Tag: Charudutta Panigrahi

Categories
Editorial

Wild Winds and April Showers

From Public Domain 
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, 
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, 
And bathed every veyne…

The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) by Chaucer, Prologue

This is the month Asia hosts sprays of new years across multiple regions. Many of these celebrate the fecundity of Earth, spring and the departure of bleak winter months. Each new year is filled with hope for the coming year. The vibrant colours of varied cultures celebrate spring in different ways, but it is a welcome for the new-born year, a jubilation, a reaffirmation of the continuity of the circle of life. Will the wars, especially the shortages caused by them and felt deeply by many of us, affect these celebrations? Had they impacted the festivals that were celebrated earlier? These are questions to which we all seek answers. We can only try to gauge the suffering caused by war on those whose homes, hopes, families and assets have been affected other than trying to cope with the senselessness of such inane attacks. But, in keeping with TS Eliot’s observations on Prufrock, most of us continue our lives unperturbed and as usual.

Some of us think and try to dissent for peace and a world without borders with words – prose or poetry. To reinforce ideas of commonalities that bind overriding divides, we are excited to announce a poetry anthology mapping varied continents with content from Borderless Journal, Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems. We are hugely grateful to Hawakal Publishers for this opportunity and to Bitan Chakraborty for the fabulous cover design. We invite you all to browse on the anthology which is available in hardcopy across continents.

Our issue this month is a bumper issue with the translation of Tagore’s Roktokorobi (Red Oleanders) by Professor Fakrul Alam. It’s the full-length play this time as earlier we had carried only an excerpt. The play is deeply relevant to our times as is Somdatta Mandal’s English rendition of his story, ‘Daliya’, set in Arakan. We also have also translated Tagore’s response to the idea of mortal fame and deification in poetry. Kallol Lahiri’s poignant Bengali story about the resilience of an ageing actress has been brought to us in English by V Ramaswamy.  Isa Kamari brings us translations of his Malay poems exploring spirituality through nature.

Our poetry section explores myriad issues – some with the help of nature. We have a vibrant selection of poems from Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, A. Jessie Michael, Mahnoor Shaheen, John Grey, Fazal Abubakkar Esaf, Malaika Rai, Tony Dawson, Pramod Rastogi, Debra Elisa, Ananya Sarkar, Jim Murdoch and George Freek. In one of his four poems, Charles Rammelkamp reflects on the impacts of global warming. David Mellor explores the impact of bombing. Ryan Quinn Flanagan brings us an ekphrastic poem which leaves us smiling.  Snigdha Agrawal explores a battle of kitchens on YouTube with a touch of humour and Rhys Hughes dedicates a poem in memory of Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), which too brings a smile to the lips.

But what really grips are the fables that Hughes will be sharing with us over four months. He calls them Rhysop Fables, after the ancient ones from Aesop’s with the ancient author himself being mentioned in one of the short absurdist narratives this time.  In fiction, our regular fable writer, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao explores a modern-day dilemma, that of social media intruding into the development of children. Jonathon B Ferrini glances at resilience and mental disability while, Sangeetha G looks into societal attitudes that still plague her part of the world.  Oindrila Ghosal gives a story set in Kashmir.

From Kashmir, Gower Bhat shares a heartfelt musing on being a first time father. Mohul Bhowmick writes of Eid in Hydearbad (Hari Raya in Southeast Asia) — echoing themes from Kamari’s poems — and Anupriya Pandey ponders over the quiet acceptance of mundane life that emphasises social inequities. Jun A. Alindogan brings home issues from Phillipines. While we have stories about Vietnam from Meredith Stephens, Suzanne Kamata muses about Phnom Penh, mesmerised by Cambodian dancers.

Farouk Gulsara writes of his cycling trip from Jaipur to Udaipur bringing to life dichotomies of values and showing that age can be just a number. Chetan Poduri reinforces gaps created by technology as does Charudutta Panigrah, a theme that reverberates from poetry to fiction to non-fiction and much of it with a light touch. Devraj Singh Kalsi sprinkles humour with his strange tale about hiring a bodyguard.

Keith Lyons has brought in Keith Westwaters, a soldier-turned-poet who seems to find his muse mainly in New Zealand. We have also featured an author who overrides borders of continents, Marzia Pasini. Her book, Leonie’s Leap, has a protagonist of mixed origin and her characters are drawn out of Russia, India, Bulgaria and many other places.

We have variety in book excerpts. Scott Ezell’s Journey to the End of the Empire: In China Along the Edge of Tibet is a non-fiction about the author’s rather unconventional trip while the other excerpt is a historical fiction, Tarana Husain Khan’s The Courtesan, Her Lover and I. In book reviews, Mandal travels back a to the last century to the times of Octavio Paz (1914-1998) as she writes of Indranil Chakravarty’s The Tree Within: The Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz’s Years in India. Meenakshi Malhotra has discussed Radha Chakravarty’s second poetry collection, In Your Eyes A River: Poems and Rabindra Kumar Nayak has written of the prolific Bhaskar Parichha’s latest book, Odisha – 500 Years of Turmoil, Mayhem and Subjugation. Parichha himself has reviewed Ashoke Mukhopadhyay’s No. 1 Akashganga Lane: The First Novel about the Gig Workers of Kolkata, translated from Bengali by Zenith Roy. The review rsuggests a fascinating story that hovers on the lives of the ‘invisibles’ — the people who continue to ‘help’ the middle classes in South Asia lead a comfortable life. Acknowledging societal gaps is perhaps the start of raising consciousness so that a move can be made towards bridging them and eventually, closing them.

This rounds up our April issue. Do visit our content’s page and explore the journal further.

Huge thanks to the wonderful team, especially Sohana Manzoor for her art. They help bring together the colours of the world to our pages. Huge thanks to contributors who make each issue evolve a personality of its own. And heartfelt thanks to readers who make it worth our while to write.

Wish you all a wonderful month ahead!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE CONTENTS FOR THE APRIL 2026 ISSUE

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Categories
Essay

Nobody Cries at Goodbyes Anymore

By Charudutta Panigrahi

From Public Domain

We are the most connected generation in human history. Is this why does leaving feel so utterly weightless?

There was a ritual. I still remember it distinctly. You probably remember it, or your parents do. The last morning of a visit — to a grandparent’s house, a village cousin’s home, an uncle’s rambling bungalow where the ceiling fans whirred through long afternoons — had a particular texture. Trunks or suitcases were latched. Strolleys hadn’t arrived yet or were on their early novelty days. Bags were piled by the door. And then, invariably, someone wept.

Not a little polite sniffle. Real tears. The kind that came from a grandmother pressing your face into her sari one more time, or an aunt who had spent a week feeding you as though you might never eat again, standing at the gate long after the rickshaw (autorickshaws were not common) or the personal car (Ambassador or Fiat[1] depending on the size of the family mostly) had turned the corner. You waved until you could no longer see her. She stood there until she could no longer see you. That was the goodbye.

Try to find that scene today. Go ahead. You won’t.

Today, the goodbye is punctuated not by tears but by the brisk choreography of the in numerous selfies.

Phones are raised, filters applied in real time, expressions arranged for maximum glow. The image is uploaded before the car has reversed out of the driveway. The caption reads: Such a beautiful time with family. So blessed. Heart emoji. Heart emoji. Heart emoji and a few ummahs thrown in. Thirty-seven likes in the first eight minutes. Nobody cried. Nobody needed to. You’re already on a group chat together.

The old goodbye made sense in its economic context. Distance, in those decades, was not merely geographical — it was temporal. A cousin who lived two states away or a city even in the same state was, in practical terms, a person you saw once a year, twice if there was a wedding or a funeral nudging the universe into action. Letters arrived weeks after they were written, sometimes smelling faintly of the sender’s home. Trunk calls were events, scheduled and anxious and too expensive to linger over. When you left, you genuinely did not know when you would next sit in the same room.

So the tears made sense. They were a rational response to real absence. Grief, after all, is the tax we pay on love, and those goodbyes had genuine grief in them — not theatrical, not performed, not calibrated for an audience. Just the honest acknowledgement that a period of closeness was ending, and the ending mattered.

WhatsApp changed the mathematics of absence. So did video calls, Instagram, the entire chirping infrastructure of perpetual connectivity. Your cousin in Rayagada is now a voice note away. Your village relatives appear on your screen every Diwali whether you want them to or not. The emotional logic of the old goodbye has been quietly dismantled, brick by brick, by the algorithm’s promise that no one ever really has to leave.

But here is the uncomfortable question: has connection replaced closeness, or merely simulated it? The notifications keep flowing, but something in the texture of relationships has changed. We know more about each other’s lives — the holidays, the promotions, the new kitchen tiles — and feel, perhaps, less. The mystery that once made a reunion electric has been replaced by the tepid familiarity of a continuous feed. When you already know what someone had for breakfast, the surprise of seeing them in person is somewhat diminished.

And then there is the paradox of the modern public display of affection. We live in the golden age of the PDA. Couples announce their anniversaries with slide shows. Families post coordinated outfits for festivals. Friendships are commemorated with “appreciation posts” of baroque emotional intensity. The declarations have never been louder or more frequent. The relationships, statistically, have never been more fragile.

Divorce rates climb. Friendships dissolve over a single inflammatory tweet. Families splinter over WhatsApp forwards. The online performance of devotion seems almost inversely proportional to its durability offline. We have, it seems, confused documentation with feeling, reach with depth, and visibility with love.

There is something almost poignant about this — people posting tribute reels for relationships that are already, privately, ending. The Instagram caption lags behind the reality by about three months. The photograph preserves the illusion the way formaldehyde preserves a specimen: perfectly, and without life.

The old woman weeping at the gate was performing nothing. There was no camera to catch the angle of her grief, no audience to validate it, no metric by which to measure its impact. It existed purely because it was true. That is what made it unbearable and unforgettable in equal measure.

This is not, to be fair, entirely a story of decline. Connectivity has genuine gifts. The grandmother who once waited three weeks for a postcard now receives a video of her grandchild’s first steps within minutes. The cousin separated by continents is present — imperfectly, through a pixelated screen, but present — at the birthday party. Something real is preserved by these tools, even if something else is lost.

And it would be sentimental to pretend that all those old tears were purely authentic. Families are complicated. Some of those goodbyes mixed genuine love with relief. Some of the weeping aunts were also, frankly, exhausting. Nostalgia has a well-known tendency to airbrush the difficult parts.

But what does seem genuinely lost is the cultural permission to let a goodbye mean something. To stand at a gate and feel the weight of separation without reaching for a phone. To let the absence be real, just for a moment, before the notifications begin. The old goodbye taught us that love has a physical grammar — it lives in proximity, in the particular smell of someone’s kitchen, in the specific quality of their silence at the dinner table.

The old goodbye taught us that love has a physical grammar. These things do not transmit over Wi-Fi.

Perhaps the most honest thing we can say is this: we have traded depth for frequency, and we are not entirely sure we got the better deal. The feed is always full. The gate is always empty. And somewhere between the two, a particular kind of tenderness — unrehearsed, unselfconscious, and completely without likes — has quietly slipped away.

No one posted about it. No one noticed it go. Gradual but sudden demise.

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[1] Popular brands of cars in India in the late 1900s and early 2000s

Charudutta Panigrahi is an author. He can be reached at charudutta403@gmail.com.

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Categories
celebrations

Six Years of Borderless Journal…

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Six years ago, a few of us got together to bring out the first issue of Borderless Journal. We started as a daily blog and then congealed into a monthly journal offering content that transcends artificial borders to meet with the commonality of felt emotions, celebrating humanity and the Universe. Today as we complete six years of our existence in the clouds, we would like to celebrate with all writers and readers who made our existence a reality. We invite you to savour writings collected over the years that reflect and revel in transcending borders, touching hearts and some even make us laugh while exploring norms. 

In this special issue. we can only offer a small sample of writings but you can access many more like these ones at our site…Without further ado, let us harmonise with words. We invite you to lose yourselves in a borderless world in these trying times.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Jared Carter, Snehaprava Das,  Manahil Tahir, Ryan Quinn Flanagan,  Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Saptarshi Bhattacharya, John Swain, Ron Pickett, Saba Zahoor, Momina Raza, Annette Gagliardi, Jenny Middleton, Afsar Mohammad, Rhys Hughes, George Freek, Mitra Samal, Lizzie Packer, Shamik Banerjee, Maithreyi Karnoor,  Hela Tekali, Rakhi Dalal, Prithvijeet Sinha, Asad Latif, Stuart MacFarlane

Isa Kamari translates his poems from Malay in The Lost Mantras. Click here to read.

Two of her own Persian poems have been written and translated by Akram Yazdani. Click here to read.

A Poet in Exile by Dmitry Blizniuk has been translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov. Click here to read.

Refugee in my Own Country/ I am Ukraine… Poetry by Lesya Bakun of Ukraine. Click here to read. 

Sukanta Bhattacharya’s poem, Therefore, has been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

Amalkanti by Nirendranath Chakraborty has been translated from Bengali by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard. Click here to read

Ye Shao-weng’s poetry ( 1100-1150) has been translated from Mandarin by Rex Tan. Click here to read.

Rebel or ‘Bidrohi’, Nazrul’s signature poem, ‘Bidrohi‘, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Manish Ghatak’s Aagun taader Praan (Fire is their Life) has been translated from Bengali by Indrayudh Sinha. Click here to read.

Tagore’s poem, Tomar Shonkho Dhulay Porey (your conch lies in the dust), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty as ‘The Conch Calls’. Click here to read.

Waiting for Godot by Akbar Barakzai; Akbar Barakzai’s poem has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Ihlwha Choi spent some time in Santiniketan and here are poems he wrote in reaction to his observations near the ‘home of R.Tagore’, as he names Santiniketan and the Kobiguru. Click here to read Nandini.

Fiction

Flash Fiction: Peregrine: Brindley Hallam Dennis tells us the story of a cat and a human. Click here to read.

Rituals in the Garden: Marcelo Medone discusses motherhood, aging and loss in this poignant flash fiction from Argentina. Click here to read.

Navigational Error: Luke P.G. Draper explores the impact of pollution with a short compelling narrative. Click here to read.

Henrik’s Journey: Farah Ghuznavi follows a conglomerate of people on board a flight to address issues ranging from Rohingyas to race bias. Click here to read.

The Magic Staff , a poignant short story about a Rohingya child by Shaheen Akhtar, translated from Bengali by Arifa Ghani Rahman. Click here to read.

A Cat Story : Sohana Manzoor leaves one wondering if the story is about felines or… Click here to read. 

Pus Ki Raat or A Frigid Winter Night by Munshi Premchand has been translated from Hindi by C Christine Fair. Click here to read. 

American Wife: Suzanne Kamata gives a short story set set in the Obon festival in Japan. Click hereto read.

Hena, a short story by Nazrul, has been translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read. 

A Queen is Crowned: Farhanaz Rabbani traces the awakening of self worth. Click here to read.

A Penguin’s Story: Sreelekha Chatterjee writes a story from a penguin’s perspective. Click here to read.

Disappearance by Bitan Chakraborty has been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

The Sixth Man: C. J. Anderson-Wu tells a story around disappearances during Taiwan’s White terror. Click here to read.

Looking for Evans: Rashida Murphy writes a light-hearted story about a faux pas. Click here to read.

Used Steinways: Jonathan B. Ferrini shares a story about pianos and people set in Los Angeles. Click here to read.

The Beaten Rooster, a short story by Hamiruddin Middya, has been translated from Bengali by V Ramaswamy. Click here to read.

The Onion: JK Miller brings to us the story of a child in Khan Yunis. Click here to read.

Santa in the Autorickshaw: Snigdha Agrawal takes us to meet a syncretic spirit with a heartwarming but light touch. Click here to read.

The Untold Story: Neeman Sobhan gives us the story of a refugee from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Click here to read. 

The Wise Words of the Sun: Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a fable involving elements of nature. Click here to read.

The Headstone, a poignant story by Sharaf Shad has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Sandy Cannot Write: Devraj Singh Kalsi takes us into the world of adverstising and glamour. Click here to read.

Musalmanir Galpa (A Muslim Woman’s Story) Tagore’s short story has been translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

Non-Fiction

 Haiku for Rwandan Girls: Suzanne Kamata writes of her trip to Africa where she teaches and learns from youngsters. Click here to read.

Menaced by a Marine Heatwave: Meredith Stephens writes of how global warming is impacting marine life in South Australia. Click here to read.

 ‘All Creatures Great and Small’: Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of animal interactions. Click here to read.

One Life, One Love, 300 Children: Keith Lyons writes of a woman who looked after 300 children. Click here to read.

When West Meets East & Greatness Blooms: Debraj Mookerjee reflects on how syncretism impacts greats like Tagore,Tolstoy, Emerson, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi and many more. Click here to read.

The Day Michael Jackson Died: A tribute  by Julian Matthews to the great talented star who died amidst ignominy and controversy. Click here to read.

Amrita Sher-Gil: An Avant-Garde Blender of the East & West: Bhaskar Parichha shows how Amrita Sher-Gil’s art absorbed the best of the East and the West. Click here to read.

Dramatising an Evolving Consciousness: Theatre with Nithari’s Children: Sanjay Kumar gives us a glimpse of how theatre has been used to transcend trauma and create bridges. Click here to read.

Potable Water Crisis & the Sunderbans: Camellia Biswas, a visitor to Sunderbans during the cyclone Alia, turns environmentalist and writes about the potable water issue faced by locals. Click here to read.

T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land: Finding Hope in Darkness: Dan Maloche muses on the century-old poem and its current relevance. Click here to read. 

 My Love for RK Narayan, Rhys Hughes discusses the novels by ths legendary writer from India. Click here to read.

Travels of Debendranath Tagore : These are travel narratives by Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

The Comet’s Trail: Remembering Kazi Nazrul Islam: Radha Chakravarty pays tribute to the rebel poet of Bengal. Click here to read.

From Srinagar to Ladakh: A Cyclist’s Diary: Farouk Gulsara travels from Malaysia for a cycling adventure in Kashmir. Click here to read.

 Baraf Pora (Snowfall): This narrative gives a glimpse of Tagore’s first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated by Somdatta Mandal . Click here to read.

In The Hidden Kingdom of Bhutan: Mohul Bhowmick explores Bhutan with words and his camera. Click here to read.

The Day of Annihilation: An essay on climate change by Kazi Nazrul Islam has been translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Reminiscences from a Gallery: The Other Ray: Dolly Narang muses on Satyajit Ray’s world beyond films and shares a note by the maestro and an essay on his art by the eminent artist, Paritosh Sen. Click here to read.

The Bauls of Bengal: Aruna Chakravarti writes of wandering minstrels called bauls and the impact they had on Tagore. Click here to read.

The Literary Club of 18th Century London: Professor Fakrul Alam writes on literary club traditions of Dhaka, Kolkata and an old one from London. Click here to read.

From Madagascar to Japan: An Adventure or a Dream: Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia writes of her journey from Africa to Japan with a personal touch. Click here to read.

250 Years of Jane Austen: A Tribute: Meenakshi Malhotra pays a tribute to the writer. Click here to read.

The Chickpea That Logged More Mileage Than You: Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan gives an interesting account of the chickpeas journey through time and space, woven with a bit of irony. Click here to read.

The Day the Earth Quaked : Amy Sawitta Lefevre gives an eyewitness account of the March 28th earthquake from Bangkok. Click here to read.

Where Should We Go After the Last Frontiers: Ahamad Rayees writes from a village in Kashmir which homed refugees and still faced bombing. Click here to read.

The Last of the Barbers: How the Saloon Became the Salon (and Where the Gossip Went): Charudutta Panigrahi writes an essay steeped in nostalgia and yet weaving in the present. Click here to read.

That Time of Year: Rick Bailey muses about the passage of years. Click here to read.

The Untold Stories of a Wooden Suitcase: Larry S. Su recounts his past in China and weaves a narrative of resilience. Click here to read.

Adventures of a Backpacking Granny: Sybil Pretious recalls her travels across the world post sixty, including Kiliminjaro. Click here to read.

Categories
Editorial

Sense and Nonsense: Atonal, Imperfect, Incomplete

Incomplete statues of Michelangelo in Accademia Gallery, Florence

In the Accademia Gallery, Florence, are housed incomplete statues by Michelangelo that were supposed to accompany his sculpture of Moses on the grand tomb of Pope Julius II. The sculptures despite being unfinished, incomplete and therefore imperfect, evoke a sense of power. They seem to be wresting forcefully with the uncarved marble to free their own forms — much like humanity struggling to lead their own lives. Life now is comparable to atonal notes of modern compositions that refuse to fall in line with more formal, conventional melodies. The new year continues with residues of unending wars, violence, hate and chaos. Yet amidst all this darkness, we still live, laugh and enjoy small successes. The smaller things in our imperfect existence bring us hope, the necessary ingredient that helps us survive under all circumstances.

Imperfections, like Michelangelo’s Non-finito statues in Florence, or modern atonal notes, go on to create vibrant, relatable art. There is also a belief that when suffering is greatest, arts flourish. Beauty and hope are born of pain. Will great art or literature rise out of the chaos we are living in now?  One wonders if ancient art too was born of humanity’s struggle to survive in a comparatively younger world where they did not understand natural forces and whose history we try to piece together with objects from posterity. Starting on a journey of bringing ancient art from her part of the world, Ratnottama Sengupta shares a new column with us from this January.

Drenched in struggles of the past is also Showkat Ali’s The Struggle: A Novel, translated from Bengali by V. Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir. It has been reviewed by Somdatta Mandal who sees it a socio-economic presentation of the times. We also carry an excerpt from the book as we do for Anuradha Marwah’s The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta. Marwha’s novel has been reviewed by Meenakshi Malhotra who sees it as a bildungsroman and a daring book. Bhaskar Parichha has brought to us a discussion on colonial history about Rakesh Dwivedi’s Colonization Crusade and Freedom of India: A Saga of Monstrous British Barbarianism around the Globe. Udita Banerjee has also delved into history with her exploration of Angshuman Kar’s The Lost Pendant, a collection of poems written by poets who lived through the horrors of Partition and translated from Bengali by multiple poets. One of the translators, Rajorshi Patranabis, has also discussed his own book of supernatural encounters, Whereabouts of the Anonymous: Exploration of the Invisible. A Wiccan by choice, Patranbis claims to have met with residual energies or what we in common parlance call ghosts and spoken to many of them. He not only clicked these ethereal beings — and has kindly shared his photos in this feature — but also has written a whole book about his encounters, including with the malevolent spirits of India’s most haunted monument, the Bhangarh Fort.

Bringing us an essay on a book that had spooky encounters is Farouk Gulsara, showing how Dickens’ A Christmas Carol revived a festival that might have got written off. We have a narrative revoking the past from Larry Su, who writes of his childhood in the China of the 1970s and beyond. He dwells on resilience — one of the themes we love in Borderless Journal. Karen Beatty also invokes ghosts from her past while sharing her memoir. Rick Bailey brings in a feeling of mortality in his musing while Keith Lyons, writes in quest of his friend who mysteriously went missing in Bali. Let’s hope he finds out more about him.

Charudutta Panigrahi writes a lighthearted piece on barbers of yore, some of whom can still be found plying their trade under trees in India. Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia dwells on her favourite place which continues to rejuvenate and excite while Prithvijeet Sinha writes about haunts he is passionate about, the ancient monuments of Lucknow. Gulsara has woven contemporary lores into his satirical piece, involving Messi, the footballer. Bringing compassionate humour with his animal interactions is Devraj Singh Kalsi, who is visited daily by not just a bovine visitor, but cats, monkeys, birds and more — and he feeds them all. Suzanne Kamata takes us to Kishi, brought to us by both her narrative and pictures, including one of a feline stationmaster!

Rhys Hughes has discussed prose poems and shared a few of his own along with three separate tongue-in-cheek verses on meteorological romances. In poetry, we have a vibrant selection from across the globe with poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Ron Pickett, Snehaprava Das, Stephen Druce, Phil Wood, Akintoye Akinsola, Michael Lauchlan, Pritika Rao, SR Inciardi, Jim Murdoch, Pramod Rastogi, Joy Anne O’Donnell, Andrew Leggett, Ananya Sarkar and Annette Gagliardi. Rich Murphy has poignant poems about refugees while Dmitry Bliznik of Ukraine, has written a first-hand account of how he fared in his war-torn world in his poignant poem, ‘A Poet in Exile’, translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov —

We've run away from the simmering house
like milk that is boiling over. Now I'm single again.
The sun hangs behind a ruffled up shed,
like a bloody yolk on a cold frying pan
until the nightfall dumps it in the garbage…

('A Poet in Exile', by Dmitry Blizniuk, translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov)

In translations, we have Professor Fakrul Alam’s rendition of Nazrul’s mellifluous lyrics from Bengali. Isa Kamari has shared four more of his Malay poems in English bringing us flavours of his culture. Snehaparava Das has similarly given us flavours of Odisha with her translation of Pravasini Mahakuda’s Odia poetry. A taste of Balochistan comes to us from Fazal Baloch’s rendition of Sayad Hashumi’s Balochi quatrains in English. Tagore’s poem ‘Kalponik’ (Imagined) has been rendered in English. This was a poem that was set to music by his niece, Sarala Devi.

After a long hiatus, we are delighted to finally revive Pandies Corner with a story by Sumona translated from Hindustani by Grace M Sukanya. Her story highlights the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms. Sumana has assumed a pen name as her story is true and could be a security risk for her. She is eager to narrate her story — do pause by and take a look.

In fiction, we have a poignant narrative about befriending a tramp by Ross Salvage, and macabre and dark one by Mary Ellen Campagna, written with a light touch. It almost makes one think of Eugene Ionesco. Jonathan B. Ferrini shares a heartfelt story about used Steinway pianos and growing up in Latino Los Angeles. Rajendra Kumar Roul weaves a narrative around compassion and expectations. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives a beautiful fable around roses and bees.

With that, we come to the end of a bumper issue with more than fifty peices. Huge thanks to all our fabulous contributors, some of whom have not just written but shared photographs to illustrate the content. Do pause by our contents page and take a look. My heartfelt thanks to our fabulous team for their output and support, especially Sohana Manzoor who does our cover art. And most of all huge thanks to readers whose numbers keep growing, making it worth our while to offer our fare. Thank you all.

Here’s wishing all of you better prospects for the newborn year and may we move towards peace and sanity in a world that seems to have gone amuck!

Happy Reading!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Essay

The Last of the Barbers: How the Saloon Became the Salon (and Where the Gossip Went)

By Charudutta Panigrahi

If language were a haircut, “saloon” got a buzz cut and a blow-dry and came out as “salon.” That change in spelling is the visible tip of a larger style transformation: one rough, male-only ritual space has been trimmed, straightened, scented and repackaged into a gleaming, multi-service, mostly woman-centred retail experience. Along the way, the loud, fragrant, argument-heavy mini-parliaments of small-town India — the saloons — have been politely ushered into warranties, playlists and polite small talk.

Barbers in India are almost as old as conversation itself. The profession of the barber — the nai or hajam — is embedded in pre-colonial life: scalp massage (champi), shaves, tonsure at rites of passage, and quick fixes between chores. These services were usually delivered in open-fronted shops or under trees, with tools that were portable and livelihoods that were local.

The “saloon” as a distinctive, Western-flavoured, male gathering place began to consolidate during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Port cities and colonial cantonments — Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta (Kolkata), Madras (Chennai) — saw the rise of dedicated shops selling not only shaves and haircuts but also imported tonics, straight razors and a distinctly public atmosphere shaped by newspaper reading, debate and gossip. Over time, that form blended with older local practices and spread inland. By the mid-20th century, the saloon — a recognisable, chair-lined, mirror-fronted social stage — existed in towns from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Gujarat’s chawls to Assam’s market roads.

So ancient barbering traditions fed into a colonial-era intensification of the barbershop as public forum; by the 1950s–70s, the saloon as we remember it was firmly a part of India’s social furniture. The precise start date is a quilt of custom and commerce rather than a single founding ceremony — and that is part of the saloon’s charm.

Walk into a saloon in Nagpur, Nellore, Shillong or Surat and you’ll notice an uncanny resemblance. The reasons are simple and human:

  • Low price point: Saloons survive on quick volumes and walk-ins. That encourages many chairs, fast turnover, and layouts that invite waiting men to talk rather than sit quietly.
  • Ritual services: Shave, cut, champi. These are short encounters that thread customers through the same communal space repeatedly — ideal for gossip to collect and ferment.
  • Social role: The barber doubles as ear, counsellor, news-disseminator and crossword referee. That role is culturally consistent across regions: a saloon’s psychic geography is the same whether the tea is masala or lemon.

The result is that a saloon in Kutch and a saloon in Kerala will differ in language, politics and local jokes — but both will produce that same satisfying racket of opinion, repartee and advice. They are India’s unofficial, peripatetic fora for public life.

Enter the salon: padded seats, curated playlists, appointment-booking and a menu so long it reads like a restaurant wine list (colour, rebonding, keratin, facials, pedicures, threading, and sometimes a minor festival of LED lights). A couple of business realities did most of the heavy lifting:

  • Women’s services earn more and recur more often. Regular facials, hair treatments and beauty routines translate into steadier, higher bills. The money follows the customer, and the space follows the money.
  • Franchising and professional training created standardized staff who follow brand scripts — which tighten conversation and reduce the barber-confessor vibe.
  • Unisex salons consolidated footfall, but that consolidation shrank male-only territory. Men who once had a semi-public living room now sit in chic, quieter spaces that discourage loud, extended debate.

The practical upshot: the saloon’s boisterous mini-parliaments were replaced by stylists with laminated menus, muted background music and an etiquette that favours privacy over political salvoes.

What we miss (and what we gained)

We miss the moralisers, the wisecracks, the boisterous consultancy of unpaid experts who knew which councillor was friendly with which shopkeeper and which wedding was scandalous; the loud education in rhetoric and local affairs; the bench-seat apprenticeship in how to perform masculinity in public.

We gain in expanded choices for women, more professional hygiene and techniques, new livelihoods for trained stylists (especially women), and spaces where people can pursue personalised care without the social cost that used to attend public rituals.

It’s not a zero-sum game — but it does reorder who feels proprietorial about public grooming spaces. The new economics say: she who pays more — and pays more often — gets the say.

Not all saloons are extinct. In smaller towns they still hum. In cities, they’ve evolved into hybrid forms:

  • Old-school saloons persist where price sensitivity and cultural habit remain strong: walk-ins, communal benches, loud conversation and a barber who’ll recommend both a haircut and the correct candidate for local office.
  • Nostalgic barbershops in urban pockets lean into the past with “vintage” decor, whiskey-bar vibes and sports on TV — except now they charge a premium and call the barber a “grooming specialist.”
  • Some entrepreneurs stage “men’s nights” or open-mic gossip hours in neighbourhood shops, trying to recapture the civic pulse while keeping the modern business model.

If you want the old saloon spark, look for places without appointment apps, with too many phones in sight but none in use, and with a tea flask on the counter.

What’s lost isn’t only a loud, male-only gossip pit; it’s a training ground for public argument and a place where local memory was kept live and messy. The saloon taught people how to spar without a referee; the salon teaches how to look good while being politely neutral. If you mourn for the saloon’s barbed banter, you can grieve — but also take action: host a “Salon for Men” in your local café, revive a community noticeboard at the barber, or convince your neighbourhood salon to schedule a weekly “open-chair” hour for community talk (and maybe offer tea).

And until then, if you miss the salty, pungent chorus of small-town democracy, go to any saloon that still has a kettle on the stove and a barber who knows the mayor’s schedule by heart. Sit down, get a shave, and watch a mini-parliament assemble around you. You’ll leave clean-faced, better informed, and maybe a little animated — exactly how democracy used to feel.

From Public Domain

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Charudutta Panigrahi is a writer. He can be contacted at Charudutta403@gmail.com.

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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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Contents

Borderless, May 2023

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Dancing in May? … Click here to read.

Translations

Aparichita by Tagore has been translated from Bengali as The Stranger by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

The Kabbadi Player, a short story by the late Nadir Ali, has been translated from Punjabi by Amna Ali. Click here to read.

Carnival Time by Masud Khan has been translated from the Bengali poem by Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Desolation, a poem by Munir Momin, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Loneliness, a poem, has been translated from Korean to English by the poet himself, Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read

Jonmodiner Gaan or Birthday Song by Tagore has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Conversations

A conversation with Mitra Phukan about her latest novel, What Will People Say? A Novel along with a brief introduction to the book. Click here to read.

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri converses with Prerna Gill on her poetry and her new book of poetry, Meanwhile. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Lakshmi Kannan, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Shahriyer Hossain Shetu, Peter Cashorali, K.V. Raghupathi, Wilda Morris, Ashok Suri, William Miller, Khayma Balakrishnan, Md Mujib Ullah, Urmi Chakravorty, Sreekanth Kopuri, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In What I Thought I Knew About India When I was Young, Rhys Hughes travels back to his childhood with a soupçon of humour. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

A Towering Inferno, A Girl-next-door & the Big City

Ratnottama Sengupta writes of actress Jaya Bachchan recounting her first day on the sets of Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar. Click here to read.

Kissed on Kangaroo Island

Meredith Stephens travels with her camera and her narrative to capture the flora and fauna of the island. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In The Reader, Devraj Singh Kalsi revisits his experiences at school. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Making Chop Suey in South Carolina, Suzanne Kamata recaptures a flavour from her past. Click here to read.

Essays

Rabindranath’s Monsoonal Music

Professor Fakrul Alam brings to us Tagore songs in translation and in discussion on the season that follows the scorching heat of summer months. Click here to read.

A Night Hike in Nepal

Ravi Shankar hikes uphill in Nepal on a wet and rainy night along with leeches and water buffaloes. Click here to read.

Moving Images of Tagore

Ratnottama Sengupta talks of Tagore and cinema. Click here to read.

Stories

Threads

Julian Gallo explores addiction. Click here to read.

The Whirlpool

Abdullah Rayhan takes us back to a village in Bangladesh to give a poignant story about a young boy who dreamt of hunting. Click here to read.

Look but with Love

Sreelekha Chatterjee writes a story set in the world of media. Click here to read.

The Mysterious Murder of Adamov Plut

A globe-trotting murder mystery by Paul Mirabile, a sequel to his last month’s story, ‘The Book Hunter’. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Aruna Chakravarti’s Daughter’s of Jorasanko describing the last birthday celebration of Tagore. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Bhubaneswar@75 – Perspectives, edited by Bhaskar Parichha/ Charudutta Panigrahi. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Meenakshi Malhotra revisits Tagore’s Farewell Song, translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Somdatta Mandal reviews KR Meera’s Jezebel translated from Malayalam by Abhirami Girija Sriram and K. S. Bijukumar. Click here to read.

Lakshmi Kannan has reviewed Jaydeep Sarangi’s collection of poems, letters in lower case. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada by Ujjal Dosanjh. Click here to read.

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

Dancing in May?

Courtesy: Creative Commons
“May is pretty, May is mild,
Dances like a happy child…”

Annette Wynne (Early twentieth century)

Each month is expressed in a different form by nature in various parts of the world. In the tropics, May is sweltering and hot — peak summer. In the Southern hemisphere, it is cold. However, with climate change setting in, the patterns are changing, and the temperatures are swinging to extremes. Sometimes, one wonders if this is a reflection of human minds, which seem to swing like pendulums to create dissensions and conflicts in the current world. Nothing seems constant and the winds of change have taken on a menacing appearance. If we go by Nazrul’s outlook, destruction is a part of creating a new way of life as he contends in his poem, ‘Ring Bells of Victory’ — “Why fear destruction? It’s the gateway to creation!” Is this how we will move towards ‘dancing like a happy child’?

Mitra Phukan addresses this need for change in her novel, What Will People Say — not with intensity of Nazrul nor in poetry but with a light feathery wand, more in the tradition of Jane Austen. Her narrative reflects on change at various levels to explore the destruction of old customs giving way to new that are more accepting and kinder to inclusivity, addressing issues like widow remarriage in conservative Hindu frameworks, female fellowship and ageing as Phukan tells us in her interview. Upcoming voice, Prerna Gill, lauded by names like Arundhathi Subramaniam and Chitra Divakaruni, has also been in conversation with Shantanu Ray Choudhuri on her book of verses, Meanwhile. She has refreshing perspectives on life and literature.

Poetry in Borderless means variety and diaspora. Peter Cashorali’s poem addresses changes that quite literally upend the sky and the Earth! Michael Burch reflects on a change that continues to evolve – climate change. Ryan Quinn Flanagan explores societal irritants with irony. Seasons are explored by KV Raghupathi and Ashok Suri. Wilda Morris brings in humour with universal truths. William Miller explores crime and punishment. Lakshmi Kannan and Shahriyer Hossain Shetu weave words around mythical lore. We have passionate poetry from Md Mujib Ullah and Urmi Chakravorty. It is difficult to go into each poem with their diverse colours but Rhys Hughes has brought in wry humour with his long poem on eighteen goblins… or is the count nineteen? In his column, Hughes has dwelt on tall tales he heard about India during his childhood in a light tone, stories that sound truly fantastic…

Devraj Singh Kalsi has written a nostalgic piece that hovers between irony and perhaps, a reformatory urge… I am not quite sure, but it is as enjoyable and compelling as Meredith Stephen’s narrative on her conservation efforts in Kangaroo Island in the Southern hemisphere and fantastic animals she meets, livened further by her photography. Ravi Shankar talks of his night hikes in the Northern hemisphere, more accurately, in the Himalayas. While trekking at night seems a risky task, trying to recreate dishes from the past is no less daunting, as Suzanne Kamata tells us in her Notes from Japan.

May hosts the birthday of a number of greats, including Tagore and Satyajit Ray. Ratnottama Sengupta’s piece on Ray’s birth anniversary celebrations with actress Jaya Bachchan recounting her experience while working for Ray in Mahanagar (Big City), a film that has been restored and was part of celebrations for the filmmaker’s 102nd Birth anniversary captures the nostalgia of a famous actress on the greatest filmmakers of our times. She has also given us an essay on Tagore and cinema in memory of the great soul, who was just sixty years older to Ray and impacted the filmmaker too. Ray had a year-long sojourn in Santiniketan during his youth.

Eulogising Rabindrasangeet and its lyrics is an essay by Professor Fakrul Alam on Tagore. Professor Alam has translated number of his songs for the essay as he has, a powerful poem from Bengali by Masud Khan. A transcreation of Tagore’s first birthday poem , a wonderful translation of Balochi poetry by Fazal Baloch of Munir Momin’s verses, another one from Korean by Ihlwha Choi rounds up the translated poetry in this edition. Stories that reach out with their poignant telling include Nadir Ali’s narrative, translated from Punjabi by his daughter, Amna Ali, and Aruna Chakravarti’s translation of a short story by Tagore. We have more stories from around the world with Julian Gallo exploring addiction, Abdullah Rayhan with a poignant narrative from Bangladesh, Sreelekha Chatterjee with a short funny tale and Paul Mirabile exploring the supernatural and horror, a sequel to ‘The Book Hunter‘, published in the April issue.

All the genres we host seem to be topped with a sprinkling of pieces on Tagore as this is his birth month. A book excerpt from Chakravarti’s Daughters of Jorasanko narrates her well-researched version of Tagore’s last birthday celebration and carries her translation of the last birthday song by the giant of Bengali literature. The other book excerpt is from Bhubaneswar@75 – Perspectives, edited by Bhaskar Parichha/ Charudutta Panigrahi. Parichha has also reviewed Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada by Ujjal Dosanjh, a book that starts in pre-independent India and travels with the writer to Canada via UK. Again to commemorate the maestro’s birth anniversary, Meenakshi Malhotra has revisited Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Tagore’s Farewell Song. Somdatta Mandal has critiqued KR Meera’s Jezebel, translated from Malayalam by Abhirami Girija Sriram and K. S. Bijukuma. Lakshmi Kannan has introduced to us Jaydeep Sarangi’s collection of poems, letters in lower case.

There are pieces that still reach out to be mentioned. Do visit our content page for May. I would like to thank Sohana Manzoor for her fantastic artwork and continued editorial support for the Tagore translations and the whole team for helping me put together this issue. Thank you. A huge thanks to our loyal readers and contributors who continue to bring in vibrant content, photography and artwork. Without you all, we would not be where we are today.

Wish you a lovely month.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Excerpt

Bhubaneswar@75 – Perspectives

Title: Bhubaneswar@75 – Perspectives

Editors: Bhaskar Parichha/Charudutta Panigrahi

Publisher: Pen In Books

INTRODUCTION

As we look forward to the next 25 years … 

April 13, 1948. It was on this day that the first Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru laid the Odisha capital city’s foundation stone. Since then, Bhubaneswar has remained a celebrated model of modern architecture and city planning with its prehistoric past as a temple city. Along with Jamshedpur and Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar is one of modern India’s first planned cities. 

While laying the foundation-stone, Nehru observed: ‘Bhubaneswar would not be a city of high-rise buildings for officers and rich men without relation to the common masses. It would be consistent with the idea of reducing differences between the rich and the poor. The New Capital would embody the beautiful art of Odisha, and it would be a place for beauty…so that life might become an adjunct to beauty.’

Bhubaneswar is a temple town with a series of ancient sandstone temples varying in size from the towering eleventh century Lingaraja Temple. It was a city of temples. Once upon a time, there were more than 7,000 temples in and around Bhubaneswar. Today, there are only a few. 

EXQUISITE ARCHITECTURE

From a religious standpoint, the Lingaraj temple is the most popular. Other temples include the 7th century Vaital temple, the impressive 10th century Mukteshwar temple, and the 11th century Raja Rani temple with its fine carvings. There are many other temples of exquisite architecture. 

Several Grade-I temples of national importance have been protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Old Bhubaneswar, such as Ananta Basudeva, Mukteswara, Persurameswara, and Rajarani Temples, which are just a few examples. Bhubaneswar’s modern capital is shaped by Old Bhubaneswar’s ancient temples.

The state capital city planning began near the old temple town. The Master Plan for the upcoming city of Bhubaneswar was prepared by Dr Otto H Koenigsberger on the concept of neighbourhood unit planning. The original plan envisaged horizontal development rather than vertical growth for a population of 40,000 with administration as the primary function. Koenigsberger designed a linear pattern for the city, with administrative units on the main artery, and neighborhood units attached to them. Neighborhood units offer residents the most sophisticated amenities in a city. They were placed at short distances to give people easy access to schools, hospitals and other facilities.  

CENTRAL VISTA

Six units were developed. Unit-V served as the site for the administrative complex, while other units were planned according to neighborhoods. As part of the town center, there was a market building, a weekly market, a day-to-day market, and a bus station. There was a central vista with views of the Raj Bhawan. There was also a commercial zone along Janpath and Bapuji Nagar up to the railway station. Koenigsberger’s planning zone provided characteristic weather control and a salubrious climate throughout the year. This area — the heart of the city — maintains the lushest green cover in the city with open space and a well-organized transportation system.

A neighborhood unit required that each child live within a quarter of a mile or a third of a mile of their school. Housewives were required to live within a half mile of the civic center to shop there and have access to medical facilities within the town. Distances between a person’s home and place of employment could conveniently be covered by a bicycle or a cycle rickshaw. Koenigsberger suggested 7 different types of roads for 7 different groups of users and 7 different functions. Those are footpaths, parkways, cycle paths, minor housing streets, major housing streets, main roads and main arteries.

Bhubaneswar was planned to be the state capital, but it is primarily a city for government officials. Residential quarters were designed to meet the needs of officials from various income groups. Planning was made to meet the ideal urban family’s requirements. This was done by providing them with single-storey independent houses with a front yard and kitchen and garden space in the back yard. Government bungalows have extensive open spaces around them and abundant space between one house and another. Those with high incomes occupy bungalows near the main employment complex. 

Low income housing consists of mostly one and two bedrooms comprised of more than one unit broken into rows. Early in the planning process, residential quarters in different neighborhoods were mostly standardized. Small scale industries and manufacturing activities were added after 1980. Much of the original plan has changed in twenty years.

HERITAGE ZONE

Bhubaneswar has been declared a special heritage zone as Ekamra Kshetra, which consists of several significant structures. Various socio-cultural and religious heritages of Odisha are represented in the monuments, which represent different periods in Odisha’s history. In recent years, several of these significant elements have steadily lost their significance due to modern construction activities.

An integrated regional development plan has been prepared to meet the growing demand for services in the region. This plan has been declared as the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) of the Bhubaneswar Development Plan Area (BDPA). The BDPA comprises Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, Khurda Municipality, Jatani Municipality and adjoining 122 Mouzas. The Long Term Perspective Plan for Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Urban Complex (BCUC) provides a vision for the development of the whole region by 2030. Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Urban Complex being the hub of commercial, political, administrative and socio-cultural activities in Odisha, it has rich potential for development. 

A lot of resentment was felt — and it still exists — when Bhubaneswar replaced Cuttack as the capital on 19 August 1949, two years after India gained independence from Britain. In recent times, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack have been called the ‘twin cities of Odisha’ – one with a modern look and another with a millennium-old history. Bhubaneswar and Cuttack have become closer since the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Bridge, also known as the Trisulia Bridge, opened on 19 July 2017. 

BIG FIVE

There are a few Tier-2 cities in the country that host the top five IT companies in the country. Bhubaneswar is one of them. These companies include Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, Tech Mahindra, and Mindtree. It is considered one of the three most attractive places in the world to do business, according to the World Bank. Bhubaneswar has been selected as one of the first twenty cities in India to be developed as a smart city. This is part of his flagship ‘Smart Cities Mission’ which seeks to develop 100 smart cities in India. 

Bhubaneswar was added to the World Heritage List (WHL) as part of the application process. The WHL requires that the site be of outstanding value, as well as having at least one of the ten selection criteria met. This is required for inclusion on this list. Bhubaneswar meets four of them. Over 100 cities have been designated World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

Nations that nominate heritage sites and cities to UNESCO, and submit data, maps, and photographs, are given heritage status by the organization. World Heritage Status is the highest honor and most prestigious title given to heritage monuments, sites, and cities in recognition of their universal value.

Bhubaneswar, one of the two Indian capitals planned after independence, alongside Chandigarh, is today one of the most prominent cities in Odisha. It has a culture as vibrant as the city itself. With a population of one and a half million, Bhubaneswar has become known as one of the most happening cities in Eastern India. India’s evolving urban landscape places the city among its upcoming metropolises.

This book contains twenty-seven essays written by learned scholars on different aspects of Bhubaneswar. From temples to town planning, from becoming India’s sports capital to urban living, from culture to literature, and from business to education, the book says it all. It represents everything that has happened since the foundation stone was laid. It is a throwback to what we have witnessed.

It is hoped that by the time Bhubaneswar celebrates its centennial twenty-five years from now, the city’s signature identity and impeccable heritage will have been preserved and passed on to future generations in a more intact form. 

Bhaskar Parichha

About the Book:

The capital of Odisha and a city that is still in the process of being shaped, Bhubaneswar is many things to many people. The Temple City, as it was once called, was home to thousands of temples at one time.

The foundation stone of ‘modern’ Bhubaneswar was laid in 1948 by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. It became the administrative capital of Odisha in the learly 1950s. Bhubaneswar was declared a ‘smart city’ under the urban initiative by the government of India in 2014.

Bhubaneswar, one of the two capitals planned after independence, is today a vibrant city in Odisha with an equally vibrant culture. With a population of one and a half million, Bhubaneswar has become known as one of the most happening cities in Eastern India. India’s evolving urban landscape places the city among its upcoming metropolises.

The book has 25 essays on different aspects of Bhubaneswar written by scholars of standing. From temples to town planning, from becoming India’s sports capital to urban living, from culture to literature, and from business to education, the book says it all. It is a compilation of all that has happened over the past 75 years.

A ‘portrait’ of the city is presented in the book.

About the Editors

Bhaskar Parichha (1957) is a senior journalist and author of five books Unbiased: Writings on India, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha, Madhubabau – The Global Indian, and BijuPatnaik – A Biography. He has edited an anthology of essays entitled Naveen @25 -Perspectives. He is a bilingual writer and lives in Bhubaneswar.

Charudutta Panigrahi (1968) is a social advocate and practicing intellectual. He has set upthink tanks in India and abroad. A TED Speaker and an author, he is a polymath whose work takes him everywhere. This is from the last mile in indigenous communities to the high table of global policy making. He lives between Gurgaon, Bhubaneswar, and Panjim with his family. His recent release, The Scent of Odisha, has been received well by readers all over and is acclaimed as an exceptional Odisha chronicle of current times. He is engaged in climate change work and has set up a global platform called Climatists in Berlin.

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