Tag: California

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Editorial

Counting Colours

Look around you and expand your heart. 
Petty sorrows are insignificant.
Fill your vacant life with love for humanity. 
The Universe reverberates with celestial ecstasy. 

— Anondodhhara Bohichche Bhubone (The Universe reverberates with celestial ecstasy), Tagore, 1894

Some of the most beautiful colours in this universe are blended shades— colours that are born out of unusual combinations. Perhaps that is why we love auroras, sunrises and sunsets. Yet, we espouse clear cut structures for comprehension. As we define constructs created by our kind, we tend to overlook the myriads of colours that hover in the gloaming, the brilliant play of lights and the vibrancy of tints that could bring joy if acknowledged. That ignoring the new-born shades or half-shades and creating absolute structures or constructs lead to wars, hatred, unhappiness and intolerance has been borne true not only historically but also by the current turn of events around the globe. While battles are never fought by the colours or beliefs themselves, they can harm — sometimes annihilate — rigid believers who are victimised for being led to accept their way as the only one and hate another. Perhaps, this has echoes of the battle between the Big Endians and Little Endians over the right way to break eggs in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). As the book is mere fiction, we can admire, agree and laugh at the content. However, in real life, watching newsreels has become a torture with destruction and violence being the main highlights. These detract from life as we knew it.

Writing or literary inputs seem to have become a luxury. But is it really hedonistic to play with words? Words used effectively over a period of time can impact readers to think peace, acceptance and love and also help people heal from the ensuing violence. That can be a possibility only if we self-reflect. While we look for peace, love and acceptance in others, we could start by being the change-makers and bridge builders ourselves. That is the kind of writing we have managed to gather for our November issue.

Building such bridges across humanity, we have poems on the latest Middle Eastern conflict by Stuart McFarlane and David Mellor, which explore the pain of the victims and not the politics of constructs that encourage wars, destruction of humanity, the flora, the fauna and our home, the Earth. Michael Burch writes against wars. Prithvijeet Sinha and Ahana Bhattacharjee write about refugees and the underprivileged. Reflecting colours of the world are poems from Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Suzayn AH, Radhika Soni, Ron Pickett, George Freek and many more. Rhys Hughes has brought lighter shades into his poetry by trying a new technique while reflecting on yetis and mermaids. His column tries to make a parody of a non-existing parody, using TS Eliot’s century old poem, ‘Wasteland’, with amazing results!

Our translations are all poetry too this time. Professor Fakrul Alam has translated a poem discussing human aspirations by Quazi Johirul Islam from Bengali. Another Balochi poem of hope by Bashir Baidar has been brought to us in English by Fazal Baloch bringing into play the moonlight.

For the first time, we are privileged to carry poetry from a language that has almost till now has eluded majority of Anglophone readers, Maithili. Vidyanand Jha, a Maithili poet, has translated his poetry for all of us as has Korean poet, Ihlwha Choi. Winding up translations are Tagore’s ultimate words for us to introspect and find the flame within ourselves in the darkest of times – echoing perhaps, in an uncanny way, the needs of our times.

Our conversation this month brings to us a poet who comes from a minority group in India, Banjara or gypsies, Ramesh Karthik Nayak. In his attempt to reach out to the larger world, he worries that he will lose his past. But does the past not flow into the future and is it not better for traditions to evolve? Otherwise, we could all well be living in caves… But what Nayak has done — and in a major way — is that he has brought his culture closer to our hearts. His debut poetry book in English, Chakmak (flintstones), brings to us Banjara traditions, lives and culture, which are fast getting eroded and he also visits the judgemental attitude of the majoritarian world. To give you a flavour of his poetry, we bring to you an excerpt from his book, livened beautifully with Banjara art and an essay by Surya Dhananjay that contextualises the poetry for us. Our excerpts also have a focus on poetry for we are privileged to have a few poems from Mamang Dai’s The White Shirts of Summer: New and Selected Poems. Mamang Dai is a well-known name from the North-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh for both her journalistic and poetic prowess.

We are happy to host Ranu Uniyal’s beautiful review of I am Not the Gardener: Selected Poems by Raj Bisaria. Bisaria among other his distinctions, was named “Father of the modern theatre in North India” by the Press Trust of India. The other reviews are all of prose. Somdatta Mandal has written of Ali Akbar Natiq’s Naulakhi Kothi, a fictional saga of gigantic proportions. Anita Balakrishnan has reviewed Lakshmi Kannan’s short story collection, Guilt Trip. The book that gives hope for a green future, Akshat Rathi’s Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions has been reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha. Parichha contends: “Through stories that bring people, policy and technology together, Rathi reveals how the green economy is possible, but profitable. This inspiring blend of business, science, and history provides the framework for ensuring that future generations can live in prosperity.”

The anti-thesis to the theme for a welfarist approach towards Earth can be found in Koushiki Dasgupta Chaudhari’s poignant musing titled, “The Theft of a River”. Meredith Stephen’s travel to California and Sai Abhinay Penna’s narrative about Chikmagalur have overtones of climate friendliness. Ravi Shankar writes further of his travels in Peru and Peruvian coffee. Keith Lyons takes us peeking at Beijing and the Great Wall. Gayatri Devi adds to the variety by introducing us to the starry universe of South Indian cinema while Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in the much-needed humour with his narrative about his “Crush on Bottles“. Suzanne Kamata has also given a tongue-in-cheek narrative about the mystique of addresses and finding homes in Japan. We have fiction from Paul Mirabile located in England and Kalsi’s located in India. Pause by our contents page to view more gems that have not been mentioned here.

Huge thanks to our team at Borderless Journal, especially Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. This journal would not have been as it is of now without each and every one of them and our wonderful contributors and readers. Thank you all.

Wish you all a wonderful month as we head towards the end of a rather tumultuous year.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents page for the November 2023 issue

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READ THE LATEST UPDATES ON THE FIRST BORDERLESS ANTHOLOGY, MONALISA NO LONGER SMILES, BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK.

Categories
Slices from Life

In Quest of Seeing the Largest Tree in the World

By Meredith Stephens

General Sherman: The largest tree in the world. Courtesy: Creative Commons

On our final day in California, we were looking forward to making the journey to Kings Canyon to see the largest tree in the world, a giant sequoia 87 metres tall. We packed the car with eight pieces of luggage destined for Australia, into Alex’s 1993 Ford Explorer. It had served us faithfully for several hundred miles of touring in California for the previous weeks. We headed up the winding mountains to Kings Canyon, dotted with live oaks and cattle in the foothills. We were heading up a particularly steep section of the road when the engine faltered. Alex urgently pressed his foot on the accelerator but the car refused to budge. 

“I’ll try and push it,” I offered.

I positioned myself to one side of the rear of the car. If the brakes failed, I did not want the car rolling back and flattening me. The car did not respond to my urgings so I gave up. I noticed cars ascending the mountains at speed, and the blind corner ahead. I decided to walk uphill so that I could signal the cars coming up the hill to warn them of oncoming traffic around the corner. When there was a car descending the hill on the other side, I put up my hand to warn them to stop until it was safe. About twenty cars passed us this way, until one driver noticed our plight and decided to help us. He stopped at the turn-out, and two elderly couples alighted from the car.

“Hasn’t anyone stopped to help you?” the driver asked.

“You’re the first,” I replied.

The two men walked towards the car to help push it twenty metres to the turn-out.

“John!” called out his wife, trying to stop him. It obviously wasn’t safe for a man in his seventies to push a heavily laden car up a mountain ahead of oncoming traffic.

Meanwhile, a man in his thirties had joined the party. Another car stopped on the other side of the road. Two burly men with tattoos crossed the road to help push the car to safety. Alex, the elderly men, the younger man, and the burly men, joined forces to push the car to the turn-out. The car slowly responded and was eventually positioned off the road. The burly men crossed the road to return to their car, and the elderly men returned to theirs. The younger man remained with us.

Alex tried to call the automobile service but his phone had no reception. 

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asked the younger man. 

“Sure. By the way, it might be quicker to call a tow truck. I suggest getting a tow-truck from Reedley, because you will be able to rent a car there.”

We called the tow truck company in Reedley and they agreed to come in two hours. The young man, who turned out to be an off-duty ranger, took his leave. We grabbed our picnic items from the car, and headed downhill to the shade of a large live-oak, while we waited for the tow truck. Lying on the grass under the cool shade of the live-oak, enjoying our picnic items, I could almost forget that we were in a crisis. After an hour or two we thought we needed to be visible from the road for the tow-truck, so we returned to the punishing heat road-side, and soon the tow truck appeared. The driver expertly loaded the car onto the truck, and invited us to join him in the front.

“Careful. It’s very high up,” he warned.

Photograph by Meredith Stephens

I stretched my legs to reach each step to get into the front of the truck, and sat in the back seat, while Alex sat next to the driver.

Sitting in air-conditioned comfort high up with a view down the mountain was such a contrast to sitting in the old car, straining up the mountain. We reached the plains and passed through the hamlet of Squaw Valley before reaching Reedley. With only minutes to spare, we picked up a rental car, removed a few items from the Explorer, and drove back up the mountain. We wound our way past where the car had broken down, into the National Park, through dense forest and charred remains of forest fire several years ago. We followed the signs to our lodge, but our break-down had cost us several hours, and we did not have time for sights that evening. 

That evening, Alex checked the passports to confirm they were at hand for our departure to Australia the following evening. They were not in their usual place. We searched our other bags. Then we retrieved bags from the car and searched them too, to no avail. 

“We’ll have to call the consulate and get temporary passports,” I suggested. 

“First, we will have to retrace our steps. Maybe they fell out when the car broke down. Maybe they are still in the Explorer,” suggested Alex.

That night Alex could not sleep, worrying about the passports. What if we could not return to Australia the next evening and had to buy new tickets? The next morning he was still worried.

“We’ll have to look for the passports, retracing our steps from yesterday. We have no time to see the tallest tree in the world.”

“Do we have time to see the third to tallest tree in the world?”

“Yes. That’s only a fifteen minute detour.”

We drove to see the third to tallest tree in the world. As I started walking in the forest I immediately felt both exhilarated and relaxed. These giant trees provided a protective canopy and their scent sent a rush of well-being through my body. I was satisfied. Did I really need to see the largest tree in the world? Yes, but that would have to wait!

Photographs by Meredith Stephens

We hurried back down the mountain to search for the passports. We could not risk the possibility of not finding them just because of sightseeing. We reached the area of our break-down, and combed the grassy hill carefully in search of the passports, to no avail. Then we wound our way back down the mountain to the tow truck business. I received the keys from the office, opened the car door, and there were the passports on full display.

“Shall we go back to Kings Canyon to see the largest tree in the world?” I asked Alex.

“It will be ninety minutes to get back to the National Park, and then a five hour drive to the airport in LA.”

“I really want to see the tree, but I can’t face over six hours in the car. I guess we should head for the airport.”

“If we had known that the passports were here, we could have gone and seen the tree while we were still in the park,” lamented Alex.

With passports in hand, we did not need to visit the consulate to be issued temporary ones. We could catch the plane as planned. We were not able to see the tallest tree in the world, even though we had driven up the mountain twice. There was some consolation in the fact that the tree would be waiting for us, in years to come, when we had the opportunity to return to our beloved California.

Photographs by Meredith Stephens

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.

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 Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Editorial

We had Joy, We had Fun…

Pre-historic cave painting in France

La Tauromaquia. Leap with the Spear by Picasso (1881-1973)
Courtesy: Creative Commons

There was a time when there were no boundaries drawn by humans. Our ancestors roamed the Earth like any other fauna — part of nature and the landscape. They tried to explain and appease the changing seasons, the altering landscapes and the elements that affected life and living with rituals that seemed coherent to them. There were probably no major organised structures that laid out rules. From such observances, our festivals evolved to what we celebrate today. These celebrations are not just full of joie de vivre, but also a reminder of our syncretic start that diverged into what currently seems to be irreparable breaches and a lifestyle that is in conflict with the needs of our home planet.

Reflecting on this tradition of syncretism in our folklore and music, while acknowledging the boundaries that wreak havoc, is an essay by Aruna Chakravarti. She expounds on rituals that were developed to appease natural forces spreading diseases and devastation, celebrations that bring joy with harvests and override the narrowness of institutionalised human construct. She concludes with Lalan Fakir’s life as emblematic of the syncretic lore. Lalan, an uneducated man brought to limelight by the Tagore family, swept across religious divides with his immortal lyrics full of wisdom and simplicity. Dyed in similar syncretic lore are the writings of a student and disciple of Tagore from Santiniketan, Syed Mujtaba Ali (1904-1974). His works overriding these artificial constructs have been brought to light, by his translator, former BBC editor, Nazes Afroz. Having translated his earlier book, In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan, Afroz has now brought to us Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Tales of a Voyager (Jolay Dangay), in which we read of his travels to Egypt almost ninety years ago. In his interview, the translator highlights the current relevance of this remarkable polyglot.

Humming the tunes of Mujtaba Ali’s tutor, Tagore, a translation of Tagore’s song, Amra Beddhechhi Kasher Guchho (We have Tied Bunches of Kash[1]) captures the spirit of autumnal opulence which heralds the advent of Durga Puja. A translation by Fazal Baloch has brought a message of non-violence very aptly in these times from recently deceased eminent Balochi poet, Mubarak Qazi. Professor Fakrul Alam has translated a very contemporary poem by Quazi Johirul Islam on Barnes and Nobles while from Korea, we have a translation of a poem by Ihlwha Choi on the fruit, jujube, which is eaten fresh of the tree in autumn.

A poem which starts with a translation of a Tang dynasty’s poet, Yuan Zhen, inaugurates the first translation we have had from Mandarin — though it’s just two paras by the poet, Rex Tan, who continues writing his response to the Chinese poem in English. Mingling nature and drawing life lessons from it are poems by George Freek, Ryan Quinn Flanagan and Gopal Lahiri. We have poetry which enriches our treasury by its sheer variety from Hawla Riza, Pramod Rastogi, John Zedolik, Avantika Vijay Singh, Tohm Bakelas and more. Michael Burch has brought in a note of festivities with his Halloween poems. And Rhys Hughes has rolled out humour with his observations on the city of Mysore. His column too this time has given us a table and a formula for writing humorous poetry — a tongue-in-cheek piece, just like the book excerpt from The Coffee Rubaiyat. In the original Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) had given us wonderful quatrains which Edward Fitzgerald immortalised with his nineteenth century translation from Persian to English and now, Hughes gives us a spoof which would well have you rollicking on the floor, and that too, only because as he tells us he prefers coffee over wine!

Humour tinged with irony is woven into Devraj Singh Kalsi’s narrative on red carpet welcomes in Indian weddings. We have a number of travel stories from Peru to all over the world. Ravi Shankar takes us to Lima and Meredith Stephens to Californian hot springs with photographs and narratives while Sayani De does the same for a Tibetan monastery in Lahaul. Keith Lyons converses with globe trotter Tomaž Serafi, who lives in Ljubljana. And Suzanne Kamata adds colour with a light-veined narrative on robots and baseball in Japan. Syncretic elements are woven by Dr. KPP Nambiar who made the first Japanese-Malyalam Dictionary. He started nearly fifty years ago after finding commonalities between the two cultures dating back to the sixteenth century. Tulip Chowdhury brings in colours of Halloween while discussing ghosts in Bangladesh and America, where she migrated.

The theme of immigration is taken up by Gemini Wahaaj as she reviews South to South: Writing South Asia in the American South edited by Khem K. Aryal. Japan again comes into focus with Aditi Yadav’s Makoto Shinkai’s and Naruki Nagakawa’s She and Her Cat, translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori. Somdatta Mandal has also reviewed a translation by no less than Booker winning Daisy Rockwell, who has translated Usha Priyamvada’s Won’t You Stay, Radhika? from Hindi. Our reviews seem full of translations this time as Bhaskar Parichha comments on One Among You: The Autobiography of M.K. Stalin, the current Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, translated from Tamil by A S Panneerselvan. In fiction, we have stories that add different flavours from Paul Mirabile, Neera Kashyap, Nirmala Pillai and more.

Our book excerpt from Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s Why didn’t You Come Sooner? Compassion in Action—Stories of Children Rescued from Slavery deserves a special mention. It showcases a world far removed from the one we know. While he was rescuing some disadvantaged children, Satyarthi relates his experience in the rescue van:

“One of the children gave it [the bunch of bananas] to the child sitting in front. An emaciated girl and a little boy were seated next to me. I told them to pass on the fruit to everyone in the back and keep one each for themselves. The girl looked curiously at the bunch as she turned it around in her hands. Then she looked at the other children.

“‘I’ve never seen an onion like this one,’ she said.

“Her little companion also touched the fruit gingerly and innocently added, ‘Yes, this is not even a potato.’

“I was speechless to say the least. These children had never seen anything apart from onions and potatoes. They had definitely never chanced upon bananas…”

Heart-wrenching but true! Maybe, we can all do our bit by reaching out to some outside our comfort or social zone to close such alarming gaps… Uma Dasgupta’s book tells us that Tagore had hoped many would start institutions like Sriniketan all over the country to bridge gaps between the underprivileged and the privileged. People like Satyarthi are doing amazing work in today’s context, but more like him are needed in our world.

We have more writings than I could mention here, and each is chosen with much care. Please do pause by our contents page and take a look. Much effort has gone into creating a space for you to relish different perspectives that congeal in our journal, a space for all of you. For this, we have the team at Borderless to thank– without their participation, the journal would not be as it is. Sohana Manzoor with her vibrant artwork gives the finishing touch to each of our monthly issues. And lastly, I cannot but express my gratefulness to our contributors and readers for continuing to be with us through our journey. Heartfelt thanks to all of you.

Have a wonderful festive season!

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

[1] Wild long grass

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Visit the October edition’s content page by clicking here

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Categories
Slices from Life

Onsen and Hot Springs

Meredith Stephens explores Japanese and Californian hot springs with her camera and narrative.

One of the pleasures of living in Japan is taking a dip in the hot springs, otherwise known as onsen. Although I lived in Japan for more than twenty years, it was ten years before I could bring myself to regularly visit an onsen. This is because I could not bring myself to accept the notion of communal (albeit segregated) nude bathing, which would be taboo in the West. My long-term expat English friend in Japan continued to entreat me to visit the onsen, and so I eventually capitulated. Would everyone in the onsen be slim, and would they look down on a curvy westerner? Would I attract glances because of my physical difference? I visited one of the many onsen in Matsuyama with my two daughters. Nobody appeared to look at me. The onsen was not full of young slim women. There were many elderly and infirm in the onsen. Maybe the young were already healthy, and they did not need to visit an onsen.

There was a wide range of pools at the onsen. One had a walking pool, in which you walked anti-clockwise. Another had pools with jets that could be turned on to massage your back, a carbonated pool, and stone beds to lie on while watching a television screen placed on the wall which faced you. Another had an outdoor area, with separate bathtubs, a communal pool, a communal cold pool, and a pool inside a cave. There was also a sauna. Inside was a bucket of salt. You could scoop some salt out of the bucket and throw it over your shoulders. There was a clock in the sauna. I could not bear to stay in as long as the other patrons and would sometimes let myself in the door and then walk straight back out again.

I made up for the ten years of not visiting the onsen by becoming a regular patron, usually visiting at least once a week. I returned to Australia at the beginning of the pandemic, and one of the many things I missed about Japan was visits to the onsen. The next time I was able to visit an onsen was over three years later, on a visit to California.

My companion Alex and I drove from Shaver Lake to Mono Hot Springs Resort, both in the Sierra Nevada. We wound up the mountains through the site of the Big Creek Fire. On each side of the road were charred tree trunks.

Huntingdon Lake, California

As we drew closer to the resort, we turned onto a narrow road with large granite boulders on each side. Dump trucks charged towards us, and we took shelter in the many turn-outs.

After this hair-raising drive we arrived at our destination at 4 pm. We collected the key to our hut from the office and made our way there. I remembered an experience from an onsen resort in Japan, where patrons boasted how many times they had bathed in the various pools, and decided I would do the same at this Californian hot spring. We consulted the map and decided to visit the bath house. We had purchased swimsuits for this purpose. In Japan being clothed in an onsen is taboo, but in America it is quite the contrary. The first thing I noticed outside the bath house was the sign saying, ‘No Dogs Allowed’.

Why would you bring a dog into a bath house? In Japan, I had seen a sign saying, ‘No-one with tatoos can enter’, but never — ‘No dogs’.

I entered the bath house expecting to see large communal pools as in Japan, but instead discovered individual showers and baths in separate rooms with doors that could be locked. Apparently, the water was piped into the bath house from the source across the valley. Next, we decided to cross the valley to take a dip in one of the outdoor springs. In order to cross, you had to wade through a river gripping on to a rope, and tread across river rocks.

Alex went ahead of me, and I slipped into the icy cold water onto the river rocks. I tried to grasp the rope, but it eluded me. After several attempts, I managed to grasp it.

“Alex! Help!” I shouted.

I was aware of the glance of onlookers on the rocks witnessing my panic. Alex climbed onto the rock on the other side, extended a hand, and pulled me to the other side. The onlookers offered words of encouragement. We walked across the granite rocks and up the grassy hill, to find El Padro baths. Other bathers kindly and unnecessarily stepped out of the bath to offer us a place. Unlike Japanese baths it was muddy underfoot. We bathed there for twenty minutes, then continued up the grassy hill to the Iodine Bath.

This was similar to El Padro. We bathed here for another twenty minutes and chatted to a fellow bather. Then we headed back to our hut, this time walking a considerable distance out of our way in order to cross the bridge rather than wade through the river again.

The next morning, we decided to return to the baths before breakfast, in the hope of having them to ourselves. We went back across the bridge and headed up the grassy hill to the mud bath. The mud bath was shallow, just deep enough to sit in. The base of the pool at one end felt like grains of granite, and at the other end soft slimy mud. We could feel the heat pulsing from the edge of the pool. We spread mud over our neck, shoulders and legs, soiling our new swimsuits. We lay in the pool for twenty minutes enjoying the sensation of the warm mud on our bodies. Then we stepped out and washed the mud off in a metal bath.

We returned to our hut to wash off the rest of the mud, and rest, before visiting another pool called Li’l Eden. We trudged up the road in the sunshine for about thirty minutes, before spotting a downhill path leading to the pool. The path turned into a steep granite decline. A rope had been placed there to assist in ab-sailing. I had never ab-sailed before, but I followed Alex’ example, placing the rope in between my legs, clutching it, while carefully placing my feet in suitable footholds. I descended safely, albeit with muddy sleeves and sodden shoes. We spotted Li’l Eden and entered. It was a large muddy pool. If I sat on the mud at the bottom of the pool, I could feel the heat pulsating through the mud. After luxuriating in the mud, we hopped out and decided to return to the hut via the path and cross the river, rather than the bridge. We trod through the long muddy grass back down the hill. This time, instead of wading through the river across the river rocks to get to the other side, we decided to walk along a log which had been placed there for this purpose. What if I fell into the cold waters below? At least the log was a shorter distance than wading through the river holding the rope, so I decided to try. I quickly placed one foot in front of the other and a few seconds later I was safely on the other side.

We had two lengthy conversations with fellow visitors, and what struck me was that both of them said that this was their favourite place in the world. One said he had come here over one hundred times and preferred it to more famous destinations such as Yosemite and Kings Canyon. The other said she loved it so much that she spent her entire summers here. (In winter the road is closed because of the snow.)

I’m glad I had the chance to visit Californian hot springs after having spent so many years visiting Japanese ones. The latter are much more manicured. Each bath has a unique quality, and clothed attendants come in regularly to test the water quality. The Californian hot springs were more rustic. Other than the bath house, they required physical effort to get to each one, and the floor of each springwas unsealed. Many bathers had tattoos, but this was unremarkable. Both the Japanese onsen and the Californian hot springs are charming in their own ways. Yet, it was only because I had succumbed to the encouragement of my friends in Japan to indulge in frequenting onsen that I had braved the almost inaccessible roads to reach Mono Hot Springs in California.

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.

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 Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Editorial

What do they Whisper?

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

‘Moment’ by Margaret Atwood

With an unmanned mission reaching the moon — that moon that was chipped off the Earth’s surface when Theia bashed into the newly evolving planet — many feel mankind is en route to finding alternate biomes and perhaps, a solution to its housing needs. Will we also call moon our ‘Homeland’ and plant flags on it as we do on Earth?  Does the Earth — or the moon — really belong to our species. Do we have proprietary rights on these because of lines drawn by powerbrokers who say that the land belongs to them?

These are questions Margaret Atwood addresses in her writings which often fall into a genre called cli-fi. This is gaining in popularity as climate has become uncertain now with changes that are wringing fear in our hearts. Not all fear it. Some refuse to acknowledge it. While this is not a phenomenon that is fully understood by all of us, it’s impact is being experienced by majority of the world — harsh stormy weather, typhoons, warmer temperatures which scorch life and rising water levels that will eventually swallow lands that some regard as their homeland. Despite all these prognostications, wars continue to pollute the air as much as do human practices, including conflicts using weapons. Did ‘climbing a hill’ and ‘planting the flag’ as Atwood suggests, ever give us the rights over land, nature or climate? Do we have a right to pollute it with our lifestyle, trade or wars — all three being human constructs?

In a recent essay,   Tom Engelhardt, a writer and an editor, contended, “Vladimir Putin’s greatest crime wasn’t simply against the Ukrainians, but against humanity. It was another way to ensure that the global war of terror would grow fiercer and that the Lahainas of the future would burn more intensely.” And that is true of any war… Chemical and biological weapons impacted the environment in Europe and parts of Afghanistan. Atom bombs polluted not only the cities they were dropped in, but they also wreaked such havoc so that the second generation’s well-being continues impacted by events that took place more than seven decades ago. Yet another nuclear war would destroy the Earth, our planet that is already reeling under the impact of human-induced climate change. Flooding, forest fires and global warming are just the first indications that tell us not only do we need to adapt to living in changed times but also, we need to change our lifestyles, perhaps even turn pacifist to survive in a world evolving into an altered one.

This month some of our content showcase how to survive despite changes in norms. Suggesting how to retain our flora in a warming world is a book, Roses in the Fire of Spring: Better Roses for a Warming World and Other Garden Adventures, by M.S. Viraraghavanand Girija Viraraghavan, the grandson-in-law and granddaughter of the second President of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). They have been in conversation with Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri to explain how they have adapted plants to create hybrids that survive changing climes. Would it be wishful to think that we can find solutions for our own survival as was done for the flora?

Critiquing the darker trends in our species which leads to disasters is a book by an eminent Singaporean writer, Isa Kamari, called Maladies of the Soul. He too looks for panacea in a world where the basic needs of humans have been satiated and they have moved on towards overindulgence that can lead to redundancy. In a conversation, he tells us how he hopes his writings can help towards making a more hopeful future.

This hope is echoed in the palliative poems of Sanket Mhatre from his book, A City full of Sirens, excerpted and reviewed by Basudhara Roy. Bhaskar Parichha’s review of Samragngi Roy’s The Wizard of Festival Lighting: The Incredible Story of Srid, is a tribute also from a granddaughter to her grandfather celebrating human achievements. Somdatta Mandal’s discussion of fiction based on history, Begum Hazrat Mahal: Warrior Queen of Awadh by Malathi Ramachandran not only reflects the tenacity of a woman’s courage but also explores the historicity of the events. Exploring bits of history and the past with a soupcon of humour is our book excerpt from Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Tales of a Voyager (Joley Dangay[1]), translated from Bengali by Nazes Afroz. Though the narrative of the translation is set about ninety years ago, a little after the times of Hazrat Mahal (1820 –1879), the excerpt is an brilliant introduction to the persona of Tagore’s student, Syed Mujtaba Ali (1904-1974), by a translator who describes him almost with the maestro’s unique style. Perhaps, Afroz’s writing bears these traces as he had earlier translated a legendary work by the same writer, In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan. Afroz starts with a startling question: “What will you call someone who puts down his profession as ‘quitting job regularly’ while applying for his passport?”

Other than a semi-humorous take on Mujtaba Ali, we have Rhys Hughes writing poetry in a funny vein and Santosh Bakaya giving us verses that makes us laugh. Michael Burch brings in strands of climate change with his poems as Jared Carter weaves in nature as we know it. George Freek reflects on autumn. We have more poetry by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Pramod Rastogi, Peter Devonald, Afshan Aqil, Hela Tekali and many more, adding to the variety of colours that enhance the vivacity of conversations that run through the journal. Adding more vibrancy to this assortment, we have fiction by Paul Mirabile, Saranyan BV and Prakriti Bandhan.

In non-fiction, we have Devraj Singh Kalsi’s funny retelling of his adventures with a barber while Hughes‘ essay on the hugely popular Tintin makes us smile. The patriarchal past is reflected in an essay by G Venkatesh, whereas Suzanne Kamata from Japan talks of women attempting to move out of invisibility. Meredith Stephens and Candice Louisa Daquin both carry on the conversation on climate change. Stephens explores the impact of Californian forest fires with photographs and first-hand narrative. Vela Noble draws solace and strength from nature in Kangaroo Island and shares a beautiful painting with us. Madhulika Vajjhala and Saumya Dwivedi discuss concepts of home.

Two touching tributes along with a poem to recently deceased poet, Jayanta Mahapatra, add to the richness of our oeuvre. Dikshya Samantrai, a researcher on the poet, has bid a touching adieu to him stating, “his legacy will continue to inspire and resonate and Jayanta Mahapatra’s name will forever remain etched in the annals of literature, a testament to the enduring power of the poet’s voice.”

Our translations this time reflect a diverse collection of mainly poetry with one short story by Telugu writer, Ammina Srinivasaraju, translated by Johny Takkedasila. Professor Fakrul Alam has introduced us to an upcoming voice in Bengali poetry, Quazi Johirul Islam. Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poetry from Korean and brought to us a fragment of his own culture. Fazal Baloch has familiarised us with a Balochi ballad based on a love story that is well known in his region, Kiyya and Sadu. Our Tagore translation has attempted to bring to you the poet’s description of early autumn or Sharat in Bengal, a season that starts in September. Sohana Manzoor has painted the scene depicted by Tagore for all of us to visualise. Huge thanks to her for her wonderful artwork, which invariably livens our journal.

Profound thanks to the whole team at Borderless for their support and especially to Hughes and Parichha for helping us source wonderful writings… some of which have not been mentioned here. Pause by our content’s page to savour all of it. And we remain forever beholden to our wonderful contributors without who the journal would not exist and our loyal readers who make our existence relevant. Thank you all.

Wish you all a wonderful month.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

[1] Translated literally, it means Water & Land

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Categories
Slices from Life

Black Pines and Red Trucks

A narrative set against the 2020 impact of Californian forest fires, a community bent on healing the Earth and a travelogue with photographs by Meredith Stephens

The drive up the mountains to the town of Shaver Lake, California, continues to shock me, even though it has been three years since the 2020 fires. Where there formerly stood proud ponderosa pines extending into the sky, there are now barren mountains exposing charred tree trunks and the view beyond of granite boulders previously hidden. The bottom half of the mountain is scarred on both sides of the road, but the upper half is charred and desolate on one side and partially untouched on the other. As you ascend the mountain you notice gates announcing the entrance to where ranches once stood. Some have positioned a caravan or two on the site where their house was. Once you have passed through the town, at an elevation of almost six thousand feet, you notice a line of ponderosa pines adjoining a barren landscape indicating the point where fire-fighters saved the community.

As the Assistant Chief of the Shaver Lake Volunteer Fire Department, James and his team were saving Shaver Lake, while his own property further down the mountain was under threat. His wife Janet, also a fire-fighter, received a mandate to evacuate. Janet was reluctant to leave her home, but obeyed the order, and left with her two dogs. This was just as well, because their house and property were ravaged by the wildfire and she and her dogs would not have survived had they remained at home.

My partner, Alex, had been put into contact with James and Janet when the fires had begun ravaging the mountain in 2020. A mutual acquaintance sent an email to Alex at his home in Adelaide, Australia, asking whether he could offer his holiday house in Shaver Lake to James and Janet. Alex had been focussed on watching the nightly news of the fires back in Adelaide, and scrutinised the maps of the fires every evening to see whether they would engulf his holiday house. It was spared, so he was able to offer it to James and Janet. Alex was unable to visit California himself because of international travel restrictions during the pandemic.

Cluster of Baby Ponderosas

In 2023, Alex and I made the eight-thousand-mile trip from Adelaide to Shaver Lake. Once we arrived, we indulged in morning and evening walks on an undulating path through the ponderosa pines, Douglas firs, and cedars. The path was soft beneath our feet in the aftermath of rain the day before. There was a scent of pine which was immediately calming. In places it is fashionable to pursue ‘forest-bathing’, but here you can simply walk out of your back door and experience biophilia without having to consciously seek it out. 

Lupins alongside the Forest Path

Whenever I heard a rustle I half-expected to see a kangaroo, as I would have in Australia, but instead spotted squirrels hiding behind tree trunks, or a pair of deer cantering away from us as they heard our voices. The path was adjacent to a national park where hunters could hunt deer with a permit in the hunting season.

“When is the deer hunting season?” I asked Alex.

“Not until autumn.”

Phew! It was still late summer, so I needn’t have worried.

“Best wear a fluorescent top in the hunting season,” he advised.

Can you spot the deer?

When I chatted to residents further down the mountain, some said that they could not bear to rebuild their lives on their beloved mountain, such was the shock and devastation of their loss. They had left the site of their former home and relocated to the city of Fresno at the base of the mountain. Others, like James and Janet, have bravely rebuilt their house and are busily engaged in revegetation.

In August, 2023, James and Janet invited us to a fire-truck “push-in ceremony” at Shaver Lake, to celebrate the arrival of a new firetruck. We drove to the township the next day at three pm. The road was blocked by the flashing lights of the sheriff’s patrol cars. We turned back and parked the car, and then entered the township on foot. A crowd of well-wishers was cheering the volunteer fire-fighters, who were pushing the shiny new firetruck into its new home. They strained as they pushed it into the narrow confines where it will be housed. Once it was pushed in, the crowd cheered, and everyone was offered a free ice-cream.

James, Janet, and Cyclone.

I hope the firetruck remains shiny and new, and never has to confront smoke and flames, so that the people of Shaver Lake, the deer, the squirrels, and the ponderosa pines, can live in peace.

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Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.

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

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Categories
Poetry

Loose Leaves Fill…

Poetry by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Photo courtesy: Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal
LOOSE LEAVES 

Trifling through loose leaves.
Searching for the young me,
same as the old me. Did I write
anything of value then? Do I
write anything of value now?
We all have our detractors.
It is best to let all criticism
slide across your back. Pay 
no mind and forge forward
like rockets in the sky. All you
need to do is lay your heart
bare. Whether pure of thought
or dirty ramblings, write it
all down as best you can.
Scrap it and throw it away if
you can make it better. Loose
leaves fill entire cemeteries,
where words go away to die.
Sometimes you can pick one
out of the many that are worthy
to be kept alive or resurrected.


OUT OF BED

I drag myself out of bed
into the city where the cold
wind blows. I go where the skies
appear like mirrors, pale and
pure, in the October twilight.
In the melancholy streets
my restless feet wander. I
walk with trepidation. I
feel myself pulling away.
Art by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, CA.His poetry has been published by Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Escape Into Life, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, SETU, and Unlikely Stories.

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

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Categories
Conversation

Better Roses for a Warming World and Other Garden Adventures

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri in conversation with M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan

M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan

In their new book Roses in the Fire of Spring: Better Roses for a Warming World and Other Garden Adventures (Running Head, 2023), world-renowned rose hybridisers, M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan, record their journey of over fifty years, creating more than a hundred new rose varieties, in a range of colours, shapes and types. The authors spoke to Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri on their lifelong passion for the rose.

The passion for roses goes back a long way – can you recall the first moments when you realised that this was a ‘calling’ you had to follow? Any epiphanic moment that leaps to the mind?

From quite a young age, Viraraghavan was fascinated with roses, but the epiphanic moment was really when his family spent summer vacations in Coonoor, staying at the government guesthouse within Sim’s Park, which overlooked a rose garden. Every morning, he would wander about this garden which was a blaze of colour of the new roses created from the golden rose of Persia, R. foetida by Pernet Ducher, a great French rose breeder. The brilliant, never-before-seen colours of these roses amazed him – from bright gold and apricot to dazzling oranges and reds. In particular, one of the golden roses took his breath away – ‘Julien Potin’, aptly named for a jeweller – its vivid colour was quite overwhelming for the boy of thirteen, already thrilled with roses. From this came the intoxicating thought: ‘If Pernet Ducher could do it, why not I?’

There’s a delightful little bit about Viraraghavan sir’s viva-voce for the IAS and how his knowledge of roses played an important part in him getting through that. Would you like to share that with our readers?

A difficult part of the IAS examination is the viva-voce, where a panel of senior administrators question the aspirant about various aspects of his or her life and ambitions. Viraraghavan was in the middle of this interview when the Chairman, by chance a learned rose grower, asked him what his hobbies were. ‘Growing roses,’ was the response. The next question was meant to be a googly to confuse a nervous candidate. ‘What roses can you grow in Madras City?’ But Viraraghavan had read the Complete Gardening in India by K.S. Gopalaswamiengar, well-known horticulturist of Bangalore, many times, so my answer was nearly verbatim from the chapter on various kinds of roses which do well in low-to-medium elevations, i.e., warm climates, so he reeled off the different rose classifications: Teas, Noisettes, Bourbons, Chinas, Hybrid Teas, Hybrid Perpetuals. The interview committee then decided it was prudent to go on to other questions rather than get a lecture from a young and seemingly unflurried candidate! But his capacity to master detailed information on various subjects had been noted, and he came through with flying colours (pun intended).

You mention making your presence on the world stage as late as 2000. Please give us a brief account of your work on roses before and after – a potted highlights package, if one can call it.

From the start, our rose breeding focused on creating better roses for warm climates based on the dictum of India’s pioneer rose breeder, B.S. Bhatcharji of Bengal and Bihar, who had stressed the need for a separate breeding line for warm climates as distinct from the Western focus on creating cold-hardy roses suitable for them. Thus, in the early years, our work was with those roses which, though Western, performed well in hot climates, and we had bred many which did well in Hyderabad where we lived. Then, after perusal of many books on roses, we realised the potential in two Indian rose species Rosa gigantea (from northeast India) and Rosa clinophylla (perhaps the world’s only tropical rose species). After getting them with great effort, we began to work with them. At every annual national rose convention in India we would present updates of our work. In 1999, at what happened to be a World Regional Rose Convention, in Jaipur, Viraraghavan’s talk, as always, focused on the breeding with the two rose species mentioned. After the talk, the World Federation of Rose Societies President, Helga Brichet, and Vice-President (South America), Mercedes Villar, came up to him and said they had never before heard of this kind of rose work or of these rose species and invited him to be a speaker at the next World Rose Convention to be held in May 2000 in Houston, Texas.

That was the start of a further phase of rose breeding with the realisation that other than India, several warm parts of the world were also looking for roses that would do well there. These two rose species had been personally collected by us from their native habitat. At Houston, and in other places, people were fascinated by this aspect, which no earlier breeder had undertaken, that is, personally collecting rose species in the wild, at great risk, growing them and using them in creating new roses; starting from scratch as it were. It made sense to them when Viraraghavan explained the dictum of that great German breeder Wilhelm Kordes I who said –‘The soup ladle will only bring out what is already in the tureen’, meaning that fresh genetic input was required if new and different roses are to be created. The enthusiastic response to his ideas strengthened his determination to go ahead with this new rose breeding line. There is nothing as intoxicating as the realisation that the rose world is watching our work with great interest.

One of the most fascinating sections of the book is the one titled ‘The Ones Who Came Before’. Please provide readers with a short account of these legendary influences.

Karrie’s Rose. Photo courtesy: M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan

We had noticed that invariably roses were named for famous people with often no connection to the world of roses. This made us think: why not name our roses for the intrepid plant-hunters who had discovered roses in the wild, on mountains and in forests, and botanists who had contributed to the knowledge on plants.

One wild Indian rose is R. gigantea, from our north-east, and Myanmar. Three great plant hunters were responsible for collecting this species in the wild – Sir George Watt, General Sir Henry Collett and Frank Kingdon Ward. We decided to name our rose hybrids for all three. Sir George was a medical doctor with an interest in botany, and worked as a surveyor with the British India government. During the course of his work, in the 1880s, he found Rosa gigantea growing on the slopes of Mt Sirohi, now in Manipur, and collected specimens. Almost simultaneously, so did Sir Henry Collett, except in the Shan Hills in what is now Myanmar. Both specimens were identified as being the same and named by the great Belgian taxonomist of the time, François Crepin. Climbing Mt Sirohi in 1990, we came across and collected plants from perhaps the precise location that Sir George had found Rosa gigantea. We named our first hybrid, a creamy yellow climbing rose, for him. We then felt it should be planted near his ancestral home in Scotland. With the help of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, we managed to get this new rose planted in the Logan Botanic Garden, very near Sir George’s birthplace. Some years later we embarked on a sentimental journey, along with his descendants and his associates’ descendants, visiting his grave and the hospital he had worked in after retiring from India, to see the rose blooming in Logan.

We named a second seedling we had bred from R. gigantea for General Sir Henry Collett, a rose with big creamy white blooms that has been planted in suitable areas in Britain as well, and, gratifyingly, being grown by some of his descendants. A third rose, a climber with blooms of yellow-suffused pink, was named for Frank Kingdon Ward, the legendary and intrepid plant hunter who collected innumerable new and wild Himalayan plants despite his surprising acrophobia! We then came across a piece by the then BBC 4 gardening anchor, Matthew Biggs, who had visited Kingdon Ward’s grave in Grantchester near Cambridge. He wrote about the neglected condition of the grave of one of the world’s greatest plant explorers. So we decided to make amends by planting ‘Frank Kingdon Ward’ by the wall nearest his grave in the churchyard in a moving ceremony organised by Matthew Biggs, and attended by a number of well-known British horticulturists, as also the family. An urn with the ashes of Sheila Macklin, Kingdon Ward’s wife, for whom he had named a Himalayan lily, and who had died just the previous year, was interred near his grave, and close to where the rose was planted.

We have also named a rose for Leschenault de la Tour, the great French plant explorer who found a beautiful new rose species, called Rosa leschenaultiana after him, in the Western Ghats in the early 1800s; our rose named for him is a climber with pure white blooms.

And of course we have a rose to celebrate the remarkable life and career of the great Indian botanist and cytogeneticist, E.K. Janaki Ammal, who co-wrote the Chromosome Atlas of All Cultivated Plants in 1945. She studied botany at Michigan State University in the 1920s on a full scholarship, later receiving a PhD and DSc honoris causa. Back in India, she played a vital role in creating the ‘Noble’ strain of sugarcane – an extraordinary hybrid of sugarcane and bamboo leading to varieties thick as a man’s arm in contrast to the pencil-thin traditional varieties. But credit was stolen by seniors at the research station, and so she went off to Britain. There she worked at famous institutes, including John Innes, Kew and the Royal Horticultural Society. Later, she met the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on a plane, and he put her in charge of reforming the Botanical Survey of India in Calcutta. But sadly she was a forgotten figure by the time of her death in 1984. Our rose named for her has the same colour hues as the saris she wore – orange yellow and saffron. A plant of this rose was planted in 2020 at the World Regional Rose Conference Kolkata, at the Botanical Survey of India garden. The rose has also been planted in the John Innes Institute, in Kew and the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden in Wisley in the UK.          

If one were to ask you of one moment each – one particular achievement in the journey and one abiding regret – what would these be and why?

There can be no doubt that the moment which was special in our rose breeding career was the moment described above, when Helga Brichet and Mercedes Villar came up to us in Jaipur in 1999, and said they had never heard such a new approach to breeding roses, pioneered by us, of using two Indian rose species to create a new line of warm-climate roses. It was their invitation to speak in Texas launched us on to the world stage of roses.

As for an abiding regret, that’s all too easy to answer. It’s the systematic neglect of Indian-bred roses by the rose-growing public of India, who remain fascinated by roses raised in Europe and the U.S. though they are utterly unsuited for Indian climates. This unreasonable preference for foreign rose varieties is part of the general craze for all things foreign. Fortunately, more recently, there has been a change, and young rose breeders and growers are realising that Indian bred roses do better in the heat and are slowly beginning to grow these.

Give us an insight into the challenges and pitfalls of growing and creating roses in India, as informed by your journey. Interesting story that highlighted these.

The main challenge was getting Indian roses accepted by the Indian rose growing public, as highlighted above. Indeed, now our roses are being grown in India, perhaps because they are being grown around the world! Another thing is one must learn patience. It takes us about eight to nine years to name and release a new rose. It is a long process, of the actual crossing of two roses, waiting for the fruit to ripen, then harvesting the fruit (rose hips), collecting the seeds, stratifying them in the refrigerator (if one lives on the hot plains), sowing the seed, waiting for the seedlings to sprout, growing the plant for a number of years to test its potential, and suitability, and only then finding a name and releasing it, by sending to a rose nursery to make more plants.

Our long career in rose breeding and our connected travels around the world has provided us with many interesting, even hilarious experiences. We were in Japan, at the Sakura Rose Garden. With us was a group of people including our friend, the well-known Japanese plant scientist, Dr Yuki Mikanagi. We were looking at a rose plant, with dark pinkish-red blooms with white on the reverse, bred by us and as yet unnamed. Yuki said she liked this rose very much. We immediately told her that we would name it for her. She said: ‘But this rose is red and white, whereas my name means “snow” in Japanese. Viru’s instant response was, ‘Then we will it name it Blushing Yuki,’ much to the delight of Yuki and everyone.

In his government service days, when we lived in Hyderabad, Viru would tend to his roses, watering and spraying them with fertilizers before leaving for office. There would be a number of telephone calls for him about some official matter. Girija would answer the phone (landline in those days), and when she told the callers he was busy spraying, they would hear it as ‘praying’ and immediately apologise: ‘Please do not disturb him when he is at his prayers’.

Both of us were hands-on gardeners, doing most of the work ourselves and you cannot garden without muddy hands and clothes. Very often visitors would mistake us for the garden help and request us to take them to the master or the mistress of the house. The looks on their faces when they realised who we were would make us laugh.

On one occasion, we were in California to receive the ‘Great Rosarians of the World’ Award. At the ceremony, we both first gave a talk on ‘Roses in India, Past Present and Future’. At the end of the ceremony, an earnest old lady came up to us and asked, in all seriousness, ‘Do roses grow in India?’

For most of us, roses are red and a Valentine’s Day Gift. Appendix 1 of your roses runs to 50 pages! Tell us briefly of some of the interesting ones, in particular the very evocative names you have, for example, Kindly Light, Meghamala/Wine-dark Sea, Twilight Secret. What goes into giving a name to a rose?

Apart from the roses we have named for friends, for other roses we like to give evocative names.

  • KINDLY LIGHT: we named this lovely white shading to soft pink rose after the hymn ‘Lead, Kindly Light’, a favourite of Mahatma Gandhi’s. We have the practice of giving two names to some of our roses, one better understood in India, if it is a Sanskrit word, and one for the West. This rose is named ‘Swami Vinayananda’ in India, for a monk of the Ramakrishna Mission order. He was great plantsman, his book on dahlias is a definitive work on all aspects of dahlia growing and he was very good rose grower.
  • MEGHAMALA/WINE-DARK SEA: One more example of two names for a rose. Meghamala translates as ‘garland of clouds’. The name for our rose was inspired by the purple garland-like pattern, reminiscent of clouds, on the petals of this rose, which otherwise are dark orange-red  in colour. ‘Meghamala’ is from a line by Devulapalli Krishna Sastri, beloved modern poet of the Telugu language, to whom the rose is a tribute. ‘Wine-Dark Sea’ derives from Homer’s epithet, in both the Iliad and Odyssey, of the purple shadows of approaching night on the orange-red waters reflecting the rays of a setting sun on the Aegean Sea.
  • ALLEGORY OF SPRING: We named a very special light-pink rose with intriguing pointed petals after the famous Botticelli painting La Primavera, also called ‘Allegory of Spring’.
  • INCENSE INDIGO: An indigo purple rose with an enticing fragrance was the inspiration for this name.
  • TWILIGHT SECRET and TWILIGHT TRYST: Two purple-hued roses that remind one of the late evening, shadowy light, romantic secrets and trysts.
  • AHIMSA: We gave this name to a golden yellow rose borne on a plant without any thorns (prickles), thinking of the Mahatma’s philosophy of non-violence.
  • KUSABUE’S GUARDIAN ANGELS: Kusabue is the name of a rose garden in Sakura City, Japan, entirely looked after by volunteers, all very senior citizens. This is our tribute to them.
Golden Threshold
Kanyakumari
Photo Courtesy: M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan

Click here to read the excerpt

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is 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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Categories
Stories

The Japanese Maple

By Shivani Shrivastav

Courtesy: Creative Commons

I saw her again. She was wearing dark slacks and a loose top she was blowing leaves off her lawn and into a corner with a blower. I had been seeing her daily for almost six months now, mostly in her front yard or her porch, or sometimes slowly driving to or from her house. She also seemed to be of Indian descent, as I could make out from her features, and as was confirmed when once her Amazon package that was wrongly delivered to our house.  When I had gone to return it, she had been pleasantly surprised, telling me that it was an expensive coffee maker she had ordered, and not everyone would have sought out the rightful owner.

That’s how we got talking. After that, I would always wave to her — when I saw her doing her yard work, on my evening walks or when either of us drove by, on our way to get groceries. In the spring she would plant colourful flower beds, and could often be seen cleaning and watering them. On sunny days, she would be mowing her lawn or talking to the college kids who sometimes came to do her yard work. In autumn, I saw her raking out leaves, putting the garden waste into large brown disposal bags and decorating her porch with colourful wreaths of maple leaves and berries.  Winter saw her blowing fresh snow off her porch and lawn and clearing and salting her driveway, so that the garage pathway would be clear for her to take out her car. She would often be seen driving to and from the local grocery stores, where I met her at times. Gradually, as we got friendlier, she invited me over for tea and then later for potluck lunches and sometimes just for sharing something special she had made that day, or a new recipe she had tried.

I had a hectic schedule, with frequent out of town work trips. She would often tell me, “Tara, you eat very less! You should take care of yourself; you should put on a little weight.” and more along the same lines. My usual replies were, “Mrs. Sen, I can’t cook yummy food like yours!” or “I don’t usually have time to cook!” accompanied by an indulgent smile. Of course, these reasons were true, but there was also the fact that I really did not enjoy cooking. I would much rather spend my time reading a good book or indulging my leisure time activity of writing poetry, than slaving over a hot oven or cooktop! She, on the other hand, was an excellent cook and baker, having picked up various tips and tricks for making the most mouth-watering dishes out of almost the most basic ingredients. She shared these with her book club members in their weekly meetups as well as with some lucky neighbours, me being one of them.

One day, as we sat talking on her porch, surrounded by the sweet smells of the lush lavender growing in one of a flower beds, she shared, “I came to Canada with my husband, after my marriage in 1988. Two years later, my brother and my uncle shifted here to, along with their families. Those early years were beautiful. Although we didn’t have much back then, we were happy, happy to have each other in a new land. Many of us were not fluent in English, coming from rural Indian backgrounds. We practised with each other, to gain confidence in social interactions as gradually we enlarged our social circles. Once everyone started on their  respective jobs, they also shifted to other places. One of my sons is now in California, the older one. The younger one is in Vancouver.”

We were interrupted by the barking of her tiny wire-haired terrier who was fiercely protective of her. Mostly, he was almost like a therapy dog, sitting on her lap, or somewhere near her, where she could reach out and pet him often. Right now, he had seen a delivery guy approaching the house. She took a parcel from him, offered it to Mickey, her tiny self-appointed protector, to sniff and judge okay, for that was her practice, which she said made him feel included in all her day-to-day activities and interactions.

Placing it aside, she thanked the delivery guy with a smile. Sitting down on one of the two cherry red Adirondack chairs on her porch, she told me, “Nowadays I prefer having as much delivered as I can: it’s easier, particularly for the stuff not readily available at Costco or Home Depot.” I could only imagine how difficult it must be for a lady of advanced years living by herself.

“I go to Toronto almost once a week and also to one of the farmer’s markets nearby. If you want, you could come along if you have some work or want to buy something from there. I could even bring it for you if you so wish.”

Although it was not my intention to cause her any kind of pain, what I had said had seemingly touched her, for as she looked up at me, she had tears shining in her eyes. “Thank you, my dear, I can’t tell you how much it means to me. It has been more than five years that I have been by myself now. Usually it’s okay, but some days are just harder. When Sudhakar passed away I lost my best and oldest friend. He used to tell me – Maya, you should make more friends; you should have your own life too.”

I do have friends here, my book club people too, plus some relatives living in Toronto and some other nearby places, but it’s not the same.”

“I understand”, I could only pat her hand helplessly, wishing I could do more. Going with the change of mood, we picked up the tea things as the breeze turned colder and went inside. It was nearly autumn again and the October evenings were getting quite chilly. The red, orange and yellow autumn foliage had its  own grace and beauty, but I would miss the long summer evenings, when I could just sit out on the patio or enjoy working in the backyard garden or water the front lawn barefoot. Not to mention, the beautiful flowers summer brought. Mrs. Sen, or rather, Maya, as she had instructed me to call her, had beautiful gardens, both at the front and back of her house. These she tended meticulously, taking care of her perennials through the change of seasons and making sure to  plant various varieties of seasonal flowers and shrubs. She had two gorgeous Japanese maples in her front yard, and had a beautiful weeping willow in her back yard that fascinated me. The flowerbeds were populated with multiple herbs like lavender, thyme, sage and rosemary, as well as flowers like peonies, roses, pansies, violets, lilies, hydrangea etc. She also had some beautiful shrubs and flowering trees like lilacs and magnolias. It was a veritable dream for the most discerning of botanists, at the very least!

As we entered the house, I realised that this was the first time I had been inside her home. Somehow, most of our conversations till date had been outside, on our patios or in one of our backyards, while one of us worked in the garden. She had successfully transmitted her enthusiasm for flora to me too. This was a first for us. As I placed the tray of biscuits and cookies on the kitchen counter, I noticed the wall next to it filled with lots of pictures — pictures of Tara with her family and of her visits back to India and their travels to various places. I could see pictures in front of the Taj Mahal, the Notre Dame, the Sydney Harbour and more.

“Oh, these are so beautiful! It seems you travelled quite a bit!”

“Oh yes, when the children were young, we travelled during the winter and summer breaks. Mostly to India, sometimes to America and Mexico, sometimes to more exotic places like Egypt, Bulgaria etc. It was only when the children started their own careers and moved away that we stopped our frequent travels.”

She went quiet for a bit, looking off into the distance, reliving the past perhaps.  Maybe a past that brought back bittersweet memories. I felt a little guilty for having asked her about the pictures. Some moments later, I took her leave, wishing her well and promising to meet her soon after having mastered the new biscuit recipe she had shared.

As fall turned to winter and I returned from some work-related travel, I thought of her as soon as I had settled back into my regular routines. I decided to meet her in the evening, but being severely jet-lagged, had to postpone it a little.

I finally went after three days. I noticed that her driveway was freshly shovelled and salted. As I rang the bell, I admired the beautiful wreath on her door, with her trademark red winter berries and green ribbons. I knew that nearer to Christmas, she would add some striped candy canes to it.

I heard some shuffling steps and she came to the door.

“Oh hello Tara!  It’s been quite a while! Were you out of town?”, came her cheerful greeting.

She did seem a little frailer to me, and I noticed her favouring one leg more than the other.

“Hello! Yes, I came back from a ten-day work trip three days ago. Sorry I couldn’t visit earlier. How have you been? Is anything the matter with your leg?”

“Yes, I fell down and hurt myself. There was a patch of black ice in the driveway. Although I had cleared and salted it, there were more flurries that day, followed by some rainfall. When I came back from visiting a friend, who dropped me back to my place, she had to hurry back as she had received a phone call, and I got down from the car and had barely taken a step when I slipped and fell. I hurt my leg and my back. Worse was that after the fall, the ice was so slippery that I couldn’t get back up. I walked like a four-legged animal for a few steps till some neighbours who had seen me fall rushed out and helped me back up and took me inside the house. This was two days ago. Since then I have been resting. Yesterday I got groceries delivered here, once the snow stopped.”

Feeling bad that I had not been there for her at such a time, I escorted her inside and shut the door. I gave her a little Reiki healing and made her a little tea after the session. We sat and chatted for a little while, and then I came back.

As I was on the way back her word echoed in my head, “No one knows what life might bring. I had never thought I’d be alone at this age. Back in India, people say that a lady who has sons is very fortunate. Well, I have two sons. When I called them, they said that they were sorry to hear about my fall, but they would not be able to come till the weekend. For the first two days, during which it snowed heavily, the neighbours who had seen me fall were kind enough to bring food over, two times a day. I am fortunate to have good people around me.”

I reflected on my own situation. I was separated, with no chances or desire of a reconciliation. Having decided that I did not need anyone in my life who had the power to hurt me, I had walled myself off, interacting briefly with people and that too, only to the extent needed. Very rarely did I venture out of my comfort zone;  letting people within my walls was a risk which I could not bear to take. Maya was the first person in the last three years that I had spoken to with such an open heart. Maybe it was because I felt such comfort in her presence and understood subconsciously that she would never hurt me.

When I thought about her, I remembered all her acts of kindness – the food drives for the homeless, the collection drives for clothes for refugees she ran, offering to collect all the donated clothes at her  house and later on sort through them for distribution, her gardening and plantation drives etc. This year, on Canada Day, she had gifted many trees and plants to her neighbours, as per their choice and need. I had received a beautiful Japanese maple, a sapling from her one of her own trees. She had said that the trees were saplings created from the tree that she had planted in her first home in Canada. The sapling she gave me looked very promising and would definitely turn out to be a beautiful and healthy tree, vibrant with its deep red leaves. Whenever I looked at it, I was reminded of Mrs Sen’s spirit and her welcoming smile.

Through the next few days, I kept a regular check on Mrs. Sen. She recovered quite well and was soon back to her usual tasks.

One day as I came to her place to meet her before going away on another work trip, she opened the door with a big smile. I smiled and asked her, “Wow! You are really glowing today! What’s up?”

“I am going to visit my son in California. He is coming over the next week for some work to Canada. After that, I plan to take him to see our beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, then I’ll accompany him back to California. I plan to stay there for almost a month.”

“That’s great news! You haven’t meet him for such a long time!”

“Yes! I’m so excited I will get to meet the grandchildren again!”

The rest of my visit passed in discussions of her upcoming trip. I promised to take care of her mail and plants while she was away, then left.

When I came back from my office trip, she had already left for California. I dutifully collected her mail, laying it aside on my hall table to give to her once she was back. I took special care of her two red maples, knowing that  she was especially fond of them. They stood to either side of her driveway, forming a delicate arch over her garage door.

The season changed again and spring blossomed, bringing with it fresh leaves on all the plants. The Japanese maples sprang fresh with vibrant leaves. I liked overseeing her yard work, paying the college students who came to clean it every week from the fund she had left with me when she met the last time.

Sitting there on her porch, reading a book while waiting for the boys to finish, I often looked at the trees, which seemed like two sentient sentinels. Now lush, they merrily waved their branches with their cherry-red leaves in the spring breeze.

“How happy Maya would be when she comes back and looks at them again!” She had shared some photos of her son’s house in California; it was a condo — no garden or even house plants; ‘they didn’t have the time for frivolities’, as her son had said.

“That is the one thing I’m really going to miss when I’m there — my garden. These plans that I choose every year with care and the perennials are like my children too. I love them all — the daisies, the sunflowers, the weeping willow at the other end of my lawn, the many seasonal flowers I like to keep in my window planters, all of them! I’m really going to miss them all!

“Don’t worry, you’re coming back before spring will have passed. You’ll still have your lilacs in bloom when you come back, and your begonias, petunias and lilies would all be in full bloom too.”

She smiled but seemed a little unconvinced.

That day, she was supposed to return. She had been in the habit of brining me warm meals the days I returned from one of my trips, so that I would not have to cook immediately after having journeyed, and also to ensure that I ate well. Taking a leaf out of her book, I thought I would return the favour and cooked a hearty soup, along with some homemade pasta. Balancing the bag with the food, I rang her bell but receiving no reply, thought maybe she was sleeping and came back, thinking that I would try again a little later, or maybe the next day.

The same thing happened the next day and the next; no reply to the doorbell. I had tried calling her cell phone, but it always went to voicemail. The three messages I had sent were delivered but not answered. Now I was truly worried, but there was little I could do except wait. Maybe she had extended her stay, because she certainly didn’t seem to be in the house. Although the lights turned on and off, I knew it was the automated system I had helped her install before leaving, so that the house would not seem empty.

I continued the upkeep of her garden in the meantime, hoping that she would show up any day and  sit blissfully once again, in her lovingly created garden. I missed her more than I thought I would. She had taught me a lot, even without my knowing.

Feeling a little bit like a stalker, I went to her Facebook profile and also the profile on the neighbourhood app, and found her sons’ profiles and dropped them both messages related to the wellbeing of Mrs. Sen. After a week, I still hadn’t received any replies. Almost a month passed. One day, I saw a ‘For Sale’ sign put up in her garden, right in front of one of the maples. Shocked, I called the agent’s number written on the board and was told that her son had made the decision to sell the house. All her stuff would be going to Goodwill as both her sons had no intention of coming back there to live.

I was broken-hearted that they cared so little for the place hey had grown up in, and which was so loved by their mother. She would never again get to see her garden. The flowers were all there; the garden still bloomed, but its creator had gone.

Two days later, I got a letter from her in my mailbox. It was dated a month and a half ago, so as per  my calculations, must have been written mere days before she passed away. In it, she had thanked me for taking such good care of her garden in her absence. Showering me with love and blessings, entreating me to take good care of myself, she ended her letter with something that surprised me. She mentioned that there was a key enclosed; indeed, there was a small but intricate key in one corner of the envelope, that must have slipped back when I pulled out the letter. She had written that it was the key to a post office box in her name. She had said, “If I do not return, please collect whatsoever is there and distribute it to all our neighbours. It is nothing that my sons would value, as I have set aside all else for them, except this mail box and its contents, that I will to my neighbours, who have loved and supported me through my last years.”

With tears in my eyes, I clutched the key to my heart and remembered her love for all her neighbours, sent across the border, across the bounds of life itself.

The next day, I went to the post office to collect the gifts. To my surprise, they were heirloom seeds, along with carefully collected and preserved flower bulbs, both of which she had painstakingly collected over the years. I remembered her getting some from as far as Vancouver and Montreal; some were tulip bulbs from Holland. Coming back home with the precious living gifts, I framed a message to post on the neighbourhood app. Hitting send, I looked out of my window. My beautiful Japanese maple was dancing in the breeze; her blessings and legacy would live on, spreading to the four winds.

.

Shivani Shrivastav is a Reiki Master and Osho sannyasin. By profession she’s a UK CGI Chartered Secretary and a Governance Professional/CS. She loves meditation, photography, writing and French jazz.

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 Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Entering the Exit & More…

Poetry and Visuals by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

ENTERING THE EXIT 
 
Let’s not waste our time
anymore.
We are not going anywhere
in this life.
I am entering the exit soon.
There are green doors
that lead me to the sun.
 
There are lights that blind me,
like a candle magnified
and a fire that dances in my retinas,
like a flashlight and
flashing signals
slinging lightning bolts.
It is O.K. to say goodbye.
After all
you know nothing lasts.
The lightning bolts
are no rainbow.
 
Being alone is not so bad.
There is always music.
Soon we will be gone.
 


SMILE MORE 
 
He was just a little hungry.
This is what he told me.
Gary said he was a little lonely.
He seemed happy when he talked.
 
I listened to him as he asked
for a dollar. I handed him two
which is all I had in my pocket.
He told me to smile more and
 
he was speaking the truth.
I do need to smile a little more.
I prefer to live in silence most days.
Gary had a kind but anxious voice.
 
We will speak again soon he said.
It has been year since I’ve seen him.


THE SMOOTH LIFE

One time only
was my life smooth.
If my memory
was not so fickle,
the smooth life would
return and make
things easy. Sleeping
here, under the bed,
with the cats and
the shades blocking
the light away from us,
there is a certain intimacy
born in this room.
Our sonorous hearts
race with urgency.
Life is not clear or smooth.
The light frightens me.
Life is bizarre
like an escaped madman.
His filthy mind would 
make anyone blush.
I remain hidden
like a secret.
The poor cats are
here with me. They
scratch my face.
My selfishness is
far from lovely.
The day goes on.
Light fades away.
This makes me smile.
Our sonorous hearts
are bound to break.
Oblivion sets in.
Eternity awaits.
The moon shines on
like the glittering stars.
I lack the confidence
my heart requires.

Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, CA.His poetry has been published by Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Escape Into Life, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, SETU, and Unlikely Stories.

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 Kindle Amazon International