa and Odisha do not need a bridge between them. They already are the bridge — two ends of a single cultural arc that bends across the Indian landmass, proving that civilisational kinship does not require geographical proximity. They are proof that identity in India is not merely a function of latitude and longitude but of something deeper: a shared covenant with the sea, with rice, with the loom, with the slow and sacred act of living.
If India is a house with many rooms, these two states are the twin balconies — one facing the sunset, the other the sunrise — built from the same stone, painted in the same light, listening to the same tide.
East and West do not merely meet here. They embrace.
[1] science of architecture in alignment with natural forces
Drops of water gather to make a wave. The waves make oceans that reshape land masses over time…
Five years ago, on March 14th, in the middle of the pandemic, five or six of us got together to start an online forum called Borderless Journal. The idea was to have a space that revelled with the commonality of felt emotions. Borderless was an attempt to override divisive human constructs and bring together writers and ideators from all over the Earth to have a forum open to all people — a forum which would be inclusive, tolerant, would see every individual as a part of the fauna of this beautiful planet. We would be up in the clouds — afloat in an unbordered stratosphere— to meet and greet with thoughts that are common to all humans, to dream of a world we can have if we choose to explore our home planet with imagination, kindness and love. It has grown to encompass contributors from more than forty countries, and readers from all over the world — people who have the same need to reach out to others with felt emotions and common concerns.
Borderless not only celebrates the human spirit but also hopes to create over time a vibrant section with writings on the environment and climate change. We launch the new section today on our fifth anniversary.
Devraj Singh Kalsi with a soupçon of ironic amusement muses on humans’ attitude to the fauna around him and Farouk Gulsara lays on a coating of sarcasm while addressing societal norms. Meredith Stephens brings us concerns for a green Earth when she beachcombs in a remote Australian island. Prithvijeet Sinha continues to familiarise us with his city, Lucknow. Suzanne Kamata, on the other hand travels to Rwanda to teach youngsters how to write a haiku!
Professor Fakrul Alam takes us to libraries in Dhaka with the hope that more will start writing about the waning of such paradises for book lovers. Other than being the month that hosts World Environment Day, March also homes, International Women’s Day. Commemorating the occasion, we have essays from Meenakshi Malhotra on the past poetry of women and from Ratnottama Sengupta on women in Bengali Cinema. Sengupta has also interviewed Poulami Bose Chatterjee, the daughter of the iconic actor Soumitra Chatterjee to share with us less-known vignettes from the actor’s life. Keith Lyons has interviewed Malaysian writer-editor Daphne Lee to bring to us writerly advice and local lores on ghosts and hauntings.
We also have a translation by Lourdes M Supriya from Hindustani of a student’s heartrending cry to heal from grief for a teacher who faced an untimely end — a small dirge from Tanvir, a youngster with his roots in Nithari violence who transcended his trauma to teach like his idol and tutor, the late Sanjay Kumar. With this, we hope to continue with the pandies corner, with support from Lourdes and Anuradha Marwah, Kumar’s partner.
Borderless has grown in readership by leaps and bounds. There have been requests for books with writings from our site. On our fifth anniversary, we plan to start bringing out the creative writing housed in Borderless Journal in different volumes. We had brought out an anthology in 2022. It was well received with many reviews. But we have many gems, and each writer is valued here. Therefore, Rhys Hughes, one of our editorial board members, has kindly consented to create a new imprint to bring out books from the Borderless Journal. We are very grateful to him.
We are grateful to the whole team, our contributors and readers for being with us through our journey. We would not have made it this far without each one of you. Special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork too, something that has almost become synonymous with the cover page of our journal. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Wish you all happy reading! Do pause by our content’s page and take a look at all the wonderful writers.
This happened far, far away from the home of the Incas; in a kingdom where Sindbad was born…
When the afternoon sun rays briskly melted into the sea and the sandy beach bathed in its glittering waves, a boy in his teens, sporting a mullet haircut, lounged in one of the decorative corners of an elite semi-outdoor eatery. He sat, busy scratching his legs with one hand and handling his phone with the other. The itchiness disturbed him. He failed to repel a menacing minuscule creature that lurked under the table. He spoke less. His eyes glued to the screen. The scowl he wore on his forehead highlighted his teenage disposition. His sombreness confirmed his teenage manifestations.
His family sat in awe to appraise the affluent ambience of the Peruvian-themed restaurant by the shore of the Arabian Sea. An enormous vintage carved wood chandelier hung from the ceiling. It sprinkled dust of subtle golden light on the faces ogling up to adore it. Bonsai trees, creepers, elaborate Inca statues, and artefacts artfully contributed to the extravaganza. The crisp December draft made the semi-outdoor setting perfect for an exotic lunch. “Cheer up young man! The December heat has lulled the desert heat, what makes you frown?” a middle aged man, presumably his father interrupted his attention a little more.
“Welcome to the paradise!” A swanky waiter attended the guests in his customary white shirt, black pants and black waistcoat. He stood coated with a half-bistro apron around his waist and a pleasant smile. His generous hands served inviting prawn crackers and tempting avocado guacamole. “I would like to have Eyes of Inti[1],” the boy ordered a drink with a quick smile. “Great choice!” he hurried in and returned with the beverage. “Should you prefer sitting indoors? I must ask you this because some guests complained of mosquitoes two days back. Mosquitoes get nasty on you. It shouldn’t spoil your experience with us.” His teeth shone like pearls as he grinned.
“Oh, they still didn’t trouble us. We prefer sticking to this table. It’s lovely out here,” the boisterous voice of the man answered.
While methodically placed the cutlery on the table, the waiter continued. “No one fancies an attack from the monsters with their dangling moustache at lunchtime. They hum until they get tired of singing. When you become heedless, they sit on your bare skin to suck your blood with their straw-like weapon. Did you ever crush them between your palms to witness the lifeline in your palm raise a toast to your success with a daub of blood?” he chuckled at the boy and graciously served a glass of mocktail infusion with a smouldering orange hue popping out. “Eyes of Inti for you. It tastes like the nectar of immortality. While you enjoy the Peruvian meal, Inti shall keep a watch on those little devils.”
The banter amused him. Moving away from his phone, he began scrolling through the menu. “One Pargo a la Trufa and Inca’s Rage for me, please,” The red snapper ceviche with loads of truffle made his stomach growl for food. “So, these devils with dangling moustaches and trenchant weapons own free passes to Paradise? Or, perhaps Inti was too distracted. The wrath of Inti’s nemesis — I mean the mosquitoes – waned Inca’s rage?” the boy smiled.
“Ahh! I’m not quite sure,” the waiter chortled with a bland look. A simper smile lingered on the boy’s face.
Swati Basu Das is a journalist based in Oman. Her columns and features on culture, and travel are published in newspapers and magazines. She relishes music, escapades, coffee and John Keats.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Lokenath Roy gives us a vignette of Juhu Beach, Mumbai[1]
Sunrise at Juhu: From Public Domain
You wake up to the wet, slimy plywood stuck to your long back brushed hair on the deck. It is morning already. The faint disc of the comforting winter sun bristles by your narrow eyes. Aditya guns his hoarse voice towards the sparse crew of the boat.
Another day on the Arabian Sea.
Bone-thin legs scramble to the colour-faded slippers as they flaccidly make their way down the pier. You trod the lukewarm Juhu surface sands. The legs dip deep at certain spots. It is still morgue cold underneath.
The shadows of posh skyscrapers do little to mask the scaly smell of fresh fish sold on rows of marble slabs. The dhaba[2] owner honks his hacked voice at the trickle of daily commuters. Scratching the rashes on your forearm you drag a pockmarked plastic chair from across the narrow alley. The smoking omelet with half-cooked onion bounces down your throat. This is breakfast every day.
The plastics pile up at this end. The ocean stays buried under trash cans, cardboard, and polythene. Ponds of rotting sabzi[3] stay entangle in decaying fishing nets. The gnawing boat treads this wasteland. Sahil adjusts the balloon bag as it fills up at the front. Your eyes scrape the collections on the deck for valuables. The stink gets to your nostrils, even under the thick-lined dirty handkerchief. This is livelihood.
You’re fourteen. The letters of the English alphabet only graze your eyes on the benches of dhabas, amongst folded newspapers left behind by morning office goers. You try to read them. An article on trash-clearing boats at the Juhu beach grabs your attention. Not the writing, but rather the image, the image of your boat. You bend forward, looking narrow-eyed into the pixels over the paper, trying to find any speck on the deck that resembles you.
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[1] The persons mentioned are fictitious but typical of people he has noticed
Lokenath Roy, a writer from Kolkata who explores themes of society, memory, and the human experience, has published in several literary journals and online magazines like The Cawnpore Magazine, The Monograph Magazine, The Aeos Magazine and the Borderless Journal.
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(Excerpted from Ramblings of a Bandra Boy by Ratnottama Sengupta)
Joy Bimal Roy looks back at the many 21 Januarys, his birthday, that have dotted 70 calendars
On 6th February 1950 Baba and Nabendu Kaku arrived together in Bombay to work on Bombay Talkies’ Maa. I wasn’t born then, so I can only wonder if either of them, or their illustrious fellow travellers Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Asit Sen even imagined what a life changing experience that journey would be for each of them and, ultimately, for Indian Cinema.
This small but immensely talented and visionary team — Baba as director, Nabendu Kaku as screenplay writer and Hrishi Kaku as editor — created some of the best loved and most remembered classics of the golden ’50s and early ’60s: Do Bigha Zamin, Devdas, Madhumati, Sujata and Bandini.
When I was born on 21st January 1955, this team was already well established and feted in Bombay film industry. Co-incidentally (or perhaps not, because is there any such thing as coincidence?) six days after my birth, a daughter Ratnottama — Uttama to me — was born to Nabendu Kaku and Kanak Kakima in the same, Mandakini Nursing Home in Bandra. Uttama and I instinctively formed a bond which continues till today and seems to strengthen over the years. For me this became the link between our two families.
*
Some silly astrologer told my parents that they should not celebrate my first seven birthdays — else, ill-luck would befall me. So I grew up going to birthday parties of other children and wondering why I never had one.
That could explain why to date I hate my birthdays. It is a day of introspection and soul searching, assessing the past year of my life for gains and losses. No wonder I am more depressed than usual by the end of the day.
All that changed on my 40th birthday thanks to Sriram, my college classmate, and my sister, Aparajita, who was in Mumbai from Kolkata at that time. Together they conspired to have a small celebration at home. Sriram, ever generous, brought the champagne and glasses as well because he was not sure we had any.
Paradoxically it was possibly the worst time in our lives. We had lost the eviction suit our landlords had filed against us in the Small Causes Court, and had been given four months to vacate the premises, of which two months were already up. My birthday was on 21st January and three weeks after that, on 14th February, we were supposed to vacate our home of 46 years — unless we got a Writ Petition admitted in the High Court.
Plonk in the middle of this mess, the thought of celebrating my birthday had not even crossed my mind. But when Sriram entered holding the champagne bottle aloft like a trophy, along with his petite and demure wife Enakshi, and my classmates Divyakant and Ajay, their love and concern were so palpable that suddenly my spirit soared and I felt free as a bird. If I was blessed to have friends like them, Life couldn’t be so bad after all.
It’s not that I celebrated every year after that but I was no longer traumatized on my birthdays.
*
The first birthday we celebrated after moving into our cottage was my 50th birthday. It doubled as a housewarming party, so it was a riotous affair. Everyone got high thanks to the ministrations of a bartender called Greenville and danced to blaring music like whirling dervishes. Our neighbours complained and the cops turned up.
Not bad for someone who started out in life with no birthday celebrations at all, eh?
*
When my 60th birthday dawned I was not feeling particularly celebratory. But my sister was coming down, this time from Hyderabad, my niece from Dubai and my nephew from England, and I didn’t want to disappoint them.
Our home at that time was overrun with cats and the garden was a mess, so I looked for a more welcoming venue. The only place I could think of was Kekee Manzil, home to our old family friend Kekoo Gandhy, founder of Chemould, India’s first commercial Art Gallery — and his daughters Rashna, Behroz and Shireen. I asked hesitantly but they agreed enthusiastically and I will always be grateful for that.
Kekee Manzil is an elegant and gracious villa, a heritage structure overlooking the Arabian Sea at Bandstand. At one point of time the Gandhy family also owned the adjacent property which once went by the name of Ville Vienna and housed Baba’s mentor Nitin Bose — and now is famous as Mannat, owned by Shah Rukh Khan.
The venue was the hero on that evening filled with friends, food and fun, not me. Because I was feeling singularly ill at ease about my appearance.
I hadn’t had the time or the bandwidth to figure out what to wear for this milestone birthday, so I had to settle for the only new kurta I had. Unfortunately it looked like tent on me. To make matters worse I had burgeoned to 95 kilos, so I felt like a beached whale.
I made a mental resolution. I HAD to lose weight that year. But as they say, the way to hell is paved with good intentions. So my resolution remained just that — until months had gone by…
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But before the year dovetailed into my 61st birthday, by sheer synchronicity I stumbled into the right dietician for me — and in eight months I lost 16 kg. Cereno, a trendy batch mate, told me about Zara and gave me a style tip for my hair. He said I would look much better if I had a very short haircut, like a crew cut. I didn’t like the idea of a crew cut but I realised I needed a makeover to go with my new clothes.
At the end of it all my reflection in the mirror was unrecognisable. A strange bald man looked back at me. My sister shrieked when she saw me but she was mollified by the favourable reaction of Cereno and other classmates.
The coup de grace was when a poker-faced Cereno borrowed my phone, fiddled with it, and handed it back to me saying he had put my profile on a dating app. “Just wait for five minutes,” he said, “and you’ll get your first hit.” Sure enough, after five minutes my phone went beep!
So in my 60th year I reinvented myself. Better late than never?
About the Book
Ramblingsof a Bandra Boy is a compilation of Joy Bimal Roy’s posts on social media between 2017 and 2020. These slices of life “served without any extra seasoning or fancy garnish” as he puts it, have been described by Rachel Dwyer, professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, London, as jottings in kheror khata, the traditional cloth bound notebook that Satyajit Ray — and his father Sukumar Ray before him — used to pen down thoughts and visuals that are world’s treasure. It covers life in the glitzy Bandra where most of the Bollywood crowd resides… giving glimpses of real life of the giants peopling the cinema screens.
About the Author
Joy Bimal Roy is the son of legendary Indian filmmaker, Bimal Roy, and one of India’s pioneer woman photographers, Manobina Roy. He started his filmmaking stint as an assistant director to Shyam Benegal.
Raj leisurely sipped his tea as he sat side-by-side with his wife on the balcony of their seventh floor flat facing the Arabian Sea. As a retired couple, this was their favourite time of day, enjoying the view of the setting sun with the great orange orb gradually diminishing in size before dipping completed out of view into the sea. The mellow serenity of the moment filled Raj with a nostalgic tenderness. He reached out to touch his wife’s hand and his outstretched fingers grazed a certain hard object, its brilliance undiminished through the passage of years.
Raj had first met his wife through the good offices of a family connection who also happened to be the community matchmaker. This venerable matriarch had insisted on accompanying them to her own trusted family jeweller for the purchase of the engagement ring. Not wanting to disrespect or offend her, he had grudgingly agreed. After much unsolicited advice from their elderly companion, a beautiful solitaire diamond had been selected and Raj had proceeded to pay with his credit card.
To his utter embarrassment, the card had been rejected, casting an uncalled for shadow on the financial viability of the groom-to-be. Visions of wagging tongues and whispered warnings had floated before Raj’s eyes. Red faced, he had rushed to explain that the cause of this contretemps had been his having forgetten to upscale the payment limit on his credit card. The old lady had looked at him with a knowing smile, obviously relishing his discomfiture. Ignoring her and trusting Raj’s good faith, his wife had quickly pulled out her own credit card and paid for the ring herself. The matchmaker had let out a horrified gasp at this breach of convention. Raj had shrugged his shoulders and the couple had walked out of the shop arm-in-arm, leaving the lady open-mouthed with disbelief.
Still smiling at the memory, Raj squeezed his wife’s hand and drew his chair closer. They had been married for 50 years and his practical-minded wife had saved the day more than once.
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Saeed Ibrahim is the author of two books – Twin Tales from Kutcch, a family saga set in colonial India, and a short story collection entitled The MissingTile and Other Stories.
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Tillandsia, A plant with herbal roots. From Public Domain
Once, on a dark snowy day in a strange land, I metamorphosed to an air plant. First, I lost my tongue; then I lost my limbs; My brown trunk swirled into itself. A crusty mossy green veneer over my fern-like body. I lay still, a green cocoon– I am going back.
This chip based plastic card is my DNA barcode. It lets the rootless ausländer reside in this land, to breathe it's AQI certified perfect-for-a walk air for these exact contractual work years. It keeps me safe -- a new sample specimen, well preserved in a laboratory bell jar. A permit -- a hermit immersed in nirvana liquid. I gaze outside through the transparent glass -- everything magnified, everything distorted. An enticing pool of sunlight at the far end of the lab, beyond the windows, there are patches of green. I look for familiar faces, long lost cousins and neighbours -- Is that the rabbit-ear-leafed* herb? (the long wanderings on monsoon mornings to cure the little one’s cough) the small-flowery-leafed* one? (the herbal decoction for feverish nights) the crawl-on-the-ground-palm* and down-the-stream-gooseberry*? (a folk song, a ritual, the cure for yellow-fever) The patches of green remained as aloof as they were. They denied my identification procedure – “Wir bist nicht deine ‘name-place-animal-thing’, we are google lens-approved rational scientific botanic beings, we were featured in Systema Naturae and we are alien to your wobble-gobble”.
I swayed away and stared at the supermarket herbs section for hours. Familiar fragrances -- dried and powdered and renamed. And the authentic all-rounder -- “Indische Curry-Englisch style” Black pepper from my backyard would disown me for this affair. I reside, breathe in and breathe out the AQI verified air. I reside, observe and wait, in this permitted residence of mine. To live -- to live and thrive one should go back or grow roots. (And then, herbs are no longer a supermarket section they are an image of your soul in green, a fibrous embrace that warms your blood.)
*Literal translations of medicinal herbs from author’s mother tongue
Lakshmi Chithra is a PhD student at the University of Augsburg, Germany. When academic life allows she welcomes her writer-ego to take over. She is from Kerala and is a lover of the monsoon, the Arabian Sea and Chai.
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I had always looked forward to visiting Kanyakumari. The idea of standing at the southernmost tip of India and gazing at the vastness of the Indian ocean was irresistible. There is no major land mass till you reach the southern continent of Antarctica. The union of the waters of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal make this area, referred to as Triveni[1]Sea, unique.
We wanted to visit the Southern most part – the Vivekananda rock, where Swami Vivekananda meditated before going to Chicago in 1893. However, the gate slammed shut as we rushed to the ferry terminal. It was past four in the afternoon, the hour when the last ferry departs for the rock that was at a point peaceful and calm. With it evaporated our hopes of visiting the Vivekananda rock memorial at Kanyakumari.
We were not deterred by having failed in our endeavour. We decide to continue our exploration on the mainland to see as much as we could. Huge crowds were everywhere. It was school holiday season, and everyone seemed to be travelling. Chaotic was the word that would best describe the situation. As my travel companion, Subhish, and I moved around, we noticed nearly every house in Kanyakumari seemed to have been converted into a restaurant and a homestay though waste management was poor and the toilets – especially in the tourist spots — were unsanitary and unusable.
We went to the Gandhi Mandapam by the Triveni Sea from where the Vivekananda Rock could be viewed. You can get an excellent view of the Vivekananda memorial and the statue from the top floor. In February 1948, Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were immersed at this intersection. The memorial building houses several old photographs relating to Gandhi’s life but the museum needs maintenance and cleaning.
Kanyakumari houses ancient history. Our journey had started at the Sree Adi Kesava Perumal Temple, a temple dedicated to Vishnu, a major Hindu God, had been built in the Dravidian style and dates back at least to the seventh century. The stone and wood carvings speak of the deep devotion of the craftsmen.
The Adi Kesava Perumal TempleStone Pillars
Kanyakumari district had been part of the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore. King Marthanda Verma, who lived in the eighteenth century, is regarded as the founder of the Kingdom of Travancore. He had defeated the Dutch East India Company. A staunch devotee of Vishnu, he would pray before all his campaigns. Kanyakumari district had been the granary of the Travancore kingdom and was handed over to Tamil Nadu during the re-organisation of India along linguistic lines in 1956. Subish mentioned how his parents had told him about the fear and violence that existed for several years after the handover. Some of the monuments in the district are still maintained by the Kerala government under a 99-year lease.
Padmanabhan Palace groundsDelicate wood carvings
Just before lunch, we had visited the Padmanabhapuram palace, the capital of the Travancore kings which was rebuilt on an earlier structure from in the sixteenth century. King Marthanda Verma dedicated his kingdom to Lord Padmanabha, a manifestation of Lord Vishnu. The King and his successors saw themselves as Padmanabha dasa or subjects of the lord. The palace was vast and sprawling and situated in a four-kilometre-long fortress. Made entirely of wood, it had exquisite carvings. Though in some places, only the frames remain to suggest a story. There seemed to be massive halls where up to a thousand people could be fed at one time. They suggest a testament to the generosity of the kings. The palace unfortunately does not provide a glimpse into the life of its royal inhabitants. Having visited several museums and palaces elsewhere, I believe serious thought and action may be required on how to present this cultural gem better to visitors.
Pechiparai Reservoir
The Pechiparai Reservoir, where we stopped, has an interesting history. The dam was built across the Pechai River by a British engineer, Mr. Minchin working in the Travancore irrigation department. The site is peaceful, away from the hustle and bustle, and surrounded by green hills. In the 1880s when the dam was being built this would have been a remote location. Mr. Minchin’s grave has a home here – far from his own homeland in Britain.
Mathoor Aqueduct
We also visited structures closer to our times — the Mathoor Aqueduct, built in 1965. This is among the longest aqueducts in India. I was reminded of the Roman aqueducts. The view of the surrounding valley and hills from the aqueduct was spectacular. A rich agricultural area, you can walk along the aqueduct, come down and walk through the garden and playgrounds and then climb back to the starting point.
We drove to Sunset Point to watch the sun dip into the ocean after a hard day’s work. The sunset was spectacular. The few clouds had disappeared. The circular orb slowly sank into the silver sea.
Sunset Point
As dusk set in we started to drive back to Eraniel, Subhish’s hometown where we were staying. Subhish worked in Dubai and was on holiday like me. We stopped at Kilometre Zero on the national highway. The Indian politician, Rahul Gandhi had started his Bharat Jodho yatra[2]here a few months ago. ‘Kashmir to Kanyakumari’ is a popular slogan in India and this spot is a popular starting or ending point for political and other such marches.
Kanyakumari has red bananas everywhere. They grow well in this soil. I am partial to this variety and enjoy them whenever and wherever I can. The district has several ancient Hindu temples. We were now returning from Kanyakumari. Dusk had settled in and there was a huge line of cars going back to Nagarkovil (Nagercoil in English). We were searching for the nongu fruit also known as ice apple, palmyra palm, and by several other names. We eventually located one at a roadside stall. Eating nongu was one of the best experiences of my life. An absolute delight.
Nongu FruitsThe edible part of nongu fruitCourtesy: Creative Commons
Kanyakumari district has seen great progress over the last few decades. People from all over India have settled here. There are several water bodies scattered throughout the land and several wind farms. Tamil Nadu is among the wind energy giants in India. The climate here is less harsh compared to other parts of Tamil Nadu. Indians now have a good disposable income and are eager to explore their vast country. Will the tourism authorities pick up the gauntlet and cater to this population or will they continue along the old self-centred ways? Only time will tell!
[1] Translates to where three sacred rivers – in this case oceans — meet
[2] Unite India March carried out in 2022 by the Congress Party
*Photos by P Ravi Shankar and Subhish, where unacknowledged
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Dr. P Ravi Shankar is a faculty member at the IMU Centre for Education (ICE), International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He enjoys traveling and is a creative writer and photographer.
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Travels formed an integral part of the personae and creative artist that was Rabindranath Tagore. During his travels to England and the America (1912-13 and 1920) Tagore wrote essays for publication in various Bengali journals. Rabindranath Tagore was an inveterate traveller who travelled to the furthest corners of the globe. Detailing his travels in the colloquial everyday language (also referred to as ‘chalit’ bhasha or language) during his tour of England and USA in 1912-13, he used to publish regularly in journals like Prabasi, Bharati and Tattwabodhini Patrika. As the translator-editor Somdatta Mandal informs us, Vishwa Bharati Publication Department in 1946 decided to discard Rabindranath’s own selection. They went back to the earlier formal register and included writings of the 1912 tour, irrespective of whether they were related to his travel.
The book blurb says: “In 1939, Tagore selected fourteen of these essays and an appendix containing seven letters he had written to some of the teachers in the Santiniketan ashram while he was on these trips, for publication as a volume. It was at this point that he rewrote the original essays then using the colloquial instead of the formal language; he also revised the texts substantially. Later editions altered the number of essays, sometimes digressing from Tagore’s own selection, sometimes going back to Tagore’s original formal language.”
The travelogue, if it can be called that, provides an insight into Tagore’s perception of the different facets of western life and the diverse philosophical issues that cross his mind as he journeys from one continent to another. Thus perhaps it is more appropriate that the collection is named “gleanings’’ rather than a travel account or narrative. They are philosophical ruminations where Tagore holds forth on various aspects of civilizations and cultures.
In the very first segment, Tagore’s critical observations about Indian society comes to the fore. Thus he comments on what he sees as cultural differences and civilizational clashes, in “Prelude to the Journey”: “We always comfort ourselves by saying that we are a religious and spiritual race”. He sees this as a compensatory move by Indians to cover up our own sense of inadequacy, about our “weakness” in the external world.(Tagore was acutely conscious of India’s status as a colonised country). “Many of us boast that poverty is our asset”, dwelling perhaps in a haze of pseudo-spiritualism which balks at admitting that this attitude is merely a kind of bravado.
Tagore’s essay here unpacks the notion of the binary that the West is materialistic while the East is spiritual by lauding certain aspects of Western and European culture. Thus he writes that “if we go to Europe with the aim of a pilgrimage, our journey will not be in vain”. He further explains that this is not only because of the material developments achieved by Western culture, but their spirit and attitude.
Power, according to Tagore, is more than an external manifestation; rather, it has to do with a sense of real inner strength. He goes on to cite the instance of the Titanic and people’s altruism and self-sacrifice that was in evidence at that time, to interrogate the view, held by many Indians, that the average European is self-centred and self-serving. On the other hand, Tagore also gives plenty of instances where the spiritual poverty of Indians was in evidence. Thus he writes, “I know there has been a clash between our welfare and that of Europe and because of that we are suffering deep anguish and pain. We do not trust their religion and we criticise their culture as being too materialistic.” However, he continues that there are aspects of European culture which are worthy of emulation, which we would do well to follow, without feeling that it threatens our culture. He strongly commends that the path to seek the truth is a pilgrimage on which we should proceed without being blinded by ego, prejudice and false pride.
Coupled with this contrast of cultures, are observations about people and places. Thus he talks about the women of Bombay who are visible on the beaches of Bombay and contrasts it with the city of Calcutta, which according to him, is bereft of women in public places. Tagore also muses on the vast and limitless ocean which to him offers a cornucopia of literal and symbolic meanings. The sea and the ocean signify vastness, depth, boundlessness and infinitude, as well as the lure of the unknown. In contrast, he bemoans the loss of man’s ties with nature signified to him by the colonial appropriation of the river. He reflects that the river “Ganges was once one of Calcutta’s ties with nature…It was the one window of the city from where you could look out and realize that the world was not confined to this settlement.” He bemoans the fact that the once natural strength of the Ganga had been dissipated, “it has been dressed up in such tight clothes on both its banks and its waist band has been tightened so that the Ganges seems to be the image of a liveried footman of the city”. In contrast, the “special glory of the sea is that it serves man but does so without wearing the yoke of slavery on its neck.” His evocative description brings to life the various aspects of the landscape in full measure.
Tagore’s ‘travel’ writing is not just a mapping of people and places, but shows him as the supreme cartographer of the imagination. Witness his contrast of the earth and the ocean. The earth is compared to an excessively doting mother who binds her children to her and does not allow them to venture far away; the ocean by contrast “constantly allures him to venture towards the unattainable”. He adds, “Those who responded to that call and moved out are the ones who conquered the world.” Moreover, “that race of people on this earth who have specially welcomed this ocean have also found the unceasing effort of the ocean in their character.” Travelling on the Arabian sea, glimpsing distant shores, he stresses that the union of the two — the land and the ocean — signifying stability and movement are vital to an understanding of the truth.
The urge to travel, to move forward continuously, is forever present in man. In a philosophical vein , the poet muses that the soul “always wants to travel” and that it dies if it does not do so.In a series of similes and metaphors drawn from nature, he reflects: “Let us keep moving on, like the waterfall, the waves of the ocean, the birds at dawn, the light at sunrise.” He even transcends to the next plane when he says that “even the call of death is nothing but just a call to change the dwelling place”. In almost the same breath, he compares himself to a fairy princess who is fast asleep and who cannot be woken from her slumber, except with a golden wand.
Part anthropological study– at one point, the poet reflects that the vastness of the surrounding sea would have elicited devotion among many Indians, unlike the European traveller who is intent on enjoying the comforts and varieties of entertainment on the ship-part philosophic meditation, “Gleanings” represents the quintessential Tagore. His interrogation of Indian claims to spirituality is made in the tone of a concerned father warning his children not to fall prey to false pride and vanity. Deeply patriotic as well as an internationalist, he straddled two contrasting worlds of materiality and spirituality, without succumbing to limiting binaries and stereotypes.
Ably introduced and translated by Somdatta Mandal, a renowned Tagore scholar, the translation captures the iridescent and luminous quality of Tagore’s prose and its chiaroscuro effects.
Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is Associate Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory.
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