Tag: Bhubaneswar

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Review

Celebrating the Monsoon

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

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.

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

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

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

Categories
Essay

One Soul, Two Seas

By Charudutta Panigrahi

Goa
Odisha
From Public Domain

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

[2] Local community games which involve teams

Charudutta Panigrahi writes on culture, geography, and the quiet connections that maps forget to draw.

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

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

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

Categories
Review

The First Novel about the Gig Workers of Kolkata

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: No. 1 Akashganga Lane: The First Novel about the Gig Workers of Kolkata

Author: Ashoke Mukhopadhyay

Translation from Bengali by Zenith Roy

Publisher: Niyogi Books

No. 1 Akashganga Lane: The First Novel about the Gig Workers of Kolkata by Ashoke Mukhopadhyay, translated with sensitivity and nuance by Zenith Roy, is a strikingly contemporary novel that brings into sharp focus the precarious lives of urban gig workers. Set against the pulsating yet indifferent backdrop of Kolkata, the novel explores a world that is at once hyper-connected and profoundly isolating.

At the heart of the narrative is Sriman, a food delivery worker whose life is defined by anonymity and transience. He delivers meals to strangers, navigating the city’s labyrinthine streets, yet remains invisible within the very system he sustains. Mukhopadhyay captures this paradox with quiet precision: Sriman’s labour is essential, but his existence is expendable. The gig economy, as portrayed in the novel, demands efficiency, obedience, and silence—qualities that gradually erode individuality and agency.

Equally compelling is the character of Mrittika Sen, a bike taxi driver whose experiences foreground the gendered dimensions of gig work. Through her, the novel examines the additional vulnerabilities faced by women in an already unstable ecosystem. The constant threat of being “logged out”—a chillingly impersonal metaphor for economic erasure—hangs over her life. Mukhopadhyay does not sensationalise her struggles; instead, he presents them with restraint, allowing their quiet intensity to resonate.

What elevates No. 1 Akashganga Lane beyond a social-realist narrative is its imaginative and philosophical layer. The titular word, Akashganga, is a century-old house and serves as a refuge, both literal and symbolic. Within its walls resides Bishan Basu, a figure who introduces Sriman, Mrittika, and others to the stars. This shift from the immediacy of urban struggle to the vastness of the cosmos is one of the novel’s most poignant devices. It offers a counterpoint to the claustrophobia of gig work, suggesting that even in the most constrained lives, there exists a yearning for transcendence.

The recurring motif of the stars and the speculative question—whether these workers might one day need another planet to call home—imbues the narrative with a subtle dystopian edge. It reflects not only ecological anxieties but also a deeper sense of displacement. The idea that gig workers might carry their labour into another world is both darkly humorous and profoundly unsettling, underscoring the inescapability of systemic exploitation.

Mukhopadhyay’s Bengali prose, as rendered in English by Roy, is measured and evocative. The translation deserves particular commendation for retaining the cultural texture of the original while ensuring readability for a wider audience. Kolkata itself emerges as a character—its rhythms, inequalities, and fleeting solidarities shaping the lives of those who inhabit it. The author’s background in documenting the city’s social history is evident in the authenticity of detail and atmosphere.

The novel also succeeds in capturing the fragile solidarities that emerge among gig workers. Friendships, though often transient, provide moments of warmth and resistance. The shared experiences of precarity create a sense of community, however fleeting. Akashganga becomes a space where these fragmented lives intersect, offering not solutions but solace.

No. 1 Akashganga Lane is a timely and thought-provoking novel that captures the human cost of the gig economy with empathy and insight. Through its blend of social realism and philosophical reflection, it offers a nuanced portrait of contemporary urban life.

Ashoke Mukhopadhyay has crafted a narrative that is both rooted in the specifics of Kolkata and resonant with global relevance, while Zenith Roy ensures that its voice travels beyond linguistic boundaries. The result is a work that lingers, prompting readers to look more closely at the invisible lives that sustain modern cities.

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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

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Review

Kailash Satyarthi on Compassion

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Karuna: The Power of Compassion

Author: Kailash Satyarthi

Publisher: Harper Collins India

Never before has the world been so wealthy, so networked and so saturated with information. And yet, as Kailash Satyarthi points out in Karuna: The Power of Compassion, humanity appears increasingly fractured—by inequality, conflict, ecological devastation and a growing culture of indifference. The paradox, he argues, is not a lack of resources or knowledge, but a moral failure. What the modern world suffers from is not technological deficit, but a deficit of compassion.

Satyarthi’s central intervention is to reclaim compassion from the realm of softness. In popular imagination, compassion is often treated as an individual emotion—gentle, personal, and largely apolitical. Karuna rejects this framing outright. Compassion, Satyarthi insists, is not passive kindness or distant sympathy. It is an active, disruptive force—one that challenges injustice, reshapes institutions and compels moral action.

For Satyarthi, compassion is born at a precise moment: when another person’s suffering is experienced not as an abstract concern but as one’s own. That recognition, he argues, cannot remain inert. True compassion demands a response. In this sense, compassion is not the opposite of power; it is a form of power—ethical power—that has historically driven social movements, expanded rights and forced political change. From struggles against child labour to campaigns for human dignity, Satyarthi positions compassion as the invisible engine behind lasting transformation.

One of the book’s most distinctive contributions is the idea of a “Compassion Quotient (CQ)”. Just as IQ measures cognitive ability and EQ assesses emotional intelligence, CQ is proposed as a way to understand how individuals, organisations and societies relate to suffering and responsibility. For Satyarthi, CQ is not an abstract moral scorecard. It is a practical framework—something that can be cultivated, strengthened and embedded into systems of governance, education and leadership.

The argument is clear: without a high CQ, even the most intelligent or emotionally skilled societies risk becoming efficient but cruel. Economic growth without compassion deepens inequality. Technological progress without compassion accelerates exclusion. Political power without compassion normalises injustice. CQ, in Satyarthi’s formulation, becomes the missing ethical dimension in modern decision-making.

To prevent compassion from dissolving into sentimentality, Satyarthi defines it through four inseparable elements. The first is awareness—the refusal to look away from suffering. Indifference, he argues, is not neutrality; it’s complicity. The second is connectedness—the recognition that another’s pain is not “their problem” but part of a shared human condition. This sense of moral interdependence is central to karuna or compassion.

The third element is deep feeling—a genuine emotional identification with the other, distinct from detached sympathy or charity. And finally, action—concrete, mindful steps to reduce harm and restore dignity. Compassion, Satyarthi insists, collapses if it stops at feeling. Without action, awareness becomes voyeurism and empathy becomes self-indulgence.

When these four elements converge, compassion becomes transformative. It turns individuals—often without formal authority—into problem-solvers, moral leaders and catalysts for change. This is a recurring theme in the book: power does not always flow from institutions; it often emerges from ethical clarity and moral courage.

Satyarthi’s insistence on compassion as a public ethic is shaped by his own life’s work. Over five decades, he has fought for the rights of millions of marginalised children across borders, cultures and political systems. In Karuna, these experiences are not presented as personal triumphs but as evidence of what compassion-in-action can achieve when it is organised, sustained and fearless.

The urgency of the book lies in its diagnosis of the present moment. Satyarthi argues that globalisation has connected markets and technologies, but not consciences. What is needed, he writes, is a “globalisation of compassion”—a deliberate effort to act as if the world is one family. This is not sentimental universalism, but a pragmatic moral stance, especially when addressing issues such as child exploitation, forced labour, displacement, and environmental collapse.

In a political climate increasingly defined by hostility, exclusion and moral exhaustion, Karuna makes a quiet but radical demand: that compassion be treated not as a personal virtue but as a collective responsibility. It calls on citizens, leaders and institutions to rethink success—not merely in terms of growth or efficiency, but in terms of dignity protected and suffering reduced.

Karuna: The Power of Compassion is not a manual for charity, nor a retreat into moral idealism. It is a challenge—to individuals and societies alike—to recognise that the future will not be shaped by intelligence, technology, or power alone. Without compassion as a guiding force, Satyarthi warns, progress itself becomes hollow. With it, even the most entrenched injustices can be confronted.

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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

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Stories

Hold on to What You Let Go

By Rajendra Kumar Roul

After nearly twenty years, perhaps more, I bumped into Sadhu Kaka[1] again.

That meeting—sudden, strange—pulled me back. Back to a time before Google was born. When the world still moved at its own unhurried pace, unshackled by the glow of mobile screens; when days stretched longer; when people were simply, quietly human.

That morning, I sat at the bus stop with my wife and daughter. The air was still; the sunlight tender. We were on our way back to Bhubaneswar when he saw me—came running, shouting my name, and clasped my hands tightly. I felt the roughness of his palms, the faint tremor of age in his grip. A smile lingered on his lips—gentle, unguarded, like the soft fragrance of fresh jasmine. And yet, no matter how hard I tried, I could not bring myself to smile. Something within me had gone still, as if time itself had forgotten to move.

I looked at my wife, bewildered and uncertain. My guess had been right. By then, her face had set like stone, her eyes dulled by silence. She looked at me once, then at him, and turned away. A grimace flickered across her lips, carrying the sting of quiet satire. She stepped aside and stood there wordlessly, her gaze fixed on the road. Cars passed in a slow rhythm, their noise distant and unreal, as though the world around me had quietly lowered its volume.

I wasn’t surprised by my wife’s reaction. She had always flinched whenever I surrendered to the weakness of my heart. I knew my failing well, and what rose in me was not anger but a slow, lingering guilt. Men like Sadhu Kaka have long taken advantage of the tenderness in me, and each time, it was my family that carried the scar. Once, in a moment of misguided affection—or perhaps a surge of foolish tenderness—I had pushed my daughter into danger for his sake, and now, it was my turn to bleed before the world—this time, for the same fragile sentiment that refused to die, the one I still hold for my childhood friend, Jagabandhu.

There was a time when Jagabandhu and I sat side by side in class—sharing the same bench, the same cracked slate, the same fragile dreams that fluttered like paper kites in the dusty afternoon air.

Then one day, poverty came and sat beside him—silent, patient, and unyielding. From that day on, his place in the classroom remained empty. He began walking to the fields with his father instead, turning the soil where once he had turned the pages. The spade and the hoe became his prayer, the sun his only witness.

I went on, class after class, until the village felt too small for my growing dreams. I left, but he stayed behind, as though the earth itself had claimed him, unwilling to set him free.

The words came unbidden as I walked to the bus stop. Without intending to, I turned down the narrow lane that led to Jagabandhu’s house.

He was sitting beneath the guava tree in his courtyard, the same spot where I had seen him years ago. The tree had grown denser, its shadow trembling on the cracked earth. A brown cow stood nearby, chewing its cud in slow, unhurried rhythm.

When I saw Jagabandhu, I hesitated. It took a moment to recognise him. His face had grown thinner, his eyes sunken, as if time had quietly worked its way through him. His life, I thought, could have belonged to one of those tragic stories that never make it to paper.

The years had pressed heavily on him. The weight of poverty had bent his frame. Life, for him, had withered into a cruel jest of fate—an endless hum from some tired, indifferent machine. His wife lay ill inside the house. Last year, his eldest daughter had died. The papers called it suicide, but Jagabandhu whispered that her in-laws had murdered her. Three unmarried daughters still lived with him, and he carried their future like a stone in his chest. At night, he said, a dull pain rose from his stomach and stayed there until morning.

My eyes welled with tears the moment I heard of Jagabandhu’s plight. I have always been an emotional soul; sorrow, whether on screen or stage, seeps into me until I lose sense of where the story ends and my own ache begins. But this was no performance. This was the truth of a man’s suffering, and I was only a witness, powerless to soften his suffering.

A heaviness gathered in my chest. I laid my hand upon Jagabandhu’s shoulder. A long, tremulous sigh slipped out of me, as though my heart itself had grown tired of carrying sorrow.

“Give me five thousand rupees,” I said to my wife.

Startled, she looked up. Her eyes widened—half fear, half disbelief. I ignored her and pressed on, my voice firm. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

For a moment, a spark of rebellion flared in her eyes, but she held it back. Wordlessly, she opened her purse. Her fingers trembled. She drew out a bundle of hundred-rupee notes and placed it in my hand as though it weighed a mountain.

I passed the money to Jagabandhu and whispered a silent prayer to Lord Jagannath. Not for fortune, but for mercy. Then I turned away and walked toward the bus stop, leaving him behind with his burden of sorrow.

The road stretched empty; my footsteps sounded hollow. It felt as if every sound within me had fallen still—as though the earth itself had grown quieter than it should be. I seemed to sink into a darkness so deep that I had not known it existed within me.

How does Jagabandhu live beneath such sorrow? How does he bear a life so heavy? Is what he endures truly a life—or a curse disguised in the clothes of living?

If I were in his place…

No. My body trembled. I tried to imagine it, but I could not. It was not merely difficult—it was impossible, like trying to build a ladder that reaches heaven.

Just as I was making a futile attempt to step into Jagabandhu’s shoes, and failing all the same, my wife’s voice drifted through the silence.

“You gave the last note to charity. Do you have money for the bus fare?”

I snapped out of my thoughts and asked, “Why? What about the money I gave you the day we came to the village?”

As though she had already anticipated my question, she quietly handed me a notebook where every expense was recorded, down to the last coin.

“The money you gave your friend was the last you ever gave me,” she said. “Now you’ll have to take care of the bus fare yourself.”

It was as if a cold hand had struck me awake. I stepped out of my daze into the harsh glare of truth: I was penniless. I didn’t even have enough to buy the bus tickets.

What madness drove me to Jagabandhu’s house? Why had I stopped there on my way to the bus stop?

He is my friend, yes—but that doesn’t mean I must lose my head every time I think of him. More than anything, why had that sudden tide of emotion risen in me the moment I saw him?

It would have been different if I’d been alone. But I wasn’t. My wife and daughter were there, silent witnesses to my grand stupidity. How could I tell the bus conductor, without shame, “Brother, I have not a paisa left. Take us to Bhubaneswar for nothing”?

My mind went blank. Darkness pressed close, thick and suffocating. I wished I could slap myself. And if anyone asked why, I’d tell them plainly: because I earned it.

Sadhu Kaka broke my trance. “Are you disturbed?” he asked gently. “Your wife doesn’t seem well. Has there been some disagreement between the two of you?”

I forced a smile. A thin, artificial smile.

I wanted to tell him, Life isn’t as simple as you think, Sadhu Kaka. You, who have stepped away from the world, can never truly understand it.

I studied, loved, built a home, became a father—and soon, I’ll be the one giving my daughter’s hand away. And yet, I still wonder if I’ve ever truly grasped the delicate mathematics of living.

If I had, would I, once again ensnared by emotion, have placed my last bit of money in Jagabandhu’s hands today—just as I did twenty years ago, when my daughter burned with fever and I gave you the money meant for her medicine?

I still remember it clearly: my daughter’s asthma had flared again after days of fever. The doctor had ordered an urgent injection, and I set out in haste to buy it.

Sadhu Kaka caught me in the traffic. He ran to me, gasping, and gripped my arm.

“Jayant, disaster has struck. I must leave for the village right now, but my bag is gone. Lend me some money. I’ll send you a money order the moment I reach home.”

I opened my wallet, not even sure why. There were three thousand rupees inside. The instant his eyes fell on them, he said, “That will do. Don’t worry, I’ll return it as soon as I reach the village.”

Before I could protest, he tore the notes from my hand and disappeared onto a bus.

I went back home with nothing. No medicine, no words to explain. My daughter’s condition worsened that night, and by morning she was in the ICU.

That morning never left me. Even now, the sound of an ambulance makes my chest tighten.

Twenty years have gone by since then.

And now, Sadhu Kaka again, after twenty long years.

I wanted to cry out, to shout until my voice broke. I wanted to grab Sadhu Kaka by the shoulders and plead:

“I desperately need that money today, Sadhu Kaka. Otherwise, the bus conductor will humiliate me in front of my wife and daughter. If only you could return what I gave you twenty years ago, it would save me now.”

But I said nothing. His vacant eyes, his frail face, left no space for words.

Long ago, he had loved someone. She betrayed him, and he never recovered. He lived only as long as duty required—until his parents were gone. Then he simply let the world slip past.

People say he has no place to call his own. No one knows what he does or where he lives. How could I expect anything from a man who has already abandoned everything, even himself?

The bus pulled in at the stop. My wife caught our daughter by the hand and climbed aboard. I loosened my grip on Sadhu Kaka’s hand and turned to follow them. But before I could reach the door, he ran after me. With trembling fingers, he straightened my collar and smoothed the stray hair from my forehead. Perhaps he wished to speak, but no words came.

For an instant, I faltered, my mind adrift. His face glowed before me like that of the Lord Buddha at the Peace Pagoda in Dhauli—calm, compassionate. Then I turned away in revulsion. I’ve always been vulnerable to such people. Who would help me now? Sadhu Kaka, or Jagabandhu?

My face hardened in defiance. I pushed him aside, climbed into the bus, and sank onto the three-seater beside my wife. My eyes closed. Inside me, it felt as though the cyclone of ninety-nine was still raging.

Ah, why does this keep happening to me? Why do I remain a slave to my own emotions? Even after stumbling into trouble time and again, why can’t I understand that charity is good—but never at the cost of losing yourself?

I don’t know when I drifted into sleep. A soft touch pulled me back. I opened my eyes. The bus conductor stood before me.

Oh my God!

Startled, I cried out silently. Sweat broke across my skin; the ground seemed to give way beneath my feet. My blood turned cold. I saw my wife and daughter staring at me, their faces pale with fear.

“Mr. Jayant, right?” the bus conductor said, smiling. “Here—your ticket to Bhubaneswar. And three thousand rupees.”

I looked up, uncertain I had heard him correctly.

A ticket… money… what was all this?

The bus conductor’s smile lingered.

“Sadhu Kaka bought the tickets for you,” he said. “He told me to give you the money as well. He was afraid you might refuse if he tried to hand it to you himself.”

So, this time in the crowded market place, both my wife and I smiled and looked with contrition at him. Before we could speak, he smiled and said, “Stay well!” Then he disappeared.

[1] Kaka means “uncle” and is often used in Odia as a respectful form of address for an elderly man. Thus, Sadhu Kaka may be understood as “Uncle Sadhu.”

Rajendra Kumar Roul is an acclaimed bilingual fiction writer. A professional feature journalist, he has written more than a hundred short stories, over a thousand feature articles for Odia daily newspapers, two novels and several plays for the stage.

.

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Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Satrughna Pandab’s Odia Poems

Five poems by Satrughna Pandab have been translated to English from Odia by Snehaprava Das

Satrughna Pandab 
SUMMER JOURNEY

Does this journey begin in summer?
After the mango buds go dry 
And the koel’s voice trails away…
When simuli, palash and krishna chuda
Blaze in red? 
Does it begin when the blood
After reveling in the festivities of flesh
Crosses over the bone-fencing
And gets cold, 
When the burning soul yearns for
The fragrant and cool sandalwood paste?

And the soothing monsoon showers? 
 Where lies the destination --
At what border, which estuary, 
Which desolate island of wordlessness?
The journey perhaps itself decides 
The appropriate hour.
 You embark upon this journey alone --
Without friends, without kins, 
Without allies without adversaries.
   
You yourself are the mendicant here.
You are the violin, you too are the ektara. 
You are the alms too.
And what are the alms after all?
At that ultimate point,
When the end would wear the 
Garb of blue ascetism,
The scorch of summer
Turns to
Sandalwood paste,
 Besmears the breath that
Leaves you overwhelmed 
With its exotic fragrance.

A SKETCH OF FAMINE

The white wrap of the clouds
 Is ripped into shreds.  
The pieces are blown away in the wind.

The sky spreads out like 
A grey cremation ground,
Where the sun, like some kapalika 
Performs a tantric ritual
A sacrificial act,
And slits the throat of a virgin cloud --
Moon:  The skull of a man just died,
Constellations: A crowd of beggars,
 Night:                        A Ghost Land 
 Fissured farmlands: Human skeletons.

Flames leap. 
Green vegetations char.
The blue of the sky turns ashy. 
The tender earth
Lamenting its bruised honour
Sprawls in a pathetic, arid sprawl.

WAR (I)
 (FROM KURUKSHETRA TO KUWAIT)

All the Dhritarasthras 
Between Kurukshetra and Kuwait 
Are blinded kings, 
Pride boiling in their blood,

Not a single weapon misses the target
Each Ajatasatru fights another 
Ceaselessly,
Neither of them returns from the battlefield,

The weapons have no ears for  
 The mantra of love
Or of brotherhood,
Nor does the blood recognise its kinsmen.
The battlefield does not care to know
Which warrior belongs to which camp.

Not a soul could be seen on the bank of 
The bottomless river of blood
That flows across the battlefield
Desolate and forlorn.

And there is always an Aswatthama, 
Ready with his Naracha, the iron arrow, 
Awaiting the Parikshitas yet to be born. 


AUTUMN 

Is this river your body
Flowing, calm and pristine, 
A translucent green? 
Are the dazzling streamers of sunlight
Hanging from the sky of
Your glowing skin?
Are the rows of paddy fields 
Stretching to the horizon, 
Your sari?
Do you smell like the paddy buds? 
Do the delicate murmur of the river waves
Or the cheery chirpings of the birds 
Carry your voice?  
The glimmering stars of the night --
Are they your ear-studs?
Do your eyes sparkle 
Like those of some goddess?
Do you ever cry?
Really?
Are the dew drops clustering 
On the grass your tears, then?

And the pool of blood under your 
Lotus-like feet --
Whose blood is that? 
Ripping apart the night
Coloured like the buffalo’s skin,
Your lotus-face gleams like stars,
My breath smells of the lotus, too. 


A FAMILY MAN’S DAILY ROUTINE

The man stands 
His back turned to the sun,
Or is it the wind?

A bare back, always
Rough hair, dry, windblown,
May be there is a hunch on his back,
Or, is it a load of some kind?
Heavy and sagging, 
His toils do not show on his face.
  
He stands like a scarecrow,
Waving aimless, hollow hands
Warding off the emptiness 
Around him, or the void within?
 
His face does not show it,
Or he does not have a face at all?
Just a headless body
Moves about here and there,
 Brushing the dust off,
Mopping the sweat beads away.
The cracks on his palms and his heels
 Could be seen, indistinct though.
There are, however, times, when
A face fixes itself to the headless torso,
When he comes to know
About the pregnancy of his unwed daughter,
Or, when he has to carry his dead son
Over his shagging shoulders,
The pair of eyes in that face look like marbles 
 Deadpan, stiff and blank.  
 
How does a family man take it
When the harvest succumbs  
To the tyranny of flood and famine,
When a dividing wall is raised 
 In the house or in the fields, 
Does it matter to the family man?
May be,
A dagger rips his heart apart,
The pain does not show on the face.

Sometimes one can see something like 
A basket on his back --
Who does the family man carry in that?
 His blind parents? His kids? 
Perhaps his name is Shravan Kumar
And he is on a pilgrimage,
Perhaps not! 

He buries his already sinking feet 
Some more under earth, 
Beads of sweat shine like pearls on him.
His beards hang off his face,
Like the aerial roots of a Banyan tree,
Does he move on carrying
A dead sun on his back? 
His face reveals not much.

Who does the man stand 
Showing his bare back to? 
To the sun or to the wind?
Who knows?
Nothing shows clear on the family man’s face.

Satrughna Pandab is a conspicuous voice in contemporary Odia poetry. A poet working with an aim to define the existential issues man is confronted with in all ages, he adopts a style that embodies traditionalism and modernity in a proportionate measure. Highly emotive and poignant, his poetry that reveals a fine synthesis of the experiences both individual and universal, are testimonies of a rare poetic skill and craftmanship. A recipient of the Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award, the Sarala Award, and several such accolades the poet has nine anthologies of poems and several critical and nonfictional writing to his credit.

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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Categories
Bhaskar's Corner

‘Language… is a mirror of our moral imagination’

By Bhaskar Parichha

Prof. Sarbeswar Das (1925–2009): A scholar of depth, a teacher of light. Photo Provided by Bhaskar Parichha

In the intellectual history of modern Odisha, Professor Sarbeswar Das stands as one of those rare figures who seamlessly bridged scholarship, ethics, and social commitment. A luminous teacher, an erudite writer, and a quiet Gandhian, his life and work embodied the moral seriousness and intellectual curiosity that marked a generation shaped by the freedom struggle and the promise of a newly independent India.

Born in Sriramchandrapur village in the Puri district of Odisha in 1925, Sarbeswar Das grew up in a milieu where simplicity, discipline, and community values were deeply ingrained. His brilliance shone early—he topped the matriculation examination across Odisha and Bihar, a distinction that foreshadowed a lifetime of academic excellence.

His educational journey took him first to Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, the cradle of higher education in Odisha, where he absorbed the liberal spirit and rigorous intellectual training that the institution was known for. He later studied at Allahabad University, one of India’s foremost centers of learning, before proceeding to the University of Minnesota, for advanced studies in English literature.

His exposure to American academia at a time when few Indian scholars ventured abroad profoundly shaped his intellectual orientation. The years in Minnesota opened to him a new world of thought—modern literary criticism, American fiction, and the philosophy of democratic humanism—all of which left a deep imprint on his teaching and writing in later years.

On returning to India, Das joined the teaching profession, which he would pursue with remarkable dedication and grace for several decades. He served as a professor of English in some of Odisha’s most respected institutions—Christ College (Cuttack), SCS College (Puri), Khallikote College (Berhampur), and Ravenshaw College (Cuttack).

As a teacher, he was known not only for his formidable command of English but also for his clarity of expression, quiet humour, and empathetic engagement with students. He could bring Shakespeare and Emerson alive in the classroom, weaving them into the moral fabric of everyday Indian life. His pioneering initiative was the introduction of American Literature as a formal subject of study in Indian universities, long before it became fashionable to do so.

In an age when English studies in Odisha were largely confined to the British canon, he expanded its horizons by introducing writers like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner, and Mark Twain to Indian classrooms.

Das believed that literature must connect with lived experience. He often told his students: “Language is not just a means of expression; it is a mirror of our moral imagination.” This conviction shaped generations of students who went on to become writers, teachers, and civil servants. Among them was the late Ramakanta Rath, later one of Odisha’s most celebrated poets, who fondly remembered Prof. Das as a teacher who inspired intellectual courage and aesthetic sensitivity.

Alongside his teaching, Prof. Das was a prolific writer and scholar. He authored around twenty-five books spanning essays, literary criticism, translations, and reflections on education and society. His writings in English and Odia reveal a mind steeped in both classical and modern traditions. Fluent in English, Odia, and Sanskrit, he was at ease quoting from the Bhagavad Gita and Hamlet in the same breath.

His essays in English reflected on the role of language in education, the cultural responsibility of intellectuals, and the need for moral clarity in modern life. He consistently argued for a vernacular humanism—a belief that English education must not estrange Indian students from their cultural roots but rather help them view their own traditions through a broader, universal lens.

As a principal, he brought administrative efficiency and human warmth to his role. His tenure is remembered for reforms that encouraged academic discipline, faculty collaboration, and student participation. He believed that education was not merely about acquiring degrees but about shaping ethical citizens.

Prof. Das’s intellectual life was inseparable from his moral and civic commitments. As a young man, he participated in the Quit India Movement, aligning himself with the Gandhian values of simplicity, non-violence, and service throughout his life.

Late in life, Prof. Das turned inward to recount his journey in his autobiography, Mo Kahani (My Story), which has since acquired the stature of a modern Odia classic. Spanning eight decades of personal and social history, it offers not only a memoir of a life well-lived but also a vivid ethnography of Odisha across the twentieth century.

In Mo Kahani, he paints rich, affectionate portraits of his family—his parents and sisters, Suruji and Hara Nani—and evokes the rhythms of village life, with its festivals, hierarchies, and hardships. His account of the great famine of 1919, passed down through family memory, is a haunting narrative of suffering and resilience.

The autobiography captures the moral universe of rural Odisha—its compassion, faith, and silent endurance—while chronicling the social changes wrought by modernity, education, and political awakening.

The book transcends personal recollection to become a social document of rare authenticity, preserving the voices and values of an era in transition. Scholars have hailed it as a valuable resource for understanding Odia social and cultural history, as well as a significant contribution to Indian autobiographical writing.

Prof. Sarbeswar Das passed away in 2009 at the age of 84, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual depth and human kindness. Those who knew him remember his calm demeanour, his Gandhian simplicity, and his unwavering belief in the power of education as a moral force. His students and colleagues regarded him not merely as a teacher but as a guide who exemplified integrity and humility in every aspect of life.

His contributions to English literary education in Odisha were transformative. By introducing American literature, promoting cross-cultural study, and insisting on a pedagogy grounded in ethical reflection, he helped modernise the study of English in the state and inspired a generation to approach literature as a bridge between worlds.

Even today, his writings—both critical and autobiographical—continue to speak to the challenges of our times: the search for meaning in education, the reconciliation of global and local cultures, and the enduring need for moral clarity in a rapidly changing world.

In the final measure, Prof. Sarbeswar Das remains not only a scholar and educator but also a moral historian of his age—one who chronicled the soul of Odisha with the sensitivity of a poet and the precision of a teacher. His Mo Kahani endures as his final lesson: that learning is not a mere accumulation of knowledge, but a lifelong practice of understanding, empathy, and truth.

.

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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Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Rohini K.Mukherjee’s Odia Poems

Five poems by Rohini K.Mukherjee have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das

Rohini K.Mukherjee
AT THE MYSTICAL SANCHI 

An unknown voice beckons 
At the early hours of the morning.
Moved by a new surprise
Buddha relapses into meditation.
A crystal dawn, cold as marble,
Is traced 
On his hands and feet
And his eyes and forehead.
Some instant, invisible signal prompts him
To turn on his side and sleep.

After Buddha’s Nirvana,
Calm settles in the valley, slowly.
Thousands of 
Branches and branchlets
Radiate blissful divine light.
The trees too, in a lavish growth,
Spread out everywhere --
From the earth below to the sky above --
And meditate! 


THE EXECUTIONER 

No one could predict 
The next scene. 
But in the one enacted now
The executioner has 
A prominent presence.

The executioner stalks the moon,
 His face hidden in the veil of clouds,
Knife in hand, a gleam of smile 
On a phony face, 
A sharp, keen gaze under the glasses,
Exuding the smell of 
An expensive perfume.

The indistinct footfalls may
Prompt one to flick a look back
 But there would be no one behind
Only clouds clad in midnight blue
Sailing in the sky.
From somewhere far floats in the music  
Of a mountain stream.
 Slowly, sorrow dissipates and a 
 Path opens up for the spring,
 A wonderland of fairies.
In his unguarded moments, 
The knife in the executioner’s grip 
Glitters in the furtive moonlight.   
Any moment that poison-coated knife
Could find the moon’s throat, 
The moon knows that well.
But it forgives,
Because it also knows well
That the executioner cannot 
Hide for long
And will be trapped in 
The moonlit garden of tangled clouds.


THE DEATH OF A HAPPY MAN

One day, the eyes lost sleep
And all the locusts flew away,
  
Not one spectator had guessed 
That one day 
The man will sprawl out on  
On the sea beach sands
Washed away by the waves 
From distant lands. 

The eyes lost sleep one day.
The flock of locusts flew away.

But no one could guess 
The pains, the sobs 
That seared that forlorn soul.

Petals drifted in piles 
To make him a delicate shroud.
The smell of sandalwood came wafting  
In the sea-breeze from the north.
Seagulls flocked around the body,      
Unintimidated by the crowd in the beach,
Drowning the voice of 
The living men there 
With their loud squawks of dissent.  
Ooh! What a long wished-for 
Happy death
On a cool and blissful sea beach!

After the flock of locusts flew away 
Carrying all the dreams back 
On their wicked wings, 
The eyes lost sleep!


ANKLETS OF THE NIGHT 

There is still time for the nightfall.
But the air tinkles with the sound of 
The anklets of the night
 As if someone is retreating from
An ineffectual, moon-washed garden, 
 As if someone from the grave  
Watching the landscape, 
Or someone standing at the riverside
Hums the tune of a departed season,
Or someone hurrying aimlessly away
To escape the approaching dawn. 

It is not yet night,
But the night’s anklets ring.
You are probably returning
To your shelter of old times
In search of a new hope.
Just take a look behind to see 
The painting of a conflicting wind
Fluttering across the courtyard.

It is not yet night
But its anklets begin to jingle in the air.

How cool you appear in your 
Evening chanting of the mantras!
 How calm and steady you are
In the pure fragrance of the descending steps 
As you set out on the journey
Holding your heart on your palm 
Like a burning clay-lamp.
May be when you arrive there
The dawn around you would be sonorous
With the notations of Raga Bhairavi.

There is still time for the nightfall
But the night’s anklets tinkle in the air!


THEY DID NOT COME 

I waited for them, but
They did not come,
I waited all this time in vain, and 
Knowingly, let myself fall a victim 
To the first rays of the sun.
The sun’s whiplash spurred me on
To the jungle. 
It forced me to cut wood 
And tie them in bundles. 
The hunger of the sunset hour
Prodded me back to where 
I had started.
The smell of soaked rice, and the aroma of
Onions and oil 
 Drifted thick in the air of my house.

The sun came in, an intruder, 
Sat by me and watched.
Then it devoured all the food, 
Leaving nothing,
Not even a single dried-up onion-peel.

Because they did not come, 
For me the morning was 
Meaningless in its futility. 
I knew I was never one 
In the list of their ultimate interests
When their tenure of life here ended.

The footfall of the light
Trod easy on my skin.
Days rolled on this way 
In sun and light.
The sun was everywhere, all the time.
Whenever the door opened,
The sun stood there. 
When the meteor came shooting down,
When words rode over 
the waves of sleep to float in the air,
The treacherous sun always appeared.

And for me, there was 
No hope of their coming back.

But, one day as I leapt up in a hurry  
At the Sun’s summon,
I discovered the Sahara Desert
That I believed had 
Remained hidden in my
School Geography book, 
Lying face down all these days 
Under my own hooves!

Rohini Kanta Mukherjee has authored, edited and co-edited several volumes of poetry and short stories in Odia and English. Many of his poems have been translated and published in various Indian languages , broadcast over several stations of All India Radio and Doordarshan . Some of his poems and translations have appeared in Wasafiri, Indian Literature, The Little Magazine , Purvagraha, Samasa among others. He retired as Associate Professor of English, from B.J.B Autonomous College, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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Categories
Review

Boats in a Storm: Migrant Narratives

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962

Author: Kalyani Ramnath

Publisher: Westland/Context

The legal frameworks established during the period from 1942 to 1962 in South and Southeast Asia played a crucial role in shaping migration patterns and influencing decolonisation processes. This era witnessed significant changes as countries in these regions sought to redefine their legal systems in the wake of colonial rule, which in turn affected the movement of people across borders.

Migration patterns were influenced by various factors, including the aftermath of World War II, the struggle for independence, and the establishment of new national identities. Additionally, the decolonisation processes during this time were marked by the emergence of new legal frameworks that aimed to address the complexities of post-colonial governance and the rights of migrants. Understanding the interplay between these legal frameworks, migration trends, and decolonisation efforts provides valuable insights into the socio-political landscape of South and Southeast Asia during this transformative period.

Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962  authored by Kalyani Ramnath is a thoroughly researched work. This book is  part of the series South Asia in Motion and was originally published by Stanford University. Ramnath serves as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia and has conducted extensive research on migration.

Says the blurb: “For more than a century before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading goods, supplying credit, and seeking work. This all changed with the war and as India, Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya wrested independence from the British empire.”

This captivating book is set against the backdrop of the tumultuous post-war period. It delves deeply into the legal struggles encountered by migrants who are determined to maintain their traditional ways of life and cultural practices. The narrative highlights their experiences with citizenship and the broader process of decolonisation. Even as new frameworks of citizenship emerged and the political landscapes of decolonisation created complexities that often obscured the migrations between South and Southeast Asia, these migrants consistently shared their cross-border histories during their engagements with the legal system.

These narratives, often obscured by both domestic and global political developments, contest the notion that stable national identities and loyalties emerged fully formed and free from the influences of migration histories after the fall of empires.

In her book, Kalyani Ramnath draws on archival materials from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, London, and Singapore to illustrate how former migrants faced legal challenges in their efforts to reinstate the prewar movement of credit, capital, and labour. The book is  set against the  backdrop of a climate marked by rising ethno-nationalism, which scapegoated migrants for taking away jobs from citizens and monopolising land.

Ramnath fundamentally illustrates in the book that the process of decolonisation was marked not just by the remnants of collapsed empires and the establishment of nation-states emerging from the debris of imperial breakdown. It also encompasses the often-ignored stories of wartime displacements, the unexpected consequences that arose from these events, and the lasting impacts they have had on societies.

This perspective highlights the complex and multifaceted process of decolonisation, demonstrating how it was shaped not only by significant political transformations but also by the personal narratives and experiences of individuals who faced the challenges of conflict and displacement.

An excellent book to read!
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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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Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Ashwini Mishra’s poems

Five poems by Ashwini Mishra have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das

Ashwini Mishra 
RIDING THE EARTH: THE LAST DAY

Farewell! 
A final goodbye!
The prologue to an epic of an endless rest
Has to be something
Extra special.

Gathering up all the strength
Of his senses 
He strove to know the people
Around him.
He spoke fondly to them
‘Let you all be there in my heart
Forever,
May my world keep shimmering
With the glow of this endearing bond.’
He rode each passing day
That galloped on -- 
Like a well-fed, robust horse,
He rode on, 
His feet securely stuck in the stirrups 
His hands gripping the rein hard.
 In an instant he could
 Gallop around the earth
 Cradling time under his arm. 
The river, the ponds 
And the rainclouds brought water
For his parched throat,

Towards the end of the journey 
He called one by one his folks 
Whom he held dear to his heart.
 Some of them sounded assuring,
 Some promised to come.
 A few fulfilled their promises too
 And came --
Still, there was a disturbing emptiness
Somewhere within.

Where has disappeared
The knot of love that had held  
So strong in the days of past?
It was as though that knot 
Had loosened and shredded.   
Worn out like a weary page 
In the mindscape,
Like someone that had once 
Played a major role,   
And had moved away from the centerstage,   
To stand by the stage-wings
Distanced and dispassionate!

SWORD  

 I had never wanted
To wield a sword, a dagger or a goad.
I had always wanted to tuck plumes
into the hair,
To draw a lotus on the palm,
To play the notes of spring breeze
For the ears of the 
Blazing summer noon.
I had wanted to be a dreamer,
To let my eyes close 
At the touch of the delicate petals 
Of exotic blooms!
But you did not let that happen.
My loved ones,
My folk I held close to my heart,
Fell at the merciless blows
Of harsh and hostile words
Your canons shot.
Your anger, your cruelty,
Weighed heavy on me
And a thunderstorm brew inside me.
Unnoticed by others. 
In the end,
My compelled hands
Reached out to the scabbard
Lying abandoned under 
The smuts of time
To draw the sword out.
 
THE CLAY LAMP

A clay lamp can always guess
How long the ghee and 
The wick in it will last.
It is a living thing 
How brief might its lifespan be.
It can, like all living beings,
Battle the wind and the darkness
In its struggle to survive
In an unenclosed space
That is vulnerable to 
The assault of hooves of animals
Or the misty spray of the dew.
 It knows that 
 The moment the curtain rises,
 Revealing the stage
All set for the entry of light,  
The first act of the play will end  
And Its role will be over    
Even before the makeup is 
Rubbed off the face or the artificial tint
On the hair fades.
The hand that had lit it 
May turn impassive, too!
  
  A woman, her heart and hands 
  Focused on the act,
  Keeps lighting up the clay lamps,
  Not knowing for sure 
  How long their light would last
  Or when the flames would die.
 The idol of the goddess    
  That glittered in the light of 
  The lamps she lights 
   Never steps down to help her 
   When the flames char her body.
   There is not a soul in sight
   When her flame dies,
   Except a few burnt insects.
  
 GAZA
You neither have a chest 
Nor arms now 
To embrace those who once saw
You as their own
Like you did before.
The natives and the foreigners, 
Who trod your soil, 
Now take a turn either to your left
Or to your right and move on.
No longer the chirrups of birds
Come sprinkling down 
Either from your sky, or your trees.
There are vultures everywhere
Scavenging on the tender human flesh
Getting fat and heavy.
The sun, the moon and the stars 
In your sky are 
Blown away into thousand pieces now.
You may dig up some of them  
Graved under your ground.
The Death in your sea breeze
And in your explosive garb
Haunts living humans 
To turn them to corpses.
Like a farmland ladened with crops,
Skeletons are heaped in your streets.
Houses and buildings where life dwelt 
Are mounds of shattered concrete.
Wreckage of kitchenware, 
 And of home appliances
 Lie on the desolate roads 
 In pathetic scatters.
A book satchel slings from the 
Severed hand of a dead child.
The thirst for war is not quelled yet,
New strategies are deliberated upon
To pursue newer missions of death.
New weapons must be hoarded 
In the arsenal 
To launch an attack on the netherworld 
After this world is razed to ruins.  

WHIP 

The whip that once basked proud in
The love of the kings and the feudal lords  
And danced in elation on 
The defenseless back of the oppressed, 
Now lies worn and weary 
In a niche in the royal palace or 
Behind the glass doors in the shelf 
Of a museum, 
Coated in dust and dirt.
The obsequious tanners,
Who were far below the 
Aristocracy,  
Polished this tool of tyranny  
 Bright with oil, 
 And it jumped crazy 
On their haggard backs, 
Drawing crooked lines 
Of livid blue and red.

How wide is the chasm between 
Sage Dadhichi who gave his bones 
For forging a thunderbolt 
To kill demon Brutrasura*,
And the stingray that gave its tail to 
Shape a whip 
That performs its brutal dance
On the back of innocent humans? 
Even today,
The barges of history and legends
Voyage across the pages 
Of text books taught in the classroom,
Their sails fluttering 
On their proud masts. 

*Brutrasura was killed by Indra with a weapon made with Sage Dadhichi’s bones as per mythology.

Aswini Kumar Mishra has 13 poetry collections to his credit. He has been translated widely into English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and other Indian languages. He has authored a fiction in English, Feet in the Valley (Rupa Publications, 2016),  His poems and essays have appeared in several literary journals including Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati, Wasafiri, M.P.T, The Little Magazine, Samakaleen, Konark, Rock Pebbles and Vahi etc. A recipient of several awards, he currently lives in Bhubaneswar and can be reached at cell phone +919438615742, +918456953936. His email id is:  mishra.aswini53@gmail.com

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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

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