Chapter 2of Isa Kamari’s novel, The Throne,has been translated by the author from Malay. We will be running the whole novel as serial through the year. Click hereto read.
A Tiny Piece of Homeland, an autobiographical narrative by Kallol Lahiri in Bengali, has been translated by V. Ramaswamy. Click here to read.
Walking Together, a poem, has been written and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click hereto read.
Swopno (Dream), a poem by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click hereto read.
We have started feeling the impact of climate change with a bevy of natural disasters this August. Glacial ice melts, peat fires, haze, rising seas, more storms, warmer climes and fires wiping out greenery are just a few that come to the mind. But, long ago, our ancestors — without the support of technology — survived climate events. Göbekli Tepe (Turkey), an ancient human settlement, more than 11,000 years ago was lush and green. People moved as it turned arid. Humankind was nomadic then. They moved with shifting riverbeds. In Europe, humans survived the last glacial age, about 20,000 years ago. Then, now when we are faced with the reality of climate change, why is it we tremble with trepidation? We even have technology in hand. Ideators and writers like Asimov found solutions. In Caves of Steel (1954), Isaac Asimov had humanity move underground to survive unfriendly surface conditions. He created a huge city underground for humanity while some moved into other planets. Perhaps, the time has come for us to think out of the box. And that is what we hope all of you will join to do in Borderless.
September has thrown up varied content. We have non-fiction which reflects on how changes are a part of human lore and how diverse cultures can co-exist to enrich each other. Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri dwells on this idea while talking of Nazrul’s approach to the Persian Ghazal. He writes, the poet through his adaptation of this form “showed how a culture can absorb another culture without losing itself, and how, in the process, both cultures can become something larger than they were before.” And perhaps from that largeness of thought will emerge a one-world community — that Yatish Kumar S espouses. Maybe from people who think beyond borders, we will find the solution to tackling and adapting to climate change. We have an essay from Charudutta Panigrahi where he attempts to arouse the survival instinct in humans. Young Shruti Keskar writes of how she finds a new lease to life by accepting and adapting to changes while Farouk Guslara philosophises on living and possessions. We have Meredith Stephens adding to the vivacity of non-fiction with a recount of her sailing adventures with wonderful photographs by Alan Noble. And Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in sardonic humour with his piece on art and artists.
A story-poem by Tagore, Swopno (Dream), has also been brought to us in English. An interesting memoir by Kallol Lahiri centring around his childhood in Bengal has been translated by V Ramaswamy. Translations offer fiction from Isa Kamari. He has transcribed in English the second chapter of his Malay novel, The Throne. The novel focussing on psychological torment is being serialised in Borderless.
Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed a rare book-centric memoir by Shanta Gokhale. He tells us, “Of Ancestors and Friends: A Life with Booksis an unusual kind of literary memoir. It is neither a conventional autobiography nor a conventional work of criticism. Instead, it occupies an intimate space between the two, tracing a life’s intellectual and emotional history through books.” Meenakshi Malhotra has discussed the renowned historian Romila Thapar’s memoir, Just Being, a book that reflects not only her own journey but the freedom and outreach that privilege and capability can bestow on women in South Asia. On the other hand, Mudassar Javed Baryar refers to the plight of birongonas, war time widows during the 1971 conflict that birthed Bangladesh, while discussing Saima Begum’s The First Jasmines. He reflects: “Begum’s profound innovation is to turn the narrative back not just to these women’s trauma but to their ‘humanity, resilience and heart’, depicting them as ‘architects of family and community’.” Somdatta Mandal has praised Omair Ahmad’s novel, Homecoming.
We have also featured Kanuprya Dhingra, who has written a book on a unique book bazaar. In a candid exchange, she tells us her non-fiction, The Sunday Book Bazaar: Delhi’s Book Street and the Making of a Reading Public, “is for the reader in Singapore, or Mumbai, or London, or Lahore who has their own version of this informal, unruly, necessary space and sees it reflected here. It is a book about books, the people who read them, and the people who make that possible…the book is for everyone.” It’s an interesting read almost inviting you to stroll into the serendipitous democratic reading space full of local colour and stories.
We would like to thank not only Dhingra but all our contributors for their wonderful work. Huge thanks to the fabulous Borderless team for their input and to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork. Thank you all — without all of you and our wonderful readers, it would be difficult to have a journal. In the spirit of ubuntu, heartfelt thanks.
Do pause by our September content’s page. And let’s look forward to the hope for happier climes and times.
Swopno (Dream), a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, can be found in his collection, Kalpana (Imagined, 1900).
Art by Sohana Manzoor
DREAM
Far, far away, In my dreamworld, I travelled to Ujjainipur. I went to the banks of the Shipra River To look for my last life’s first love. Her anklets jingled as she walked Powdered with pollen, holding a lotus, Jasmines in her ears, Jhanti flowers in her hair, dressed in red. I had returned one spring, Finding the path, traveling from afar.
In the temple of Mahakal, Evening prayers were being chanted. The market was deserted. A streak of light Irradiated the darkness above the palace.
A serpentine, narrow, lonely path Led to my beloved’s home. On her doors, framed by two saplings, Were painted a conch and a chakra. On a white marble arch, Sat a statue of an arrogant lion.
My beloved’s pigeons returned home. Her peacocks slept on golden rods. Meanwhile, holding a lamp, Descended my Malavika. Between the staircase and doorway, The evening star peeped in. The fragrance of her body and hair Filled my breath with agitated yearning. Her garments rustled to reveal a motif With sandalwood paste on her left breast. Like a deity she graced the gloaming. The city’s rumour mills stopped silent.
My beloved Placed the lamp slowly by the door. She came to me, held my hand in hers, Silently, asked with melancholic tenderness, “Oh friend! Are you well?” Gazing at her, I wanted to talk but lost my words. I forgot my eloquence as together, We dwelled on each other — I cannot recall— We both longed for togetherness As our speechless tears flowed endlessly.
Together, we pondered by the saplings. I do not know what came to pass but her soft hands hid themselves in my right one like a young bird seeking its nest in the dusk. Her face bowed like a lotus stem on my chest with sad restlessness. Pensively, we met with silent breath.
In the darkness of the night
I lost myself in Ujjaini completely. The lamp by the door Was blown off by a distant breeze. By the banks of the Shipra River, The worship stopped in Shiva’s temple.
This poem has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravartywith editorial input by Sohana Manzoor.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuriexplores how Nazrul transformed a Persian musical form into a distinctly Bengali expression of love, devotion and cultural coexistence
Nazrul (1899-1976) teaching Nazrul Sangeet. From Public Domain
The journey of the ghazal into Bengal is, in many ways, the story of India itself: a form travelling across languages, faiths, courts and cultures, losing something of itself at every crossing and acquiring something new in return. Born in Arabic poetry, refined in Persian, transformed in the Hindustani world and eventually absorbed into several Indian languages, the ghazal was never a form that remained untouched by the cultures through which it passed.
In Bengal, its most remarkable transformation came through Kazi Nazrul Islam.
Nazrul did not merely introduce the ghazal into Bengali. He made it feel as though it had always belonged there. That achievement becomes all the more remarkable when we remember that Bengali already possessed a rich and deeply individual musical-literary tradition. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had produced the great poet-composers who came to be remembered collectively as the Panchakabis[1]: Dwijendralal Roy, Rajanikanta Sen, Rabindranath Tagore, Atulprasad Sen and, the youngest of them, Nazrul. They wrote their own lyrics and generally composed their own melodies, creating a modern Bengali song tradition that combined literary sophistication with music. Unlike the privileged urban backgrounds of most of his predecessors, however, Nazrul came from poverty and rural Bengal. His childhood and youth exposed him to worlds that the emerging Bengali middle class often experienced as separate: Islamic learning, Persian literature, Hindu mythology, Vaishnava poetry, folk theatre and the songs of rural Bengal. This plurality was not an intellectual position Nazrul adopted later in life. It was the atmosphere in which his imagination was formed.
The ghazal itself had already travelled an extraordinary distance before reaching him. Its origins lay in Arabic poetry, but it acquired much of its classical identity in Persian literature. Persian poets such as Hafiz, Rumi and Saadi gave the form its characteristic world of desire, intoxication, separation, beauty and mystical longing. When the ghazal entered the Indian Subcontinent, it encountered local languages and traditions and changed again. Amir Khusrau and, later, Wali Daccani were among those who helped transform the Persian form into something increasingly Hindustani. In India, the ghazal acquired new vocabularies, new images and new musical possibilities.
At its simplest, the ghazal consists of a series of couplets, each capable of standing independently while being held together by a common metre, rhyme and refrain. Yet the formal structure is only half the story. The real unity of the ghazal is emotional. Its verses circle around longing, often without resolving it. The beloved may be a woman, a man, God, beauty itself, an absent homeland or an impossible ideal. In the Sufi imagination, earthly and divine love can become indistinguishable.
That ambiguity was perfectly suited to Nazrul.
Bengal had experimented with the form before him. Atulprasad Sen is generally credited with the first substantial Bengali experiments with the ghazal. But Nazrul took the experiment much further, turning it into a popular musical form. He did not approach the ghazal merely as a literary structure to be reproduced in another language. He understood that it had to be made to breathe in Bengali.
His preparation for this was unusually rich. He learnt Urdu from his uncle Bazle Kareem and encountered Persian more deeply during his years with the Bengal Regiment in Karachi, where he studied the language with a Punjabi maulavi. He read Omar Khayyam, Rumi and Hafiz, and the attraction was immediate. The Persian poets gave him a vocabulary of intoxication, rebellion, sensuality and mystical desire that seemed to correspond naturally with his own temperament. In the early 1920s, he translated and adapted Persian and Urdu material into Bengali. But it was towards the end of the decade, with greater maturity as both poet and composer, that he began creating original Bengali ghazals in earnest. These compositions were published with musical notation and eventually travelled through gramophone records and radio.
That technological development is important. The Bengali ghazal might have remained an interesting literary experiment had it been confined to printed pages. Gramophone and radio changed its destiny. Nazrul’s songs entered homes, tea shops, theatre halls and public gatherings. A form associated with the Persian and Urdu world could now be heard in Bengali by listeners who might never have encountered its literary ancestry. The ghazal became something to sing and listen to before it became something to analyse.
Nazrul’s great innovation was to make the Persian inheritance sound Bengali without stripping it of its Persian character. Listen to the vocabulary of his songs. Words such as ishq, dil, mahfil, gulshan, bulbuli and gulbahar enter the Bengali lyric naturally. They do not sit there like foreign ornaments. They become part of the emotional vocabulary of the song. The Persian garden begins to coexist with the Bengali landscape.
This is one of the most fascinating aspects of Nazrul’s ghazals. He could summon the rose garden of Persian poetry and, almost in the same breath, evoke Bengal’s rivers, spring winds, flowering trees and muddy pathways. The imported image does not erase the local one. They inhabit the same poem. Consider the rose and the nightingale, perhaps the most familiar pair in Persian and Sufi poetry. Nazrul gives them an intimacy that is unmistakably his:
Mohammad naam jopchhili bulbuli tui aage, Tai kire tor konthe aaji emon modhur raage. Ore golap niribili, bujhi Nobir kodom chhuye chhili, Tai tar kodomer khoshbu aajo tor atore jaage.
*
O nightingale, surely you once whispered the name of Muhammad Is that why such sweetness dwells within your song? O rose, perhaps, in secret, you once touched the Prophet’s feet; That is why, even today, the fragrance of his footsteps lingers in your attar.
The rose and nightingale are ancient Persian symbols. But Nazrul does something wonderfully intimate with them. The Prophet is not invoked through theological abstraction. His presence survives as fragrance, birdsong and touch. Devotion becomes sensory. The sacred enters the ordinary world through things one can smell and hear. This ability to make different traditions converse is at the heart of Nazrul’s art.
Nazrul was writing at a time when Bengal’s cultural life was being increasingly marked by communal anxieties. The Bengali Muslim community, despite its demographic importance, often found itself culturally marginalised within a literary establishment shaped substantially by the Hindu bhadralok[2]. Nazrul’s Bengali ghazals offered Bengali Muslims a literary and musical vocabulary drawn from their own Islamic and Persian inheritance while simultaneously keeping them within the larger Bengali cultural world. That is why his Persianised diction matters. It was not merely decorative exoticism. It helped create a cultural space in which Bengali Muslim listeners could hear themselves without having to abandon Bengali identity.
At the same time, Nazrul was introducing the Hindu listener to an Islamic world that Bengali literature had often treated as something outside the mainstream of its cultural imagination. His ghazals therefore worked in both directions. They gave Bengali Muslims a sense of cultural recognition while inviting Bengali Hindus into an unfamiliar but deeply embedded part of Bengal’s history.
The scholar Dr Pushpita Mitra identifies three broad tendencies in Nazrul’s Bengali ghazals, and this distinction helps us understand the extraordinary range of his achievement. In some compositions, he brought Urdu words and phrases directly into Bengali, creating an idiom that consciously mediated between the two languages. In a second group, he used Persian imagery – gulbahar, gulbagicha, bulbuli, gardens, flowers, seasons – to evoke the landscape of Persian poetry while allowing it to overlap with Bengali nature. In a later phase, his ghazals became less dependent on obviously Persian or North Indian vocabulary and forms and increasingly absorbed his own mature musical and lyrical personality.
One of the most delightful examples of the first tendency is a song that moves between Bengali and Hindustani with a playful sensuality:
Alga koro go khopar bandhan Dil wahin mera phans gayi Binod benir zareen fitay andha ishq mera kas gayi. Tomar kesher gandho kokhon Lukaiye ashilo lobhi amar mon, Behosh hokar gir pari haath mein, Baaju-band mein bas gayi.
*
Undo the knot of your hair My heart is caught there still. In the golden ribbon of your braid, My blind love has tightened its hold. When did the fragrance of your hair Slip secretly into my heart? Before I knew it, drunk and helpless, I fell into your hands And made my home in your armlet.
What makes the song so charming is not simply its sensuality. It is the linguistic play. Bengali and Hindustani rub against each other, creating something that sounds at once theatrical, folkish and unmistakably Nazrul. The Persian vocabulary is not being displayed; it is being lived.
The second tendency in his ghazals is equally revealing, as Dr Mitra points out. Consider his evocation of spring:
The poem begins in the Bengali spring – the season of phagun, flowers, southern winds and the stirring of the heart – but Persian imagery soon enters the frame:
Spring has come, the season of flowers, And every grove is suddenly awake. The southern breeze moves through the blossoms, And the heart begins to sing and dance. The rose-garden spills its colours Over the branches and vines; The cuckoo calls from somewhere within, And sleep and languor open their doors.
The Persian garden has entered Bengal, but Bengal has not been Persianised. The two landscapes overlap. That is perhaps the most important thing Nazrul achieved with the ghazal: he did not translate one culture into another. He allowed them to meet.
And the emotion was never confined to romantic love. Nazrul could move from sensuality to devotion, from devotion to rebellion, from rebellion to loneliness. His ghazals contain lovers, mystics, intoxicated wanderers, flowers, nightingales and gods. Their beloved is often deliberately elusive. Is it a woman? God? Memory? Death? Desire itself? The uncertainty is part of the pleasure. This is where Nazrul’s Islamic inheritance meets the Bengali Vaishnava tradition of biraha, the spiritualized ache of separation. In both traditions, absence can become more powerful than presence. The beloved’s physical absence intensifies his or her presence within the imagination. Nazrul understood this instinctively. His songs rarely hurry towards resolution. Longing is allowed to remain longing.
Consider this:
Bagichay, bulbuli tui phul shakhate disne aji dol, Ajo tar phul-kolider ghum tuteni, tandraate bilol. Ajo hay rikto shakhay uttori bay jhurche nishi-din, Asheni dakhine hawa, ghazal-gawa moumachi bibhol. Kobe se phul-kumari ghomta chiri, ashbe bahire re, Shishirer sparsha-sukhe bhangbe re ghum, rangbe re kapol. Phaguner mukul-jaga dukul-bhanga ashbe fulel ban, Kurider ostho-pute lutbe hashi, phutbe gale dol. Kobi tui gandhe bhule dubli jole, kul peline ar, Phule tor buk bhorechis, ajke jole bhar re aankhir kol.
*
In the garden, O bulbul, do not set the flowers swaying on their branches today; The buds still sleep, their slumber has not yet been broken from their drowsy dreams. Alas, even now, the empty branches tremble day and night in the northern wind; The southern breeze has not yet arrived, nor the honeybees, intoxicated with the ghazal of flowers. When will she come, the flower-maiden, tearing apart her veil and stepping outside? When will the touch of dew awaken her from sleep and paint her cheeks with colour? When spring comes, when buds awaken and the banks overflow, a flood of flowers will arrive; Laughter will spill from the little buds’ lips, and dimples will blossom upon their cheeks. O poet, bewildered by fragrance, you have plunged into the waters and can find no shore; You have filled your heart with flowers, but today, fill the hollows of your eyes with tears.
This ghazal unfolds as a delicate allegory of waiting, awakening and loss. At first, its world seems entirely pastoral: the garden, the bulbul, sleeping buds, empty branches, dew, the southern breeze and intoxicated bees. Yet beneath these images lies a deeply human longing. Spring has not arrived; the flowers remain asleep, the branches shiver in the cold northern wind, and even the bees that will eventually turn the garden into music are absent.
The ‘flower-maiden’ becomes the central image of this anticipated awakening. Her emergence from behind her veil, her cheeks coloured by dew, and the laughter and dimples appearing on the buds transform nature into a living feminine presence. Spring is imagined not merely as a season but as a moment of emotional and sensual renewal.
The final couplet dramatically changes the mood. The poet, intoxicated by fragrance, has plunged into the waters and lost the shore. The flowers that once represented joy now coexist with tears. This movement from expectation to intoxication and finally to sorrow gives the ghazal its poignancy. The poem’s greatest beauty lies in this tension: spring promises fullness, yet the poet discovers that beauty and grief are inseparable. The garden blooms outside while the heart fills with tears within.
In another ghazal, the poet says:
Bosiya bijone keno eka mone Paniya bharone cholo lo gori Cholo jole cholo kande banatal Dake chholchhol jol-lahori. Diba chale jay bolaka-pakhay Bihoger buke bihogi lukay. Kende chokha-chakhi magiche biday Barowa-r sure jhure banshori. Ogo be-dordi o ranga paye Mala hoye ke go gelo joraye. Tobo sathe kobi porilo daye, Paye rakhi tare na gole pori.
*
Sitting alone in solitude, Why do you linger there by yourself? Come, fair one, come to fetch the water; Come, let us go to the water. The forest floor weeps; the rippling waves call out to us. The day slips away on the wings of the cranes; within the bird’s breast the female bird hides. The chokha-chakhi, the loving pair, weeps and bids farewell; To the plaintive strains of Barowa, the flute languishes. O heartless one, at your red feet, who has gone and entwined herself like a garland? The poet, bound to you, is caught in a dilemma: shall I place her at your feet, or wear her around my neck?
This lyric unfolds as a gradual movement from invitation to longing, and finally to surrender. Its opening image, a young woman sitting alone and being invited to fetch water, places desire within the familiar pastoral world of Bengali song. Water becomes both a literal destination and an emotional metaphor: ‘come to the water’ suggests movement from solitude towards intimacy.
The second stanza deepens the mood through nature. Day departing on the wings of the balaka, birds seeking one another, and the chokha-chakhi bidding farewell create an atmosphere of separation. The mention of Barowa and the languishing flute introduces the classical-romantic vocabulary of Indian music, where melody itself becomes an expression of yearning.
The final stanza transforms pastoral romance into personal devotion. The mysterious figure who ‘entwines’ herself around the beloved’s red feet as a garland evokes both surrender and erotic attachment. The poet’s dilemma, whether to place the garland at her feet or wear it, is deliberately paradoxical. Love has erased the distinction between worship and possession. What begins as a simple invitation to the water thus becomes a meditation on desire, separation, devotion and the inability to decide whether love is an act of surrender or an act of embrace.
His later work makes this even more poignant. The death of his young son, the illness of his wife Pramila and the devastating illness that eventually silenced Nazrul himself cast a shadow over the later part of his creative life. The rebellious energy never entirely disappeared, but the songs increasingly turned towards loss, memory, mortality and mystical yearning.
My heart is full; I listen for a song Perhaps today my beloved will come. Dreams are folded into golden wings, And some restless bird of the heart flies away into the sky.
The poem then moves towards the riverbank, the muddy path, the approaching beloved and the drifting scent of the wind. Who is coming? Nazrul never tells us. That is precisely its power. The beloved may be a lover remembered, a divine presence, an apparition from the past, even death itself. The song does not close the door on any possibility. It leaves us waiting on that riverbank.
This late Nazrul is very different from the young ‘Bidrohi Kobi’, the Rebel Poet who thundered against empire, oppression and communal divisions. Yet the two poets are not really different. The same refusal to accept boundaries lies beneath both. The poet who would not accept the separation of Hindu and Muslim traditions would not accept the separation of love from devotion, the sensual from the spiritual, or beauty from sorrow.
This is also why his use of Hindu and Islamic imagery could be so radical without being merely provocative. Nazrul could write of Krishna, Shiva, Kali and Durga with the same intensity with which he invoked Islamic devotional imagery. His Hindu devotional songs, particularly his Shyamasangeet, became an important part of Bengal’s musical heritage. His ghazals, meanwhile, brought Persian and Islamic imagery into Bengali popular music. His artistic universe was not a collection of separate compartments; it was a single, restless landscape.
There were critics who found this troubling. Some conservative Muslims objected to his Hindu imagery; some Hindu critics were uncomfortable with his Persianised diction. Nazrul belonged fully to neither camp because he refused the premise on which both positions rested: that cultures preserve themselves by remaining apart. For him, Bengal had never been culturally pure. Its languages, music, metaphors and religious traditions had been meeting one another for centuries. The Bengali ghazal is perhaps the most beautiful evidence of that history.
What Nazrul finally created was not a Bengali imitation of an Urdu form. Nor was it Persian poetry dressed in Bengali clothes. It was something new: a musical-literary language in which Persian imagery, Arabic devotional vocabulary, Bengali lyricism, folk symbolism, Vaishnava emotionalism and Hindustani musical traditions could exist together without apologising for one another.
And this is where his importance extends beyond the history of the ghazal. Nazrul’s Bengali ghazals were part of a larger cultural intervention. In the Bengal of the 1920s and 1930s, when communal identities were hardening and the colonial political order was encouraging competing claims of belonging, he offered another possibility. A culture could be Muslim and Bengali. It could draw from Persia without ceasing to be Bengali. It could invoke Krishna and Muhammad without treating the two as mutually exclusive. It could be modern without severing itself from folk memory.
The political message was sometimes explicit in Nazrul’s journalism and poetry. In the ghazals it was often quieter. It resided in the very sound of the songs – in their vocabulary, their imagery, their musical forms and their refusal to remain inside a single cultural enclosure. The effect could be political without the song ever becoming a political slogan. Perhaps this is why Nazrul’s ghazals continue to feel so alive. Nearly a century later, his Bengali ghazals remain part of the musical lives of Bengal and Bangladesh. They continue to be sung, recorded and reinterpreted. Their survival is testimony not simply to the durability of Nazrul’s melodies but to the emotional generosity of the world he imagined.
A rose can belong to Persia and Bengal at the same time. A nightingale can sing the name of Muhammad in a Bengali song. A river boat can carry an Islamic prayer. A spring garden can be simultaneously gulbahar and Bengal. A lover can be human, divine or simply remembered. Nazrul understood that these were not contradictions. They were the truth of Bengal. And perhaps that is his greatest gift to the Bengali ghazal: he did not merely give Bengal a new musical form. He showed how a culture can absorb another culture without losing itself, and how, in the process, both cultures can become something larger than they were before. The ghazal arrived in Bengal as an inheritance from elsewhere. Nazrul brought it home.
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuriis a film buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer. Books commissioned and edited by him have won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema twice and the inaugural MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images) Award for Best Writing on Cinema. In 2017, he was named Editor of the Year by the apex publishing body, Publishing Next. He has contributed to a number of magazines and websites like The Daily Eye, Cinemaazi, Film Companion, The Wire, Outlook, The Taj, and others. He is the author of two books: Whims – A Book of Poems (published by Writers Workshop) and Icons from Bollywood (published by Penguin/Puffin).
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Title: Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assam
Author: Teresa Rehman
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Trudging along the long, crammed alley, lit up by the radiant shops, I searched hard for Hajj memoirs written by women. The shopkeepers looked on vaguely, and were bewildered when I asked them for one. One of them told me that he had had copies of one such memoir but it was sold out now. I was dismayed; would there be second editions of such books, I wondered. And if so, who could these women who wrote them be? A shopkeeper, dressed in a fancy t-shirt and a crochet skull cap, tried to cheer me up. ‘We have a couple of books on Hajj written by men in case you are interested,’ he said ebulliently. I dismissed him with a smirk.
Having been unsuccessful in my first attempt, I changed my tactic. Instead of shops and publishers, I began raiding homes in the lanes of the old Muslim localities. I scavenged through forgotten trunks, dull, dreary cupboards, secret nooks and crannies. Some memoirs were lost forever, some unexpectedly tumbled out of curio collections of a few punctilious family members, who refused to junk old stuff. Sons and daughters revisited their mother’s memory through her Hajj memoir. For some, it was a matter of pride that somebody in their family had written a book, while some had hazy memories of a ragged lost book that they couldn’t seem to trace anywhere.
Begging, borrowing, (almost stealing), I managed to retrieve an exhaustive collection of women-written Hajj memoirs, some dating back to the time when flights were not available and one had to undertake the arduous journey by ship from Mumbai. Most houses only had a single copy, and the families begrudgingly gave me a photostat copy instead.
It is a unique tradition among Muslim women, especially in Assam and Meghalaya (then Assam) to write a memoir about their Hajj experience. Written mostly in their native language (Assamese; one was in Bangla) these memoirs were meant mostly for private circulation among family and friends. Most of these women painstakingly wrote in longhand, got it typeset manually and then sent to the printing presses. These were popularly dubbed as Hajj yatras or Hajj kathas, and instead of being dull notes, they were a series of insightful stories of a rather regimented travel through a strange and breathtaking land.
It was not that every memoir I came across was a literary masterpiece. While some were undoubtedly remarkably well-crafted, others read more like collections of rambling thoughts. The educational credentials of these women also ranged from middle school to a doctorate. Yet, whatever their background, these women were articulate enough to reflect on their experiences, gather their thoughts, and celebrate a collective human experience. For some, the pilgrimage had been life-changing, and they focused solely on the spiritual aspect of Hajj. Others explored and observed the people and places with a more touristy eye. Together, these memoirs add to the richness and diversity of literature written by women.
A prospective pilgrim, therefore, found these Hajj memoirs accessible, and an uncomplicated and easy-to-understand handbook, especially since they were written in their mother tongue. They also became spaces for women to speak their minds and challenge societal taboos, such as discussing menstruation during Hajj. Furthermore, the authors were able to carve out a sisterhood—an emotional connection and a supportive circle among family members, distant relatives, acquaintances and friends. Meant mostly for private circulation, the memoirs created a space within the spheres of domesticity and familiarity, without attracting public glare or media attention. For many families, they were a part of their heirloom.
The contents of these memoirs ranged across a variety of real-life concerns, practical advice, reflections and emotions. They were also a way for women to reclaim agency in storytelling and expand our understanding of the human experience. Their narratives were never entirely spiritual—at one had they spoke boldly of their anxiety about the Hajj rituals and whether they would be able to perform them correctly, on the other, there were more worldly and practical discussions about the unbearable desert heat, the fear of losing oneself or a dear one in the overwhelming crowd, menstruation, the lack of adequate toilets, luggage, food, sanitation, and hygiene. They also talked about souvenirs and memories they had carried back with them. Some of these books even had an ISBN number and a sprinkling of Arabic, Urdu and Persian words here and there, which is part of the daily usage of the community.
It is often seen that religious narratives are appropriated by men. Throughout history, male dominance has shaped religious institutions and social mores. Men often appropriate religious narratives by acting as the principal interpreters and gatekeepers of doctrine. However, women’s voices come through in these memoirs when they talk about taboo topics like purity and impurity during menstruation, while on the sacred journey. A woman is made to realise that she is physically not pure enough while she is menstruating. Lack of reprieve from certain perceived duties and existing rituals put the onus of shame on the woman. The memoirs become complete because they talk freely about these taboo topics as they were meant for private circulation among their female relatives. They were uninhibited about their experiences as they had an audience in mind. Instinctively, maybe they did not expect men to read them or use them as guidebooks.
(Extracted from Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assam by Teresa Rehman. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2026.)
ABOUT THE BOOK
What does Hajj look like through the eyes of women?
In Her Hajj Story, award-winning journalist Teresa Rehman uncovers a remarkable yet forgotten tradition of Hajj memoirs written by women from Assam. A widow completes the pilgrimage after her husband dies and is buried in Medina. A single woman struggles to find a mehram, a suitable male family member as companion, before setting out. A poet stands on the deck of a ship, mesmerised by the moonlit Red Sea. A botanist searches for the deeper fragrance of faith beyond ritual. A social worker carries the prayers of an old-age home to the holy cities. Through eleven compelling narratives— translated from Assamese and Bengali, and interwoven with historical insight—these voices reveal journeys of faith, endurance, grief, wonder, and transformation.
Rich in cultural detail and deeply human, these forgotten memoirs emerge as far more than accounts of pilgrimage. They reveal an extraordinary literary tradition in which ordinary women became chroniclers of history, preserving family memories, practical wisdom and deeply personal encounters with the sacred. Blending travel writing, oral history, ethnography and literary recovery, Her Hajj Story is both a celebration of an overlooked tradition of Muslim women’s writing from Northeast India and a moving testament to faith, resilience and the enduring power of women’s voices.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Teresa Rehman is an award-winning journalist based in Northeast India. For years, she has brought the region’s diversity and distinct ethos to mainstream media through her work with India Today, The Telegraph, and Tehelka, before founding and editing Thumbprint Northeast Magazine. Her books include The Mothers of Manipur (Zubaan Books) and Bulletproof (Penguin Random House India).
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Narrative by Kallol Lahiri: Translation from Bengali by V. Ramaswamy
What if someone were to ask me, where is your desh[1]? Quite naturally, I would reply, “Why? It’s India, isn’t it?” If I were to ask my snack-vendor, Ramesh, “Where is your desh, Ramesh?” As he weighs out fifty grams of hot peanuts to mix with roasted chira[2], he’ll say, “It’s Samstipur, Dada.” Isn’t India your country then? Ramesh would give me an exasperated look as he stirs the chira.
There was more of a crowd at his shop at this time in the evening. The train coming from Howrah drops people returning from work at the station. Many of them then walk home chewing peanuts, gram and muri[3] on the way. Ramesh’s hands work like a machine then. Handing the paper packet to me hurriedly, he says, “Arrey, all of us belong to India. Does one have to say that separately? My village is in Samstipur. Our house is there. I feel happy when I go there, Dada[4]. Does everyone have a desh like that?” That’s correct, not everyone has a desh, or a village. The desh which actually does not refer to the state called India – a place which does not shackle you with law and order, for which one does not have to prove one’s patriotism at every step. The desh which actually becomes sujala suphala shasya shyamala, abundantly watered, fertile and lush green with crops, and makes your heart wistful. Which beckons you to return home. That desh and the state are not the same. And so, while Ramesh refers to his village as desh out of an attachment, I cannot find any place with which I am similarly attached. Because I do not have a village like his. I only have a concrete, solid state.
There are many places to go on a holiday to, scattered all over. Arbeliya, Noyagram, Shibhati. But my own village? Which is one’s desh, in Ramesh’s language? As soon as I feel wistful, the bank of a pond, an earthen veranda, Orion in the night sky. The village beneath whose soil the ribs and bones of fourteen generations lie hidden, with which there is an umbilical tie? I cannot find one even after a lot of thought. The April sky feels heavy and stifling atop the attic in my Uttarpara. One can no longer see even a sprinkling of stars. It is only the lights of the teeming apartments that sparkle far and near.
Although Dada or I do not have a desh, or village, like Ramesh does, my Baba’s elder sister, Boro Moni, had a desh, a village from where she had to come away — almost all of a sudden, without any real preparation. But from time-to-time, Moni used to go off to a desh all by herself — especially when the first raw mangoes of summer arrived from the market; some special vegetables — banana flowers, banana stems, figs, spinach of taro. Observing those, and assessing their quality, she was not very satisfied. Even though she did not say anything, she seemed to be lost somewhere. She was not easily available then. She was going around, wandering, right in front of us, and talking and yet it was as if she was somewhere else. She had to be called twice for her to respond. She forgot to add salt to the cooking. She sat fixedly for a long time in a meditating posture as if she had nothing to do with this bank or the other bank, with any shore. She seemed to have left the boat of her body and become immersed in the ocean of attainment. But it was also true that even though all of us were around her, Moni did not really have anyone.
Moni was the solitary resident of a piece of desh where others other than those she led by hand were forbidden entry. You would not be able to enter the main door of that house even if you tried a hundred times. Ordinarily, Moni was busy all day attending to work. She did this and did that. If there was no work at hand, or if it was all done, she turned over the clothes put out to dry in the sun. She washed the baskets, floor-seats, and utensils with water, and left them face-down. After water had drained out of those, she put them back in place. When all these tasks were completed, if there was time, she broke coal into dust. She smeared lumps of coal dust with rice starch and made briquettes. If it had turned dark by then, Moni lit the evening lamp. And then it was time to cook dinner.
Who did Moni do all this work for? For a family — the family, which was actually not hers, but her brother’s. This never occurred to her. And even if it did, there was nothing to be done. The ambit of the narrative knew a bit about all these unspoken, unpronounced things. The characters around her knew. Family existed for this person and yet did not exist — living in a home and yet not having a home. The agony of not having a desh although she had a country – it was named Moni. That was why Moni worked without a word. She chatted with us. She used to talk to no one in particular. She filled up her spare time in her own ways.
Moni used to do various other things. If someone in the neighbourhood got a stiff neck, or got hurt on his leg, or had a bad dream just before dawn, or if a strapping boy wet his bed in his sleep, Moni performed faith healing with ritually consecrated water and oil. She used to recite mantras in whispers into ears. Blow on the head. She used to massage a stiff neck and undo the crick. She used to run her hand over an ear and soothe a piercing earache.
Dada used to say that Moni knew magic — the magic with which Moni floated oil in water and blew, muttered to herself in darkness. It wasn’t just that, so many familiar people as well as strangers came and poured out their heart’s woes. Moni listened. She chanted while counting on a finger. Blew on the head. She had no ishta devata[5], performed no pujas, had no excessive restraint when it came to conduct or judgement.
“What do you say as you blow, Moni?” I had once asked her. Widening her eyes, she had said, “All that is not for your ears.”
Why not? What if I did hear? As she waved the palmyra-leaf hand-fan over my head, she had said, “A sonless man will have no sons. The destitute will not gain wealth. The homeless will not have a home. He has to become completely alone. All his life.” Had Moni become alone after learning the mantras? Why did she learn such mantras then? Who taught her? Moni scrambled up hurriedly. The power is back. Baba’s students too had left a long while back. The newly purchased wall-clock chimed ten o’clock. A shotoronchi[6] would now be spread lengthwise on the long veranda. The radio would be on.
Everyone would listen as they ate. They would talk. After that, each one would go off to sleep as they chose. Like every day, another day would come to an end. But would it really end? If one woke up in the dead of night, wouldn’t Moni be audible? Either sitting in the veranda, or while asleep, she would be blabbering. With whom? Apparently, Moni used to have a lot of people. They were not visible. They were like shadows. Who used to crowd around Moni? Were they the memories of old days left behind? Or were they from the present? Those for whose stories Moni had to sit late at night with her legs stretched out on the small veranda beneath the patch of sky? Hearing all this gave many people the creeps. But I was not the least bit frightened of Moni. Tell me, who would pat you affectionately on the back in the way she did? Who would fan you with the hand-fan when there was a power cut, recite mantras and blow on the hand before an exam so that an entire essay on a cow could flow out of the pen?
After the mistress of the Bhattacharjee household next door took ritually consecrated water for her grandson and gave five rupees, who would immediately order milk from the Haringhata milk supply? The milk with which rabri[7] would be prepared according to Thamma[8]’s recipe. The entire household would wait in front of the stove for the thick crust to form over the milk set to boil on a low flame.
Moni never had any possessions. You could say she didn’t want any. So did Moni have no wants, no dreams? Except for the pinch of tobacco on the tip of her finger which she put into her mouth? I don’t know. I only know the pull of the house which people returned to. They worked extremely hard all day long. With the money from that hard work, they sat together at the end of the day to eat, chat, and the joys and sorrows of domestic life fell gently around the people, like drops of dew. Although all that kept Moni enclosed, Moni was very far away from this world of illusion. We knew, yes, even at that very young age, we knew, that actually Moni had no one. No home, no husband, no children, no family, and for that matter, no desh either.
Even after much searching, I could not find a picture of Boro Moni by herself. The pictures I had were all group photos. With everyone. No solo pictures. Perhaps such a picture of Bijonbala was not even supposed to be there. And so, I had to cut and crop and take out Moni from the group of people. Did Baba’s Yashica camera never find his elder sister Bijon alone then? Or had he and yet never felt the urge to put her in a frame? Or was it that after having begun my archaeological excavation so many years later, I was unable to find Boro Moni? After all, I could not print all the negatives. Some had got lost. Many more had been destroyed. Yet, Thamma, Handa are all there in whatever there is, so why is there no photo of Moni by herself? She sometimes found a place, like an extra, within the frame, in a corner, amidst a tangled, jostling group of people. Why had Thamma and Dadu[9] given such a name to their first-born? After all, “Bijon” meant alone. Devoid of people around her. How did a person’s name match her life?
In truth, she was alone all her life. Although she had her Baba, Ma, and siblings around her. Her husband’s home after she got married. And yet Bijon had to return to her mother. She did not get to live with her husband. Why not? Did her husband not like her? Had there been a quarrel? Had they driven her out? After all, much later, after coming to this side of the border, Moni had to wipe off her sindur[10], discard her conch-shell, iron and coral bangles. She had to wear a widow’s garb. Some people had apparently searched for the house and conveyed the news of Moni’s husband’s demise. How on earth did those who never kept in touch with a person come to dress her in window’s garb? Even after all these days, when I think about all this, I feel astonished.
I want to know about a lot of things. But not everything can be known. The youngsters at home were not supposed to know everything. With whatever is whispered, and more than that, with whatever one hears, they create an imaginary world. Even if there are smiles on the faces of the people in those worlds, those who roam around the house, it is understood that they are sorrowful for some unknown reason. Even if they never said anything, they went around hiding something in the depths of their hearts which they would never tell anyone. Like Indir Thakrun[11], sitting in the terrace of Sarbajaya’s kitchen, even if she asks in gasps for some water, she would never be able to convey her immense hunger.
Gazing at the plate of rice, her eyes would rain tears. And yet, she would drink a bit of water from the pot, sprinkle the rest on the saplings in the corner of the courtyard and go far away to the bamboo thicket, hoping to count the coins for the final crossing. If Sarbajaya had wanted, could she not have called Indir Thakrun that day? What would have happened if she had fed the old woman a couple of mouthfuls of her own share of rice? Sarbajaya did not perceive at that moment the contentment derived from feeding a starving person. As if it had all been masked by an all-devouring hunger. Was it really that? Or could Sarbajaya herself see that it was her own future sitting opposite near the steps of the terrace? A feverish body. The evening train too had gone by. She thought someone called out to her, “Ma,” from the door. After all, it had been a long time since she had heard being called “Ma”.
Was it Apu? Have you come, Apu? She rushed and opened the main door and saw there was no one anywhere. Infinite emptiness. Sarbajaya had to go away forever, all alone, from a desolate house in a completely unknown village. Indir Thakrun had at least been found lying in the bamboo grove by her small niece and nephew, Durga-Apu. None of Sarbajaya’s close kin found her. Apu had come and seen an empty homestead. His Ma was absent. The Ma he had learnt to manage by sending letters. Apu had not left behind any token of memory of his Ma in that house. There was nothing to speak of in Sarbajaya’s existence, except for a bundle, like with Indir Thakrun.
There was a huge crowd in the field beside the Ganga that day. A mobile cinema van had come from the Information and Culture Department of the Government of West Bengal to screen a film. They came from time to time. They screened this and that. The government wanted to make people aware by screening educational films. Before that, the dadas and didis[12]of the neighbourhood gathered together and sang, “Ora amader gaan gaite daey na … shilpi songrami Paul Robeson, They don’t let us sing … artist, fighter, Paul Robeson.” We too nodded our heads and kept the rhythm. Once the tarpaulin sheet was spread on the ground, I tried to find a good place in the first row.
Dada came and whispered in my ear, “You watch films from the rear, stupid. No one sees it from the front.” I raised my thumb and showed him a banana. Ghenchu. Nothing. He was jealous because I had found a good place. He went to the rear. Moni asked people on the two sides to move and sat down beside me. She covered my tiny feet with the shawl around her so that mosquitoes wouldn’t bite me. The field was full of people by then. Was a film screening a trivial thing? In the time I am talking about, except for one or two people, nobody in the neighbourhood possessed a television set. No telephone. There were power cuts all of a sudden. As soon as it went off, the elderly uncles of the neighbourhood sitting in the roak, the spot where they hung out, would laugh and say, “There goes Jyoti Babu.” That was why a generator set had been rented as a special arrangement.
Indir Thakrun was now on the white screen beside the Ganga. She was taking something furtively from Sarbajaya’s kitchen. Moni seemed to huddle up and stiffen herself all of a sudden. She had only recently begun to lose her health then. She brought her face close to my ear, and said, “Shall we go home? Come.” What was this! Why did Moni want to go back home? After all, I had seen so many plays with Moni before this. Seen jatras[13]. Seen Tarun Opera’s “Ami Subhas Bolchhi[14]”. When Shantigopal comes on stage in Subhas costume to the accompaniment of tumultuous orchestral music and lighting, and says, “Give me blood, and I shall give you independence”, I have seen a few thousand people break into explosive applause. Moni had folded her hands in pranam[15], and said, “Please come back. Join the two countries together.”
Moni believed that if Subhas had been there, the Partition would not have taken place. Moni would never have had to leave her village, leave her desh, and come away to this side of the border. Moni loved seeing jatra performances and plays so much, so why did the very same Moni not want to watch the film today? She had seen plenty of films before this — how, thanks to the boon of the king of ghosts, Goopy and Bag[16] had travelled to so many countries, eaten so many kinds of food, punished the wayward king. For that matter, finally they got married to princesses too. Indir Thakrun had just been caught red-handed on the screen in front by Sarbajaya. There was unease on her face. She was desperate to hide herself. And Moni’s eyes were streaming tears then. For whom? For herself? Or was it for those who stayed around like shadows out of compassion and fondness?
Moni felt like eating a lot of things in her final days — all that she had never eaten in her life. What a fierce hunger she had! How would a household that was itself hand-to-mouth obtain so much food? And yet Baba tried very hard. Towards the very end, she took a fancy to eating fish. How she loved to eat fish.
On the other hand, could a widow in a brahmin household eat fish? Nothing would remain of caste and religion! Harm would befall the family. Food then consisted of rice provided by the ration shop, a vegetable preparation, milk that was either available or not, and after lunch, it was the same at dinner, with ruti[17]. What would so many people eat in between? And where on earth would they get that from? In addition, there were, of course, the ekadashi and various other occasions for fasting. There was ambubachi[18] once a year. And of course, many people in the neighbourhood used to give out one or other kind of food in order to earn merit for themselves. Relatives too either sent money, or fruits and suchlike. But that did not benefit the widows in the household at all. However, there were no limits or bounds to the joy of kids. An abundance of fruits, sweetmeats, and chire, muri.
Moni complied with all the strictures. But in her final days, everything was turning topsy-turvy. Not only was she devoured by an all-devouring hunger, it also pushed her to greater ill health. It so happened that Moni began to eat fish furtively. After all, there was a count of the number of fish pieces on the table at home. Ma knew everything. She used to move aside her share of the fish in such a way that it seemed to be extra. Moni used to eat that bit of fish in secret. I had covertly espied one afternoon how contentedly she ate that. Even now, when a lot of fish is brought home, I remember Moni. A person sitting with her back turned around and cautiously eating fish, averting everyone’s gaze.
During tarpan[19], after making offerings of water to one’s deceased male ancestors, it is the turn to appease their wives with offerings of water. And after that come those whom the one offering the tarpan wishes to make offerings to. Dada made ritual water offerings to Moni every time. To Handa. He made offerings of water to all the people who had no one else to do that for them. Those who truly never received water when they were dying. I pour that water with black sesame seeds floating on it into a flowerpot.
The morning of Mahalaya turns into something different instantly. Standing in the middle of the sunny terrace of Dada’s flat, I like to think, what if Moni was around today? If Handa was? And Baba? Who would sit where with their back turned in this sunny terrace then? Who would put mangoes for the kashundi[20]out to dry, and where? Who would stock freshly made paper packets from the teashop and the damp copy of the last volume of the collected works of Rabindranath Tagore?
Following Moni’s return to her own mother a few years after her marriage, she never returned to her husband’s house. And so, when everyone was coming away after being uprooted from their desh, Moni’s Ma was unable to leave her own daughter behind. She had brought her along too with her. Or else how would we have got Boro Moni? Eaten her mango-mustard kashundi? Who would have taken Dada and me to a house in a village on the nights when the power went off after we had finished our studies, to an earthen courtyard, beneath a tulsi pedestal, to the round-the-clock devotional chanting of the name of Hari, the sacred offering there of rice in a clay bowl? Who would hold the hands of the two of us and walk along that dew-drenched path on the bank of the pond and stop beneath the falsa tree there?
The village floating in the early morning sunlight that we had never laid eyes on which Moni conjured up on the nights of power cuts, was Moni’s tiny piece of desh. The desh Moni left behind to never be joyful again. Was it because she was sorrowful that Moni told us stories like they were fairy tales? We used to fall asleep as we listened to those stories. A beautiful village stayed awake all night long right in front of our eyes. The village that did not belong to Ramesh, or to Dada or me, but only to Moni; the village from which, under the cover of nocturnal darkness, three women had crossed two rivers, countless villages and a vast expanse.
The place they arrived at, where they were eventually able to stand on their own feet, was then another country. A place that belonged to other people. And people became refugees in their own birthplace, their homeland, on their own soil, who, having been rendered surplus, made a fresh start in the hope of survival.
Many years later, when I was able to meet all those people, they had lost their health and reached the final stages of their lives. And yet, such élan vital. They had guarded and protected Dada and me with that infinite and inexhaustible vitality. Not just that – the narrative that had been enacted before us over a long time, even after crossing so many winters, summers, rainy seasons, autumns, late-autumns, has not faded; rather, like Baba’s Yashica, it remains hanging in the form of a photo-frame in the inner sanctum of one’s mind. And it is because it’s hanging that the residence in Bally seems to me, from time to time, like a fairy tale. And those days become Thakumar Jhuli, a grandmother’s bag of stories.
In the kitchen of the Bally residence, something special is being cooked. Ma is in the foreground. Moni is behind her. Half of the rolling pin and board for ruti in the middle is visible. Perhaps Ma had turned towards the door to do something in the middle of rolling out the rutis. One can’t make out what she is doing. Was she washing her atta-covered hands? Baba is on this side of the door. Looking through the lens of the Yashica, capturing very casually the door on the left and the wall on the right like a frame-within-frame.
Visible among the few items in the kitchen is the floor-seat. Moni seems to be in a hurry to remove something from the stove. Was someone supposed to come home that day? Or was it just like that, all of a sudden? Was something special really being cooked? Or was it merely ruti and soyabean curry? Ma is radiant with her smile even amidst all that. The moment comes to a standstill right there. But the stream of life flows ceaselessly past that. The day of that photograph and the present day seem to be separated by the vast distance of a nebula. Yet, was it not along that very path that an endless dialogue unfolded within the mind? The very dialogue whose echoes are woven into this piece of writing, all those unprinted negatives, piles of letters and the weight of memories of a long time ago.
Towards the end, Moni had become one with the bed. You could not distinguish Moni from the bed. She used to scream for food all the time — food which she could not digest at all. And so, the whole bed used to get soiled seven or eight times a day. There was shit smeared all over her body, like bedsores, Ma used to clean up all by herself, with her own hands.
Dada and I were very small then. We were in merely two rooms. So many people. Gradually, Ma too began to fall ill with that kind of terrible, inhuman toil. Right next to us was Doctor Kisku’s dispensary — our Doctor Kakima[21]. She visited us so frequently and was so fond of us that she had become like a member of the household. She attended to Moni with much care for a long time. It was because she was our family physician that she had everyone’s details at her fingertips. She warned Baba, “If this sick person remains at home like this, everyone will fall ill.” Where would this sick person be taken then? Would a public hospital take her? They tried very hard. No assurance of getting admitted there was forthcoming. Who would admit a sick person who was on the verge of death? In the end, Doctor Kakima found a way, which remained a permanent witness to a heart-rending incident in our family. It was Doctor Kakima who arranged everything. Moni was left at Mother Teresa’s “Nirmal Hriday”.
Mother Teresa had established her Nirmal Hriday for all those people who had no one, who lay on the street and waited for their final day. Nirmal Hriday provided shelter to these dying people. They spent their last few days peacefully in the land of slumber. But, after all, Moni was not lying on the street. She had everyone — brother, sister-in-law, nephews, niece and various other relatives. And yet she had had to become an unidentified person without any family and enter Mother Teresa’s Nirmal Hriday.
Even today, it is as if I can clearly remember the day Moni left home. Ma bathed Moni and dressed her in a new sari. Moni’s favourite pulao and fish curry was cooked that day. Ma fed Moni. Dada and I were standing quietly beside her. Moni acted as if she was impatient to go to the hospital. For the last few days, she had driven everyone crazy saying she wanted to go to the hospital. She believed that she would get well as soon as she went there. And once she was well, she would go to her village. How would she go? Who would take her? That was not certain. Meanwhile, a yellow-coloured taxi had arrived in front of the house. Baba carried Moni in his arms and got into the taxi. Gora Kaka[22] as well.
Moni seemed to have shrunk somehow in Baba’s arms. She gaped wide-eyed. Dada and I were at the taxi window. Ma too came and stood behind. We were saying goodbye to Moni. The taxi engine started. We heard the sound of that. Did a stream of compassion finally flow from her eyes at that moment? Yes, Moni gaped at us in astonishment and wept. “Why are you crying, Moni?” Dada ran behind the taxi. I did too. The taxi was going along the G.T. Road, becoming more and more distant. Dada screamed out, “Why are you crying, Moni?”
No reply came wafting. Once the taxi went past the bend at Kablikutir, it was no longer visible. We too never saw Moni again after that. Within a week of being admitted to Nirmal Hriday, Moni had passed away. Where did she go? To that tiny piece of homeland? The village that she had dreamt of going to after returning from the hospital?
If ever I woke up in the dead of night, I used to keep my ears pricked – could I hear Moni’s voice? Talking to herself? No, I never heard anything. Once someone leaves, they don’t return. All of us seemed to become quiet somehow after that. Baba did not utter a single word to anyone for quite a few days. When we had to find a picture for the sradh[23] ceremony, it was taken from a group photograph and framed. When the purohit moshay[24]objected to fish being offered at a widow’s sradh, Ma had told him, “Isn’t the peace of the soul the law in that book of yours?”
He could not say anything. Dada and I carried that fish head in the ritual clay pot with the lump of rice and floated it in the Ganga and walked back without looking back even once. There was no longer anyone at home that day to return to for protection. Was there truly no one? After all these years, when I look back at that road, I realise there was. There was an earthen house, atulsi pedestal as well. There was a falsa tree at the bank of a pond. There was a village awash in the morning sunshine. And there was that tiny piece of homeland that belonged to Moni, which we never set eyes on, but only kept in our dreams, like Aladin’s amazing lamp.
(This is an excerpt from the ongoing translation of Baba’s Yashica Camera: A Photographic Memoir of a Refugee Family, by Kallol Lahiri. All the photographs have been provided by Kallol Lahiri.)
Kallol Lahiri teaches cinema, makes documentary films, writes screenplays for films, television and OTT series, and writes blogs of various flavours in between. He is the author of four novels, Gora Naxal (2017), Indubala Bhater Hotel (2020), 1990, A Love Story (2022) and Ghumiye Porar Aage (2024), and a memoir, Babar Yashica Camera (2021). He was awarded the Sadhana Sen Memorial prize in 2021 for the novels Gora Naxal and Indubala Bhater Hotel by the magazine Bhumodhyosagor.
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V. Ramaswamy is a literary and nonfiction translator of voices from the margins. His translation of the novel, The Struggle, by Showkat Ali, was published in 2025.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Robihara 2 (Sunless 2) by Nazrul has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Chapter 1 of Isa Kamari’s novel, The Throne,has been translated by the author from Malay. We will be running the whole novel as serial through the year. Click here to read.
An excerpt from Aslam Dostain‘s novel, Sótkál, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click hereto read.
A Sudden Shower has been written and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Clickhere to read.
Jhor or Storm, a poem by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.
Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844, Painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner
Perhaps, the only constant that makes a difference in this ever-transforming world is how we react to changes around us. How do we interact with not just humans but our whole planet with its climate, contours, its plethora of flora and fauna? Will that impact our survival in the long run? And yet with our focus on legacies, traditions, beliefs, we tend to ignore the call to adapt to the new that might help us move towards an unpredictable future. We forget perhaps that these systems had all been made by our ancestors to ensure survival. Somewhere along the way, these have become like fences caging us into small subsets. The strange thing is we continue to allow that to happen and create enclosures which we fight to maintain. The future that we face now seems even more tumultuous with climate change, rising sea levels and global warming taking a front seat while influx of refugees from war and natural disasters have already started making themselves felt. Add to that the shortages of resources that we have taken for granted for centuries. How would we survive these?
Is it by redefining the constructs we have created or just meeting in corners and finding commonalities as suggested by Ryan Quinn Flanagan in his poem ‘Corners’?
Corners are a meeting place, they hold a room together
Our poetry section often reflects what we experience, feel or see around us. We have poems on how nature overrides human constructs by Khayelihle Benghu. In ‘Passport for the Rain‘, she writes:
If rain possessed a passport, it would read: Citizen of every place that drinks.
We also have poetry in our translations with Ihlwha Choi giving us a glimpse of Korean life. Professor Fakrul Alam has brought to us in English a Bengali poem by Nazrul written on the death of Tagore, a poem that was read out in Calcutta radio by the poet himself in 1941. Tagore’s poem, Storm, has been translated in keeping with the heavy downpours in Asia this season. Fazal Baloch has shared an excerpt in English, which reads like a short story, from Aslam Dostain’s Balochi novel, Sótkál, giving us a flavour of the hard life in their region, where self-reliance is a felt need for survival. We have mental heath issues woven into this section with Isa Kamari’s translation of his own Malay novel into English, The Throne. We will be running a chapter every month from this novel.
Book excerpts also has a translation this time with Ramananda Bharati’s Bengali travelogue, The Forest of Snow, brought to us in English by Somdatta Mandal. Aruna Chakravarti has reviewed this non-fiction for us. The other excerpt is from Hughes’ The Biscuit Thief, a book that reflects his distinct brand of absurd humour. Keith Lyons’ interview this time features an excerpt from interviewee Jayanthi Sankar’s short story set in Singapore. Mandal has written on yet another translation from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas of Arupa Patangia Kalita’s The Moonlight Saga. Bhaskar Parichha has discussed Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, co-authored by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson. He claims that this book is “is indispensable reading for anyone interested in literature, intellectual history, cultural modernity, or the life of a man whose vision of humanity continues to speak powerfully to an increasingly interconnected world.”
This month’s non-fiction section has trotted around the globe. We have Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan’s essay discussing how to redefine norms. His take is a bit different from Flanagan’s. He tells us, using Huck Finn, Terminator and Sangam Literature, people need to ask not, “What is right?” but “How did I come to believe this is right?” Rengin Uçkan’s writes on the need for framing rules that are compassionate for refugees. And Farouk Gulsara with his inevitable gruff humour talks of climate change while stating things as it is: “Climate change not only shrinks our summer beachwear but also makes outdoor living impossible. Additionally, it’s proving to be more expensive to consume anything…” Jun A. Alindogan narrates how typhoons have increased in number in Philippines and how it affects them while Jeena R. Papaadi reflects on her literary journey. Meredith Stephens shares her sailing adventures in Australia with stunning photographs by Alan Noble. And Suzanne Kamata has brought us a flavour of the unique Zine Fest in Kobe, where both groceries and books find a place!
Devraj Singh Kalsi hovers between fact and fiction. He has a musing which seems like a hash of dark fiction but based on his experiences. He has also shared a story that is purely fictional. Yi-jung Chen brings to us a quirky love story set in Taiwan across time and space while Brindley Hallam Dennis tells a tale about a dog who sits at a table and sips drinks with a straw! Jay Samanta gives a narrative about a modern relationship based on social media output. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao has shared a fable that talks of freeing nature. The issue is, can we really?
In Borderless Journal, we hope to create a space which will help reflect not just the times but also look forward to ideas that can move us towards surviving in a happier world, built on the basis of accepting differences, filled with love, kindness and compassion. While this may sound clichéd and repetitive, given the current climes, these values cannot be emphasised often enough and perhaps our content to an extent does reflect that, sometimes with a soupçon of humour. Do pause by our contents page for this August and tell us what you think.
Winding up this issue, we would like to thank our all contributors for their wonderful writings and photographs. Huge thanks to the Borderless team without who this issue would not have been as vibrant. Special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Thank you all. All of you together make this journal come alive.
Jhor(Storm) by Rabindranath Tagore was first published in his collection called Kheya (Ferry) in 1906.
Art by Sohana Manzoor
STORM
The downpour shatters the sky As the storm rages today — The mridanga drums in rhythm With thunder and lightning-strikes. What ragini would suit this weather? What tune would you hum? The darkness has cindered The blue with shadows.
Herds of cows call out In the meadow hazy with rain. Under the tall palmyra trees, Dark pools shiver. The wind whooshes screaming Through a broken burnt home. The opposing borders of empty fields Shout out to each other.
Who looked for me today While traversing the path? They would have had water Dripping down their locks. My heart dances to the tune Of the raag Mallar Who returned from my door Without singing their song?
Come all of you to my home. Sit near me. Today my mind is focussed In meditation. The empty wind rushes Through land and water. After the storm, my mind Flies with the Northwind.
Who’d be crazy enough to come In this torrential downpour, From beyond Which shore? You will arrive with the cry Of wet woods And the perfume of Garlands of gandharaj.
Oh, today after many days, After many journeys, My gathered sorrows seem to have broken Out of their cage to run to an unknown place — In the shadowy groves of endings, From the forgotten lands, Created or broken, At the end of every song.
The dark clouds whip Wayward thoughts. Haphazard conversations waft In haphazard wild winds. In the distant forest, branches swing. The rain falls hard. The thunder arouses A strange restlessness.
*ragini is the female form of raga or raag. Mallar or Malhar is the raag associated with rains.
Gandhraj flower
This poem has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravartywith editorial input by Sohana Manzoor
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson’s Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man is among the most authoritative and nuanced biographies of the Nobel laureate, offering a deeply researched portrait of one of the twentieth century’s greatest intellectuals. The result of a decade of collaborative work by a Bengali scholar and a British writer, the book transcends the conventions of literary biography to present Tagore as a global thinker whose influence extended far beyond poetry.
The biography’s highest strength lies in its refusal to reduce Tagore to a single identity. While Gitanjali and the Nobel Prize naturally occupy an important place, the authors devote equal attention to his work as an educator, philosopher, playwright, composer, painter, and social reformer. His founding of Visva-Bharati University, experiments in rural reconstruction, and engagement with questions of nationalism, internationalism, and cultural identity receive careful and balanced treatment. Readers come away with a renewed appreciation of Tagore as a visionary who sought to reconcile India’s civilisational heritage with the demands of modernity.
The authors contend in the Introduction: “This is an ambivalent book. It has to be, whichever way one views Rabindranath Tagore, well over half a century after his death. Seen from the West, Tagore appears to have come out of nowhere in 1912 and collected a Nobel prize without the least effort; to have travelled the world and enjoyed a worldwide homage for over two decades not granted to any other writer in the twentieth century; and then to have evanesced until he is barely more than a name. But seen from Bengal he looks very different. Before 1912, Rabindranath was rejected by many, perhaps the majority, of Bengalis as being a product of western influence; for the rest of his life he experienced a unique blend of vilification and homage; and only after he died in 1941 was he canonized as Bengal’s greatest creative artist and raised to the Olympian pedestal he now occupies. No writer, living or dead, is today more actively worshipped in Bengal than Rabindranath Tagore. “From his own point of view, Tagore’s predicament was even more contradictory. As an idealist – which he remained to the last – he reserved his highest admiration for the humane spirit of the West he had first encountered in the liberalism of nineteenth-century English literature and politics. ‘Whatever may be the outward aspect of Europe’s power, I have no doubt that at its core is the power of the spirit’, he said before leaving Bengal in 1912.’ Like some other highly educated Bengalis of his time, until about 1920 Tagore believed British rule in India to be providential, necessary for the reform of a moribund, degenerate society. But as a patriot, particularly after 1900, he needed to believe in the persistence of ancient India’s spiritual values in contemporary India. In 1912, through his poems Gitanjali (Song Offerings), translated by himself, and through his personal presence in England – where people were even reminded of Christ – these two beliefs became harmonized in his mind.”
Dutta and Robinson are particularly successful in capturing the contradictions that defined Tagore’s personality. They portray him neither as an untouchable icon nor as a flawless sage, but as a deeply human figure marked by personal grief, spiritual searching, intellectual restlessness, and emotional complexity. His relationships with contemporaries such as Mahatma Gandhi, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Albert Einstein illuminate the extraordinary intellectual networks that shaped the modern world. The narrative also examines the fluctuating fortunes of Tagore’s international reputation, explaining why his global fame diminished in the decades following his death despite his enduring significance.
The prose, running into five hundred pages, is elegant and accessible without sacrificing scholarly rigour. Richly illustrated and supported by extensive archival research, the biography succeeds in weaving together historical events, literary criticism, and intimate personal details into a compelling narrative. Rather than overwhelming readers with chronology, the authors emphasise the ideas and experiences that shaped Tagore’s creative genius.
Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man stands as a definitive modern biography of India’s first Nobel laureate. It is indispensable reading for anyone interested in literature, intellectual history, cultural modernity, or the life of a man whose vision of humanity continues to speak powerfully to an increasingly interconnected world.
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.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
