Tag: Christmas

Arthur’s Subterranean Adventure

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date June 14, 2023
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By Paul Mirabile

Arthur was a secretive lad, a strapping boy of alcoves and copses, of coombs and chasms … of shadows. He had no friends nor at school, neither in the neighbourhood. His extraordinary imagination provided him all that he required to communicate with the marvels of the world.

It was early spring, and unseasonably warm. After school, Arthur would rush up to his room to examine, over and over again, maps of the world and his large globe, which he turned ever so slowly, scrutinizing all latitudes and longitudes. The sixteen-year-old boy had been brewing a remarkable idea for months, and now would be the time for that idea to take a definite form: Dig a tunnel from his village that would lead him diagonally to Australia! The idea had struck him like a lightning bolt. It seemed perfectly feasible as he spun that globe round and round. He would have to tunnel southwards to the asthenosphere[1], then veer eastwards. It would take a year… No! Perhaps years. But it could be done…

For now, however, certain preliminaries had to be dispensed with: locating the exact place to start digging without being seen, concealing the tools, the ladder, the dug up dirt. Yes, it was quite a lofty programme that required organisation and determination.

He looked beyond the meadow from his upstairs room window, over the rye fields and into the thick woods where hidden in the thickets lay a seventeenth century cemetery into which no one ever ventured. That would be the perfect location to start his tunnel. His father had all that he needed; that is, a pickaxe, a shovel and a bucket. As to the dirt, he would just scatter that about the woods or fill in the plots that had long since sunken deep with their fallen, crumbling tombstones. Arthur wasn’t afraid of the dead, nor of their ghosts.

To put his journey into action he needed time, and above all, the utmost secrecy. No one must guess his intentions, especially not his parents. On Monday after school, Arthur went out on reconnaissance. He changed his clothes and trotted into the woods beyond the meadow. In the abandoned cemetery, he began searching for a place to dig. He strolled in and out of the tombstones amusing himself by reading the epitaphs on the cracked tombs, most of them having been written in Latin. Huge, yawning holes filled with weeds and yellow grass could be possible candidates for the digging, but … Arthur stopped dead in his tracks.

Behind a copse of sycamores and weeping willows, he spied out a low stone structure that appeared to be an old, village well. And indeed it was! He had never seen it before. A well rigged out with a rusting hand crank and bucket to boot. When he bent over the coping, he noted that iron rungs ran down the mossy side of it which, undoubtedly, served as a ladder. The coping had been broken on two sides, but there seemed no danger of it further crumbling. He peeked down, the bottom appeared dry. Arthur drew back in great excitement, for if the well were deep enough, how much time and energy he could save ! This was surely a good omen. Still, he would need to climb down with a torch to inspect the bottom. Arthur cringed at the thought of rats or other rodents of the subterranean world. He would just have to muster all the courage he possessed. He felt like dancing. And indeed he did, in and out of the sinking tombstones. What a wonderful beginning to his adventure, to his voyage to the centre of the Earth … and beyond to the lands of kangaroos and koala bears.

The adventurer wasted not a moment. The next day, and the many more that followed, after school he would change, pack a clean shirt and trousers, gloves and sneakers in a backpack so that after his digging he could change his boots and work clothes before returning home. He hid the pickaxe and small shovel in the woods near the well, knowing perfectly well that his father, a rather absent-minded man, would never miss them. In fact, his father never had any need for them since he used the tools at the construction site.

As Arthur thought, the iron rungs proved to be sturdy. Equipped with his helmet, onto which he had strapped a torch, he descended into the well, mindful not to touch the moss or slime. At first, the horrible stench of rats or of their urine caused him to retch, but he got used to that.

The bottom, clayey, showed no signs of water, so he inspected the fractured stones of the sides following the needle of his compass, which slowly swung to a south-easterly direction, and there broke through the stone easy enough, picking and shovelling away the earth. Every half-hour or so he would fill the well-bucket, climb the rungs and pull it up with the hand crank. It was laboriously boring and tiresome work but better than carrying that bucket up and down those rungs.

Day after day, month after month, alone in his underground solitude, Arthur banged away at the brittle earth, carving out a tunnel into which he could easily crawl until seven o’clock in the evening. To tell the truth, the going was easier than expected. He would leave the tools in the tunnel (who would ever find them?), climb up, change into his ‘dinner clothes’ and return home, where his parents would be preparing their meal. He would run upstairs, jump into the shower (his fingernails were black with soil) and saunter down to join them at the table. The usual conversation ensued: How was school ? Where had he been the whole afternoon ? Had he any homework … and so on and so forth.

Everyday Arthur trained his mind and body to adopt to this new adventure, however arduous and lonely. His body grew leaner and muscular, his face taunt. His parents admired their son, who seemed to be in brighter spirits the past few months, more pleasant at the dining table, more affectionate, too, in the evening while chatting. His gradual metamorphosis truly surprised them, although his father couldn’t quite understand why the bright summer sunshine hadn’t tanned his son’s manly face ! But being a discreet father he never enquired about this unusual pallor.

After seven months of tunnelling, Arthur observed that the underworld temperature had risen considerably. His breathing grew erratic, oftentimes accompanied by bouts of coughing, even retching. Was he still in the Earth’s lithosphere, some forty-five miles thick ? The increase in the pressure and density of the air worked its way into and through his aching muscles and bones. His mind drifted to the upper world: the singing birds, the blue skies when it wasn’t raining, the fresh, cool breezes … Here, in the underworld all he heard were the screeching of rats and at times a deep, rumbling sound, hollow, unidentifiable.

One day as he toiled with much difficulty, hammering through a layer of granite, he discovered a coin. It was a two pence with the effigy of a queen, and on the reverse side a plume of ostrich feathers with a coronet. He smiled. It was his first underworld gratification. He would investigate the origins of his find more closely when back in his room. Which he did with much zeal. Arthur learned from a numismatic entry in his encyclopaedia that this coin dated from the 1970s, composed of bronze, copper and zinc. The head was that of Queen Elizabeth the Second. He placed his prize delicately in a box, hiding it in a secret place lest his parents, by chance, should discover it.

As the Autumn months slid by, the whirling leaves had no effect on Arthur as he tunnelled and tunnelled, deeper and deeper, always in an easterly direction. And as he did, he discovered coins of the most extraordinary mint : A very rare 1937 Edward the Seventh brass three pence, three hammered coins from the seventeenth or fifteenth century called ‘Limas‘, during the reign of George the Second, two ‘Groats‘ from the fifteenth century from which Henry the Seventh gleamed perfectly visible. His box grew heavier and heavier with these extracted treasures whose wealth must have been estimable. Arthur’s excitement reached an apex when he scraped out of the extracted earth two imported coins of Frankish mint, a denier[2] and a sou[3]. Three days later, he added to his precious hoard a ‘Gold Slater’ whose effigy of Julius Caesar left him breathless.

Dreams of reaching the centre of the Earth visited his restless sleep every night now. He dreamed of encountering dwarves mining for gold, clinging to the walls of gigantic shafts tapping and hammering away. He dreamed of boring into enormous chambers glittering with sunny gems or sprouting with enormous mushrooms. One night he found himself on a deserted strand gasping at a vast ocean, out of whose fuming, stilled waters huge reptiles swam, whilst others lay bathing on the sunless sands. He would awake in a cold sweat. He had been reading too much of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Winter. Arthur crunched over a frosty bed of snow ‘back to work’. The weather had become terribly cold in the ‘upperworld’, whereas in the ‘lowerworld’, Arthur’s world, temperatures had become almost unbearable. How deep had he dug ? The outer crust of the Earth measured some 3,400 miles. His digging, shovelling, climbing up and down the rungs had become so laborious. At times he lay down flat on his belly in the damp tunnel and sobbed. Arthur reckoned that it would take years and years of unending toil to reach the centre of the Earth like his Jules Verne hero, much less the lands of kangaroos and koala bears. His spirits brightened, though, when he dug up three ‘Henistbury Head’ coins dating from 150 B.C., no doubt imported from Roman Gaul. They had been in circulation in England since the times of the Keltic tribes living in Dorset and Somerset, so he learned from a numismatic magazine he had recently purchased. In spite of this cheery event, the days went by rather drearily.

Then the miracle occurred! Banging away listlessly into the bleak and black airless universe in which he was engulfed, his shovel broke through a thin layer of sand sediment which tumbled into a pocket of emptiness. Arthur carved out a hole large enough to crawl through and lo and behold he found himself in a tunnel; a vast tunnel high enough to stand in, wide enough for two, even three men to walk abreast ! It must be a miner’s tunnel– he thought, and with a burst of fatigued emotion, leapt for joy. A miracle! A miracle!

How many miles would he gain? How many extracted buckets saved? How much energy economized? He could now walk, even trot if he felt so inclined. And the tunnel led downwards, deeper and deeper into the Earth. He checked his compass, not only deeper to the South, but also veering to the East. The work had been done for him.

Arthur checked his watch ; he still had an hour or two, although with Winter, night fell early. None the less, he had to explore this miracle a bit more before crawling back to the well. Which he did, jogging along, leaping now and then, inspecting the wooden framework of the tunnel, rotting here, split there, but still solid. He stopped in his tracks : At his feet lay a yellowing, rat pellet-filled newspaper : “The Dundee Evening Telegraph?” he queried aloud. Odd, there was no echo here. He shouted. Nothing. Shrugging his shoulders, he picked up the paper and put it in his backpack to be examined once in his room. He spun on his heels and hurried back to the well: running, crawling and climbing.

As expected, his older sister came home for the Christmas holidays from university. Arthur was jolly glad to see her but said nothing of his subterranean adventure. That must never be revealed to anyone, even to his sister whom he loved very much, and in whom he had always confided his most intimate secrets. He chose to take a rest for that week; he had earned a bit of a holiday, and after all, the miners’ tunnel would save him days, even months of labour. That night when alone, he checked the newspaper found in the tunnel: 1934. Incredible. A miner must have packed his lunch in it.

When the festivities had ended and his sister had departed Arthur returned to his timeless underworld. The mine was longer than he imagined. He walked on and on and on, descending ever deeper, the heat oppressing him, compressing him. He laughed nervously: Would he stumble upon Smeagol or Gollum frantically searching for his ‘precious’ (ring), or Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit, he, frantically searching for a way out of his underworld impasse? Or a dragon’s lair, where the hoary creature lay upon its hoard of gold? At times he swore he heard the gnomic chanting of bearded dwarves, their rhyming tunes. He laughed and laughed at these imagined airs. Was he to become a dwarf, too … Or a Hobbit, lost in the dark, inventing riddles?

The air became thinner and thinner, his head lighter and lighter. He laughed and laughed. His dreamy thoughts wandered to his parents, completely unaware of his underworld activities, to his teachers, who marvelled at his good scores in history, geography and natural science. He laughed and laughed. How many hours at night had he pored over the history of his treasured coins, their minting and circulation? How many hours had he studied the layers of the Earth, its rock formations? He had scored the highest marks in his class! His parents were so proud of him, a bit sceptical at first, but none the less, proud. They had always favoured his sister, indeed highly intelligent, more intelligent than him. Perhaps they would now consider him ‘university material’ like his sister. Perhaps. But who really cared! And he laughed and laughed as he walked and trotted.

He must have reached the asthenosphere at this time because seams of sand sediment, roan red, broke through the rotting frame beams as he trained his torchlight on them. Yet, according to his research this meant that the temperatures would be ranging at 900 degrees ! Impossible. It was the last layer, some 250 miles wide and 1, 700 miles from the Earth’s crust. Could he have come that far into Mother Earth ? He shuddered at the thought and broke out into peals of hysterical laughter. So much laughter that he began to cry. Hot tears rolled abundantly down his dirty, hairless cheeks. He heard the plump-bellied rats screech around him and covered his ears.

Arthur walked on and on in sluggish footfalls imagining himself in Australia without having had to fly or sail. His head spun, and as it did frightful images of underworld creatures passed before his puffy, red eyes. Breathing had become a toilsome effort, whilst his heart beat at rapid paces. Suddenly Arthur’s torchlight fell upon a mass of rock. The tunnel had come to an abrupt end!

He stood face to face with seams of sediment stone, dull green. He listlessly took out his compass: The digger would have to renew his digging, slightly to the right. This very plain and painful fact soured his spirits. But at least he would not have to fill bucket after bucket with extracted earth ; he had only to shovel it out and throw it into the miners’ tunnel. That, at least, was somewhat of a compensation. He checked his watch, three more hours. So he set immediately to work, albeit with unenthusiastic, torpid strokes of his pickaxe, so heavy his limbs had grown, so hot the temperature had risen, so thin the air had become.

As he picked away in a slow-motion dream state, he saw himself near the liquid core of the Earth. What would he find: A vast ocean or sea? But that was 1, 700 miles deep under the crust of the Earth. Nonsense. He had lost all track of measured miles, of time … of reality. The digging, however, was easy enough, the earth dripping with humidity and somewhat sandy. “It must be the lower mantle of the asthenosphere,” he whispered as if not to disturb the spirits of the underworld. One last stroke before retiring for the day.

Besides, he had an examination in mathematics in the morning and had to go over his notes. He raised his pickaxe but there it remained in mid-air. Some weird noise caught his attention. He pressed his ear to the hot rocky earth; a distant swishing like a flush of bats unsettled him. He crawled back a bit then struck a blow to the rocky noise. Arthur gasped as a blast of hot air flushed his face rowan red. He screamed in pain, crawling backwards, rubbing his face with a gloved hand. The tunnel filled with steaming air, followed shortly by blasts of scolding water which sent the boy tumbling over and over. He rolled and floundered about in the tremendous rush of hot, scalding water. They were driving him towards the miners’ tunnel at incredible speed. He could hardly keep his head above the flow; a flow that scorched his chin and cheekbones.

His backpack was borne along with the rush as were hundreds and hundreds of rats or other creatures of the underworld, for he heard their high, pathetic screeches above the precipitating din. Keeping his head above the rolling flood he was propelled into the miners’ tunnel where he managed to get to his feet.

Arthur grabbed his backpack and dragged his water-logged boots as quickly as he could towards the first tunnel, the rushing flow somewhat slackened by the steep upward inclination of the miners’ tunnel. A myriad of rats were scurrying on all sides of him, as if they were keeping pace with their underworld companion. Arthur, no longer frightened of them, but thinking only of his own salvation, pushed on upwards, the waters now swirling about his feet. They were gaining momentum. The boy fell several times, crying aloud, praying that he would get out alive. Then a terrible thought seized him: He was responsible for this disaster. For indeed it was a disaster! A terrible one indeed that no one was to know … No one ! But what would happen when the flow reached the well ? Arthur trembled at the very thought of it.

The boy slushed on and on as the now cooling waters rose to his ankles … to his calves. When he spotted the first tunnel, diving into it, he was literally crawling through torrents of a lukewarm current, whose incredible swiftness swung him from one side of the wall to another. Parts of the tunnel were now caving in. Screams rose in his throat, choking him, making him cry: Would he be buried alive through his own monstrous making? Why had he not consulted a speleologist before undertaking such a dangerous journey ? No ! All this had to remain his secret … for ever…

And poor Arthur bounced along with that current, gasping for breath, dog-paddling alongside rats, mice and moles. Hours and hours seemed to pass. His limbs weakend. His head bobbed above the flow like a cork. But there, just ahead, the salutary shaft of light of the well. Out he was flung like the cork of a champagne bottle into the miry clay of the pit. He scrambled for the trusty rungs, climbed frantically towards the palely lit sanctuary of the upperworld, taking a look now and then at the ever-rising waters bearing all the beasts of the underworld …

Arthur threw himself over the coping, took a last peek down at the slow but steady rise of the unleashed watery fury, then dashed into the cemetery to change his clothes. Indeed, his parents must not know anything about this mishap. He stood shivering in the failing light of evening. The greyish sky was so low. He felt drops on his feverish face. It was sleet or snow. “The pickaxe and shovel ?” he cried out in a tearful voice. “ Ah, who would ever find them ?” In the dim whitish glow he thought he espied tribes of rats streaming out over the coping, scurrying for safety into the woods. They too sought sanctuary in the light of the upper world, deprived now of the secure darkness of theirs … and his ? It was all so paradoxical.

Without further ado, Arthur made a bee-line for home. No light shone at any window. His parents must have been out. So much the better. He charged up to his room, into the shower to scrape the dirt and filth out of his fingernails and hair, put cream on his rowan-red face, then fell on his bed, exhausted, crying like a baby.

When his parents came home and noticed all the lights off in the sitting room, they mounted the stairway and knocked at Arthur’s door somewhat perplexed at the sullen atmosphere of the house. But there he was, their loving son, studiously going over his notes for the next morning’s mathematics examination. He smiled at them and they smiled back. How happy they were that Arthur took his schooling so seriously, his father, however, somewhat wary about the his son’s sunburnt face ! In early Spring ? Anyway, they were sure that he would be excellent ‘university material’ like his older sister. They closed the door quietly.

The next morning Arthur awoke to the disturbing sounds of fire engines and police sirens. Through his window he looked out over the meadow, the rye fields and into the thick woods where firemen, police and neighbours had gathered to witness and stave off the dark waters spiralling up from the abandoned village well… from some dark subterranean past into the greyish wee morning hours of the present.

[1] The layer of semi-molten rocks under the lithosphere

[2] A penny.

[3] A shilling.

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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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Tags Asthenosphere, Australia, Christmas, Dorset, Earth, Edward the Seventh, George the Second, Gollum, Henry the Seventh, Hobbt, Jules Verne, Julius Caesar, Lithosphere, Paul Mirabile, Queen Elizabeth the Second, Roman Gaul, Smeagol, Somerset

Poetry

Christmas Poem

By Rhys Hughes

Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
the moose is getting fatter
(he has eaten all your hats).
Your baldness is appalling
under the midnight sun,
the polar bears are warming
their thumbs around a drum.
Who set the drum on fire?
It wasn’t me or even you,
I think it must have been
that cold mutineering crew
from the good ship Caribou
that sailed to Arctic latitudes
simply to enjoy the view.

Christmas is coming,
the serpent is rather thin,
the stick is getting thinner
(it never poked your dinner).
Your moustache is atrocious
under the northern lights,
the penguins are out of place
after their long-haul flight.
What agent gave them tickets?
It wasn’t me or even you,
I think it must have been
Rubadub Gimp, the limping
chimp or maybe London Zoo.
And as for the walrus: his
bigger moustache appals us.

Christmas is coming,
the rain remains the same,
but now it is frozen hard
(shards bombard the yard).
Your elbows are despicable
under my critical gaze,
the narwhals are practising
seasonal songs of praise.
Who made them so devout?
It wasn’t me or even you,
I think it must have been
Graham Greene in a dream
researching a future theme.
Now regarding the festivities,
I’ll have more pudding, please.

Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.

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

Tags Arctic, Caribou, Christmas, Graham Greene, midnight sun, polar bears, Rhys Hughes

Excerpt

Yule Do Nicely

Title: Yule Do Nicely

Author: Rhys Hughes

The Hidden Sixpence

A young man was visiting the family of his girlfriend over the Christmas period for the first time. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said, as she led him into the house. In the parlour they sat down together for dinner.

“Careful you don’t swallow the hidden sixpence!” she warned, when the pudding was served.

“Cough, cough, cough, splutter!” he replied.

When he had recovered, she tenderly touched his arm. “What did I tell you? Puddings can be lethal at this time of year. You were lucky not to choke to death!”

He smiled in return but said nothing.

Concerned, she added, “Go into the kitchen and drink a glass of water. You’ll find it through that door there.”

Standing up and moving stiffly, he nodded and followed her advice, but he took a shortcut through the wall.

Three Friends

The three friends were mountain climbers who had trekked to the roof of the world. They had encountered many dangers on the way and each had taken a turn to plunge down a crevasse. Bound together by ropes as well as friendship, it seemed they had all escaped death by the narrowest of margins. One by one, they had praised their luck and had agreed that teamwork was wonderful.

After the end of one particularly difficult day, as the crimson sun impaled itself on the needle peaks of the horizon, the three friends set up their tent on a narrow ledge. The first friend, who had survived the first crevasse, boiled tea on his portable stove and lit his pipe. Stretching out his legs as far as the ledge would allow, he blew a smoke ring and said:

“Do any of you know what day it is? It is the second day of December. While timid souls are snug indoors, we are out in the cold. The wind whistles past this mountain like the voice of a ghost, shrill as dead leaves. The icy rock feels like the hand of a very aged corpse. Those lonely clouds far away have taken the form of winged demons.”

Then after a pause he added, “Everything reminds me of the region beyond the grave. I therefore suggest that we all tell ghost stories, to pass the time. I shall go first, if you like.”

Huddling closer to the stove, the first friend peered at the other two with eyes like black sequins. “This happened to me a long time ago. I was climbing in Austria and had rented a small hunting lodge high in the mountains. Unfortunately, I managed to break my leg on my very first climb and had to rest in the lodge until a doctor could be summoned. Because of a freak snowstorm that same evening, it turned out that I was stuck for a whole week. The lodge had only one bed. My guide, a local climber, slept on the floor.

“Every night, as my fever grew worse, I would ask my guide to fetch me a drink of water from the well outside the lodge. He always seemed reluctant to do this, but would eventually return with a jug of red wine. I was far too delirious to wonder at this, and always drank the contents right down. At the end of the week, when my fever broke, I asked him why he gave me wine rather than water from the well. Shuddering, he replied that the ‘wine’ had come from the well. I afterwards learned that the original owner of the lodge had cut his wife’s throat and had disposed of her body in the obvious way…”

The first friend shrugged and admitted that his was an inconclusive sort of ghost tale, but insisted that it was true nonetheless. He sucked on his pipe and poured three mugs of tea. Far below, the last avalanche of the day rumbled through the twilight. The second friend, who had survived the second crevasse, accepted a mug and nodded solemnly to himself. He seemed completely wrapped up in his own thoughts. Finally, he said:

“I too have a ghost story, and mine is true as well. It happened when I was a student in London. I lived in a house where another student had bled to death after cutting off his fingers in his heroic attempt to make his very first cucumber sandwich.

“I kept finding the fingers in the most unlikely places. They turned up in the fridge, in the bed, even in the pockets of my trousers. One evening, my girlfriend started giggling. We were sitting on the sofa listening to music and I asked her what was wrong. She replied that I ought to stop tickling her. Needless to say, my hands were on my lap.

“I consulted all sorts of people to help me with the problem. One kindly old priest came to exorcise the house. I set up mousetraps in the kitchen. But nothing seemed to work.

“The fingers kept appearing on the carpet, behind books on the bookshelf, in my soup. I grew more and more despondent and reluctantly considered moving. Suddenly, in a dream, the solution came to me. It was a neat solution, and it worked. It was very simple, actually. I bought a cat…”

The second friend smiled and sipped his tea. Both he and the first friend gazed across at the third friend. The third friend seemed remote and abstracted. He stared out into the limitless dark. In the light from the stove, he appeared pale and unhealthy. He refused the mug that the first friend offered him.

The first two friends urged him to tell a tale, but he shook his head. “Come on,” they said, “you must have at least one ghost story to tell. Everybody has at least one.” With a deep, heavy sigh, the third friend finally confessed that he did. The first two friends rubbed their hands in delight. They insisted, however, that it had to be true.

“Oh, it’s true all right,” replied the third friend, “and it’s easily told. But you might regret hearing it. Especially when you consider that we are stuck on this ledge together for the rest of the night.”

When the first two friends laughed at this, he raised a hand for silence and began to speak. His words should have been as cold and ponderous as a glacier, but instead they were casual and tinged with a trace of irony. He said simply:

“I didn’t survive the third crevasse.”

About the Book:

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat. Yes, but we first require more information about the goose, the penny and the hat. We can’t be too careful these days. How fat is the goose getting and what connection does it have with the old man? Is the goose getting so fat that it is likely to explode with disastrous results for the nation? How will paying the old man a penny prevent this outcome? The situation is unclear. We are on more certain ground when it is explained that the following fictions have been assembled in their present form in order to celebrate the festive season. They include work from the span of the past quarter century. The first twenty-four tales form a weird advent calendar from December 1st to 24th. Then it is Christmas Day and time for the stocking and the twenty-eight little strange tales inside it.

About the Author:

Rhys Hughes has been writing fiction from an early age. His first book was published in 1995 and since that time he has published fifty other books, nine hundred short stories and many articles and poems, and his work has been translated into ten languages. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Having lived in Britain, Spain and Kenya, he is now planning to move to India. His poetry tends to be humorous light verse and offbeat lyrical fantasy, influenced mainly by Don Marquis, Ogden Nash, Edward Lear, Richard Brautigan, Ivor Cutler and Spike Milligan.

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

Tags Christmas, Christmas Pudding, Rhys Hughes, Yule Do Nicely

The Observant Immigrant

We had Joy, We had Fun…

By Candice Louisa Daquin

Heortology (the study of festivals) has expanded beyond its initial Christian focus to embrace all festivals and their enduring appeal and necessity in our human culture. Festivals remind us to celebrate, and celebration is a positive experience. The very idea of festivals is ancient. No existing history book is old enough to document when the first festival took place or what its origins were, but it’s a safe bet they had some kind of worship element attached. Modern festivals often also land on old pagan holidays, whilst others are more obvious in their origins. Many who attend festivals have no idea of their origins but go for entirely celebratory reasons. We have learned a lot about the history of varied festivals but another question to consider is: Why are humans drawn to festivals and what do they provide us?

Imagine the ancient world. As much as we think we know now, they knew a tremendous amount also, considering their lack of modern resources. This may well be down to the ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ paradigm. Or that we severely underestimate our ancient ancestors, in our egocentric belief the modern world knows best. Just as we underestimate the knowledge of animals and their abilities to survive. Perhaps we could even say, we have lost the art of survival and wouldn’t know how to, if our computers were offline and our cars did not work and the supermarkets were empty.

What we do know, is the ancients were able to amass a great deal of knowledge, despite seemingly not having easy access like we do today, with our modern telescopes and technology. They had to understand mathematics and science at the very core, to establish theorems on the universe and our place in it. Whilst many were later corrected, it is surprising how many ancient scientists, mathematicians and philosophers, got it right. Almost against all odds. It is fair then to say, we dismiss the richness of the ancient world, and imagine everyone lived ignorant lives, which was not the case. When ignorance did reign, it did so deliberately, with the quashing of knowledge by various religious groups, and resulting periods of ‘dark ages’.

The ancient world was in touch with what it means to be human. Being human isn’t knowing how to work your iPhone or microwave. It’s not having a huge house, with a swimming pool and driving a Lexus. Nor is it eternal youth, fame and glory. Being human is about surviving — just as it is with any animal. When we then add an awareness of our own being, which it is argued, not all animals understand, then we become the modern human we recognise today. A being who has the choice, the ability to reflect and learn, and a tendency to seek beyond themselves. In seeking beyond oneself, we find an innate or shaped desire for ‘more’ and that ‘more’ has often come in the guise of a God-head or spirituality of some kind.

Whether we believe humans are prone to worshipping gods or being spiritual, because Gods actually exists or we just have a propensity to create them, is immaterial. The outcome is the same. The God gene hypothesis proposes that human spirituality is influenced by heredity and that a specific gene, called vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystic experiences, perhaps that is what is at work? In essence a transmitter in our brain that makes it more likely we will believe in God (and could explain why some people do so fervently, whilst others do not). Or perhaps we may find meaning in believing in a spirituality beyond the temporal world. But what we do know is, as long as humans evolved from their primate ancestors, they have formed meaning around some kind of spiritual observance and festivals were tied to this worship.

Why do we do this? We are born part of something (a family) but are also separate (an individual). Perhaps festivals and what they represent, is the coming together of all things: Nature. The seasons. Marking time (birth and death). Marking passages (fertility, menstruation, maturity, marriage, children, dying). These are the cornerstones of meaning, with or without God. I say without God, because for many, their notions of God are tied to nature, so it’s more the world around them than specific deities. For others, it’s the manifold destinies of humanity, or history of deities. But whatever the reason there is a sense of coming together in celebration of being alive, and acknowledging that life. A festival in that sense, irrespective of its actual purpose (the harvest, pagan holidays, etc.) is a ‘fest’ of life. Maybe this is why we can have such a happy time being part of it.

Growing up, neither of my parents liked festivals. They thought they were silly. I remember a street festival I went to as a child, for Fête du Travail (Labour Day) in France. I dressed up as princess and the frog (taking my toy Kermit with me) and felt an excitement like I had never felt before. The throngs of people and other children, the food, the smells, the magicians, the shows and the things to see. It was like walking through a market of treasures. I couldn’t understand why neither of my parents liked this; to me, it felt like a jewel had opened. But for some, festivities are synonymous with rituals and a degree of adherence to religion, even when it’s not. And rather than entering into the spirit of it and enjoying it, they feel what it represents is part of social control.

In France, like many countries, festivals abound. The national Fête du Citron (Menton Lemon Festival) draws crowds from around the world, as does the film screening: Festival de Cannes –near where I grew up — and Fête des Lumières (festival of lights, in Lyon). More traditional festivals include Défilé du 14 Juillet (Bastille Day). In the Middle Ages in France, on Midsummer’s Day, at the end of June, people would celebrate one last party (fête de la Saint-Jean or St. John’s Day). Bonfires would mark this longest day and young men would jump over the flames. This also happened on the first Sunday of Lent (le Dimanche de la Quadragésime), where fires are lit to dance around before carrying lit torches. Religion dominated many of the Autumn/Winter festivals historically.

In France, Christmas, is marked over twelve days with the Feast of the Innocents, the Feast of the Fools, New Year’s Eve and culminates in the Feast of the Kings with its traditional galette des Rois. Events include Candlemas (Chandeleur) with its candlelight process. Likewise, many Christian societies have some celebration connected to Easter (Pâques, in French)) or its Pagan roots. In France (and New Orleans in America) these include Shrove Tuesday (typically Mardi-Gras in America), marking the last feast day before Lent, and many others until Pentecost Sunday. My favorite ‘fest’ was Shrove Tuesday (also known as Fat Tuesday or Pancake Day, in other countries) because my grandma would make pancakes, despite our being Jewish. The notion was to eat before Christian Lent and a period of fasting, which has much in common with Muslim beliefs too (unsurprisingly since God is one in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths). In America, they serve fish options every Friday for much the same reason.

Far more impressive and immersive festivals occur in India, with Hinduism celebrating among the highest number of festival days in the world. Over 50 festivals are celebrated throughout India by people of different cultures and religions. These Indian festivals form an integral part of the rich heritage of the country. The ancient Hindu festival of Spring, colors and love known as Holi is one. “Holi is considered as one of the most revered and celebrated festivals of India and it is celebrated in almost every part of the country. It is also sometimes called as the ‘festival of love’ as on this day people get to unite together forgetting all resentments and all types of bad feeling towards each other.” Holi is celebrated on the last full moon in the lunar month of Phalgun, the 12^th month in the Hindu calendar (which corresponds to February or March in the Gregorian calendar).

With social media, more of the world have been granted access to the visual beauty of Holi – “This ancient tradition marks the end of winter and honors the triumph of good over evil. Celebrants’ light bonfires, throw colourful powder called gulal, eat sweets, and dance to traditional folk music.” One of the most popular legends in Hindu mythology says the Holi festival marks Lord Vishnu’s triumph over King Hiranyakashyapu, who killed anyone who disobeyed him or worshipped other gods. With coloured powder thrown on people as part of the celebration, many countries now celebrate Holi just as Indians may celebrate Halloween or Día de Muertos. The crossover effect may seem to dismiss the individualistic cultural value and smack of appropriation but, in reality, it’s more a sign of respecting other cultures, learning about them, and celebrating with them.

Mexico, which I live near to now, celebrates over 500 festivals yearly and consequently is one of the most festive cultures in the world. In San Antonio, TX, where I currently live, we celebrate many of these fiestas, alongside American ones. The most popular being Día de Muertos, Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe, Cinco de Mayo and Día de la Candelaria, (like the French Candlemas, celebrated after Three Kings Day, which is a bigger holiday than Christmas in Mexico). The variables in cultures are fascinating. In San Antonio, we get a huge influx of Mexican tourists over Christmas because they aren’t home celebrating as they do so a few days later. We have a fiesta in San Antonio that is much like those in Mexico, due to our large Mexican population and it’s heartening to see the merging of the two.

As a child I celebrated the Jewish Pilgrim Festivals—Pesaḥ (Passover), Shavuot (Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost), and Sukkoth (Tabernacles)—and the High Holidays—Rosh Hashana (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). But I attended a school that celebrated all faiths so we also celebrated Ramadan, the Muslim sacred month of fasting, akin to Christian Lent. Growing up, my friends of all faiths, celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr or simply Eid which is among the religious festivals for the Muslim community, marking the end of Ramadan. This festival is celebrated on the day after seeing the night crescent moon with devotees offering prayers at mosques and then feasting with their near and dear ones.

We would also celebrate Kwanzaa, which is a worldwide celebration of African culture, running from December 26 to January 1, culminating in a communal feast called Karamu. Its creator was a major figure in the black power movement in America, “Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966 during the aftermath of the Watts riotsas a specifically African-American holiday. Karenga said his goal was to ‘give black people an alternative to the existing holiday of Christmas, and give black people an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.’”

Are we socially controlled when we attend festivals? Given we have a choice, I would say no. Someone who chooses to be part of something, isn’t signing up for life, they’re passing through. Since my childhood I have been lucky enough to have attended many festivals in many countries. For me it is a reaffirming experience, seeing people from all walks of life come together in happiness. I like nothing better than dressing up and meeting with others and walking through streets thronged with people. Be they carnivals, even political events, there is an energy that you rarely feel anywhere else.

The May Pole festival, believed to have started in Roman Britain around 2,000 years ago, when soldiers celebrated the arrival of spring by dancing around decorated trees thanking their goddess Flora, is an especially interesting festival because it is still practiced almost as in ancient times. The ribbons and floral garlands that adorned it represent feminine energy and the beauty of the ritual is enduringly something to behold.

Likewise, another event ‘Guy Fawkes Night’ is steeped in ritual and British history, with much symbolism in the burning of straw dummies that are meant to represent Guy Fawkes thrown onto bonfires. However, the act of throwing a dummy on the fire to represent a person, has also been done since the 13th century to drive away evil spirits. What most people seem to take away from Guy Fawkes Night are the abundant fireworks in a beautiful night sky, alongside children and families holding sparklers and eating horse chestnuts in the cold, wrapped up in mittens. It’s a ritual that is beloved and a chance to ‘be festive’ even if it’s not a specific festival. As much as anything, it marks time, another year, another November, and gives wonderful memories. If we didn’t mark time or have those memories, we’d still have others, but there is an ease with festivals because they do it for us, unconsciously.

Young collegiates often attend festivals that involve dancing and sometimes drugs. Again, this is not a modern occurrence but has been going on for years, as rites of entering adulthood. The desire of the young to get out and meet others and dance and enjoy life, is primeval, and possibly a part of who we are as humans, marking a potent stage in our lives. Recently I went to a birthday party at a night club. I observed the diverse throngs of party goers and reveled in that abundant diversity. In just one night I saw: Pakistani women in saris, Japanese girls in anime costumes with ears, a pagan woman with huge, curled bull horns and floor length leather dress, Jamaican families in neon shorts and t-shirts, transgender wearing spandex dresses and big wigs, Hispanic Westsider’s filled with tattoos, and gold necklaces, Lesbian and gay couples holding hands. Old couples in sensible church clothes including one old black man with a pork pie hat and a waist coat.

I thought of all the diversity that had attended this club to dance the night away. All ages, all genders and backgrounds and ethnicities, and I thought how wonderful it was that one place could hold them all. In many ways this is the essence of a festival, especially nowadays where anyone can attend most festivals. Years previous, they were segregated by subject. Only those followers of that subject usually attended and you could be harmed if you tried to attend and were an outsider. The advantage we have today is we are more accepting of outsiders and when you attend festivals today, you see a wide range of people. Maybe this is the best opportunity we have to put down our differences and celebrate our similarities.

When I lived in Canada, I loved the homage paid to different seasons in varied outdoor festivals, where shaking off the lethargy of Winter, Canadians would celebrate with fairgrounds, amusements, shows and food among other things. It was like a period of renewal. Likewise, during my time in England, the Notting Hill Carnival, celebrated the Afro Caribbean culture, so essential and entrenched in English culture, with gorgeous street displays and floats, as well as some of the best music around. The idea of welcoming everyone into the fold, helps to remove any tensions between cultures and promote a feeling of unity, whilst not denying the unique properties of those cultures and ensuring they are promoted in their adopted countries. It may be idealistic and not entirely accurate, but it’s a better step than ignoring those myriad cultures exist.

As Halloween and Día de Muertos is fast approaching, I am thinking of how many of my neighbours attend these parties, despite some of them being from very conservative churches. Just last year, we all sat outside in the green spaces and had a mini fireworks display. I sat next to my little 4-year-old neighbour and watched her face as the older kids, dressed in all sorts of costumes, shrieked at the fireworks, and ran around with neon bangles, throwing glow powder at each other. I saw how inculcated we are, since childhood, but despite this I truly believe festivities are in our hearts, even if we weren’t introduced to them at an early age. Children mark their growing up by the events of their lives and it’s not just their birthday they celebrate but the touchstones of their respective culture and nowadays, many other cultures.

My Egyptian grandfather used to tell me about the Nile festival which celebrated the flooding of the river and the replenishing of life in Egypt. Without the Nile, Egypt couldn’t exist, and the ancients knew this. They employed methods to enhance the flooding and gave thanks for it. Gratitude like this can be found in many celebrations, including the American Thanksgiving (although this is a double-edged sword, given the history of genocide of the Native Americans by European pilgrims and invaders) and Harvest throughout the world. A celebration of life through food with music, is at the core of the human ability to endure and overcome hardship. More recently many of us celebrated healthcare workers by singing out of our windows and putting messages of thanks in our windows. We do this because it symbolizes essential parts of our lives, without which we would suffer.

Owing to its melting pot past, Egypt celebrates the Coptic Orthodox Christmas, the more ancient Abu Simbel Sun Festival that is akin to the Egyptian Sun God Ra (who in turn was one inspiration for the Christian God many years later), Sham Ennessim, the national festival marking the beginning of spring, as it originates from the ancient Egyptian Shemu festival, Ramadan and the Muslim Eid al-Adha (honoring the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son Ismail (Ishmael) as an act of obedience to Allah’s command). As a Jew, my grandfather’s family celebrated Passover, the festival celebrating the Jews Exodus from Egypt, despite our family still living there! Nowadays it is no longer safe to live in Egypt as a Jew but the memory of all people’s experiences is preserved through ancient festivals and events, marking our shared history.

Before the advent of mass-produced entertainment, festivals were also a highlight in any village or town, because they were entertainment. Traveling theatres and shows for children, even book sellers and traders of items not commonly found locally, could be bartered or purchased at such events and it was almost a spilling out from the market square economy that kept such villages alive. Perhaps evolving from our natural tendency to barter for things we want, we evolved to invite others from outside to come for specific events to gain greater reach. With this trading and bartering, came the accoutrements such as eating, drinking, dancing. Not only did this increase diversity and knowledge of foods and drinks from other locales, but brought people who may otherwise not meet, together into a camaraderie.

Sharing stories is also part of festivals, by way of theatre, or more improvised scenarios. It is at our heart to pass on oral knowledge and we haven’t lost that desire. We may do this now via YouTube more than face to face (which is a shame), but the desire to get out and talk directly, is innate, as evidenced by how many people have done just that since Covid 19 restrictions are eased. Religion, folklore, ritual and a desire for escapism, alongside our desire to celebrate things or others (saints, gods, seasons, harvest) are all reasons why festivals endure. Just like children will instinctively dance when music is played, maybe it is our innate nature to enjoy festivals because they foster inter-relationships we all crave to some degree. We may be diverse and believe different things, but we can also come together and respect the perspectives of others. Never more so than through our shared love of celebration.

Candice Louisa Daquin is a Psychotherapist and Editor, having worked in Europe, Canada and the USA. Daquins own work is also published widely, she has written five books of poetry, the last published by Finishing Line Press called Pinch the Lock. Her website is www thefeatheredsleep.com

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

A Wonderful World

Where “Divides of Class, Religion & Ethnicities Collapse”

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date October 1, 2022
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Painting of Durga Puja. Courtesy: Creative Commons

Wherever I look, a golden light 
Suffuses a vision of holidays,
The festive sun rises in the woods
Of puja* blossoms drenched in gold rays. 
             -- Tagore, Eshechhe Sarat

This has been a favourite poem of many who grew up reading Tagore, lines that capture the joy and abandon of the spirit that embodies the celebration of Durga Puja, a festival that many Bengalis deem as important as Christmas, Chinese New Year, Diwali or Eid. It is a major celebration in Bengal and large parts of the sub-continent, though not in all parts.

The reason that reviving the lore associated with this fiesta has become very important is that it centres around women. Given the situation in Iran, where the battle over how to wear headscarves has turned bloody, murderous and violent, celebrating an empowered woman, even if mythical, takes precedence over all else. Mythology has it that Durga was empowered by weapons given to her by various deities, all of who were men, and then, she did what all the male Gods failed to do — destroyed a demon called Mahisasur. Rama too prayed to Durga for victory around this time. And on Bijoya Doushami, the last day of the Durga Puja, some celebrate Rama’s victory over Ravana and call it Dusshera or Dashain.

Taking up this theme of the narratives around Durga Puja and how it has been made into an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO is Meenakshi Malhotra’s essay on the festival. Part of the citation reads: “During the event [Durga Puja], the divides of class, religion and ethnicities collapse….”

To bring to you a flavour of the Puja, we have translations of poetry by Tagore describing the season and of a poet who was writing before Rabindranath, Michael Madhusdan Dutt, by Ratnottama Sengupta, verses exploring the grief of parting Durga’s mother expresses as her daughter returns to her husband’s home. This is also a festival of homecoming for, like Durga, those living far from their homes return to the heart of their families. Rituparna Mukherjee has woven a story specially around this aspect of the festival. Journals in Bengal, traditionally, brought out special editions with writings of eminent persons, like Satyajit Ray. We have an interview with a writer who wrote a book on Satyajit Ray, an actor called Barun Chanda, to bring a flavour of that tradition along with the translation of a celebrated contemporary Bengali writer, Prafulla Roy, by Aruna Chakravarti. We hope you enjoy savouring our Durga Puja Special.

Poetry

Eshechhe Sarat (Autumn) , describing the season of Durga Puja, by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Bijoya Doushumi, a poem on the last day of Durga Puja, by the famous poet, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, has been translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Prose

A Mother, a Daughter & a Demon Slayer?, an essay by Meenakshi Malhotra, checks out the festival of Durga Puja against the concept of women empowerment. Click here to read.

Homecoming by Rituparna Mukherjee is a poignant story about homecoming during Durga Puja. Click here to read.

Nagmati by Prafulla Roy has been translated from Bengali as Snake Maiden by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

Interview

Meet Barun Chanda, an actor who started his career as the lead protagonist of a Satyajit Ray film and now is a bi-lingual writer of fiction and more recently, a non-fiction published by Om Books International, Satyajit Ray:The Man Who Knew Too Much in conversation Click here to read.

Musings

Great Work…Keep Going!

By G Venkatesh

It has been so since my boyhood days. Quite instinctively, I have had to learn to look for silver linings in dark clouds. By a mixture of choice and compulsion, more of the latter though. I missed the bus often. When this happened literally, the silver linings were the kilometres I aggregated on foot, and in retrospect, considered that a blessing in disguise – a predilection to walking became an obsession and stayed with me.

Metaphorically, the missed bus would make me think and convince myself that what passed me by was not destined for me…it forced me to think laterally and imagine a divine purpose in the delay, which often would fester into a denial and necessitate numbing introspection. I thought of myself as a batsman at the crease being peppered with bouncers and beamers all the time, and having to invent new ways of scoring runs off these…quite like someone once decided to move away and hook and nullify the potency of bouncers. Just when I thought I had fought away the worse, deadly toe-crushers were being hurled at me, and I had to learn not only to block them but also dexterously play them on the leg-side and score runs. Bouncers, beamers and toe-crushers kept coming and I had to counter them. I felt exhausted. Tired. Were the rewards just the runs I was scoring, during these testing times?

‘Great work, bro…keep going. You are an inspiration.’ Every non-striker who would come in to partner me would say. The same compliment. Repeatedly. ‘Okay, but I am tired of setting examples, which I really do not wish to,’ I would think to myself.

I would wait patiently for the calm after the storm. Perhaps, the captain of the fielding side would bring on a gentler seam-bowler who would just bowl a good length on or outside the off-stump and enable me to relax into my orthodoxy.

Perhaps, there would be slow spinners who would give me a little bit of respite…Perhaps…Perhaps… But what if I become so exhausted by having to deal with these bouncers and yorkers and beamers for the sake of my team, that I get out? Of course, my teammates coming in at the right time, and facing the right bowlers would reap the rewards. Good for the team, they say. Is that how it will always be?

‘No, bro. There will be other teams with bowlers who are not so hostile as these ones. And there, you will be able to bat without a care, in fact.’ A friend counselled me, and wanted me to pat myself on the back for doing what many others may not be able to. I wonder. Time is fleeting past. Where are these other teams?

If I am wont to just facing the metaphorical bouncers all the while, I may well end up forgetting everything else. And yes, most importantly, age catches up, while one waits and expects something well-deserved – rather richly deserved and long overdue sense of being divinely protected – to just appear out of thin air, you realise you have to bid adieu.

What is right, I think to myself? Is it just being at the right place at the right time interacting with the right person? But how do I make it happen? It happens, they say. If destined to, they add. It is this addition that I did not want to hear. ‘You have to trust and have faith, only then it will happen,’ a smart alec chips in. And then, I think, what if this faith is shaken momentarily, and the trust is eroded by merciless winds of ill-luck and misfortune? Do I then lose, and does all the faith I nursed in my heart till that moment of crisis, just evaporate into nothingness? Just as getting out on 99 is not equivalent to having scored a century?

The more bitter the struggle, much better is the reward, says a holy man. ‘Much better’. Now, that is a comparative form of the adjective ‘good’, right? Much better than what? What is the reference point? Much better than the reward obtained by one who did not have to go through as bitter a struggle as I did? And does God really know what would make me feel vindicated? For when I look around, ponder the past and introspect, nothing that comes to mind seems to have the ability to provide me with that vindication which will at once make all the pain and trauma, all the sleepless nights and nagging doubts go away. So, is there something which my mind is not in a position to imagine, that may be found in God’s Santa-sack of Christmas gifts?

I make myself a cup of coffee, and pad up to face the bouncers of the day that has dawned. I am out there at the crease, waiting for my batting partner and the fielding side. The sun is smiling at me, sarcastically. There is a crow on the pitch…perhaps, a dear departed one has sent some message. It stays for a while, then flies away.

G Venkatesh (50) is a Chennai-born, Mumbai-bred ‘global citizen’ who currently serves as Associate Professor at Karlstad University in Sweden. He has published 4 volumes of poetry and 4 e-textbooks, inter alia.

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

Tags Christmas, G Venkatesh, Santa

Slices from Life

Messages through Space and Time

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date March 14, 2022
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Meredith Stephens explores letter writing as an art that can stretch beyond a person’s lifetime and across borders of all kinds

I walked out to the end of the driveway of my Adelaide house, unlocked the letter box, and among the flyers and political brochures, I found a New Year’s card from a Japanese student called Mutsumi. It had been two years since the beginning of the pandemic, and I have been teaching on Zoom ever since. I have never met Mutsumi in person but have taught her for the two years online. When I taught in person in Japan, students would sometimes send a New Year’s card to my local Japanese address, but I had never received one at my Australian address.

New Year is just as important in Japan as Christmas is in my home country of Australia. In the pre-digital age we would send Christmas cards to friends and family destined to arrive on December 24th at the latest. They never arrived on Christmas Day because it was a public holiday. In contrast, in Japan, New Year’s cards are delivered on New Year’s Day and never any earlier. They may arrive later though, as receivers scramble to reply to those from whom they had not anticipated receiving a card. Although I had often received cards as late as the end of the first week in January, I had never received one in February. During the pandemic, international deliveries were experiencing considerable delays and some were even returned to the sender. I was grateful the New Year’s card had traversed the seven thousand kilometres to reach me at the southern coast of the southern Australian continent.

I looked at Mutsumi’s card and realized that the presentation of calligraphy was just as important as the message. Written Japanese is not just a means of relaying a message but also an art form. Primary school children must purchase a calligraphy set and are issued a calligraphy textbook to be used in their weekly calligraphy lesson. Fifteen years ago, when my daughter was in primary school, her homework was to create a piece of calligraphy which read Yama nobori, or ‘Climbing a Mountain’. The image below shows her doing her homework on the kitchen table, carefully pressing the calligraphy brush into the ink before she writes the characters on the rice paper.

English handwriting was also elegant in the writing of our forebears, although it wasn’t written with a brush. Here is a postcard written by my great great grandfather to my grandmother when she was about five, around 1907 when they cost only one penny to send. It reads, “Dear Emilie, Hope you had a good sleep last week and that you are feeling fit for school again next week. Love to all, From Grandfather.”

Although the writing is ornate the content is quotidian. The affection for his granddaughter is revealed not just in the message but also in the handwriting style.

A handwritten postcard, whether it is written in Japanese in 2022 or in English in 1907, may be considered an aesthetic work. Handwriting conveys both the literal meaning of the words and the feelings for the recipient. As Kathleen Parker reminds us^[1], the pleasure of receiving a letter is that both the sender and the receiver have touched the same piece of paper. The postcard above has been touched by both my great great grandfather and me, at an interval of 115 years. I am sure that when he was writing to his granddaughter asking after her health in 1907, he never imagined that his great great granddaughter would be touching and reading it in 2022.

I rarely have a chance to put pen to paper these days, other than when writing a shopping list. My fingers fly across the keyboards almost as quickly as I can think, in a qwerty fingertip language. That’s why I appreciate those who take the time to select and purchase a postcard, and choose a fine pen or brush to produce an elegant written message that I may fondly linger over for years to come.

^[1] Kathleen Parker, 2010, as cited in Baron, S. (2015). Words onscreen: The fate of reading in a digital world. Oxford University Press.

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist in Japan. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Blue Nib, 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.

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Tags Adelaide, Christmas, Japan, Kathleen Parker, Merdith Stephens, New Year

Editorial

Elephants & Laughter

Ideally, I would love to start the New Year with laughter and happiness! Then perhaps, the whole year would be dotted with humour …

Laughter clubs often practice laughing for health benefits. I know the pandemic makes both guffawing outdoors or in a group hard but think of the funniest possible thing and, perhaps, you will start laughing. For me what works other than children’s and monkeys’ antics, are my trips to the dentist, especially the trip where I wondered on the fringe benefits of ‘laughing gas’ (as given in the PG Wodehouse novel of the same name), only to be informed that it was used exclusively for young children. For me, an adult, there was only — you have guessed it — the jab that numbs your lip function to lubber. I discovered if I could make light of a dentist drilling by learning from Harry Potter (the spell to get rid of the terrifying boggart, who took the shape of the thing you feared most, was to imagine the funniest thing, focus on the humour in it, and shout ‘Riddikulus’ with a wand pointed at the creature in the form of your worst nightmare), then I could pretty much get rid of most fears.

The other thing I have been wondering for sometime is can one write an editorial that is humorous when the content is serious? I would have wanted to ask that question to many, including Ruskin Bond, who continues as one of my idols. I would love to touch hearts with the humour and the sensitivity that flavours his writing. It is tough to convey a complex thought with the simplicity and elegance of a writer who can be read and understood easily. I think we have a few of them around and I interviewed one. You all probably know him well— Rhys Hughes. I have given the reasons for the interview in lieu of Mr Bond, who continues a distant star beyond the horizon of online interviews. We discussed humour and its role in literature, leaving out completely in the cold, the fictional Mr Bond who answers to the names of James and 007 and has made entertaining films, which can be seen as serious or non-serious.

Hughes has of course, given some writerly advice not just in the interview but in ‘Making Something of Nothing’ – pretty much the advice that God had probably been given when he asked an unspecified friend on how to create the universe and multiple realities. Hughes has also added to our galaxy of poets where Michael Burch, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Anasuya Bhar, Vernon Daim, William Miller, Pramod Rastogi, Mike Smith, Jay Nicholls and many more continue to sparkle. Taking up the theme of God’s creations, Devraj Singh Kalsi has added to more humour with a dream of divine intervention to make the ‘New Normal’ in 2022 – a plan for this year. Will it ever be real?

Another major issue in this world currently is climate change. In keeping with the need for acceptance of this reality, Keith Lyons introduced us to a nature lover, author and adventurer Kenny Peavy, who loved the fictional adventurer called Indiana Jones and has been working towards living in harmony with nature. He moved to Indonesia from America and is trying to raise awareness. You can find much, though not elephants, in the interview that encompasses the story of a man who cycled across a continent on a bike made of bamboo. However, you can find some writing on a king who acquired the skill to ride and tame elephants in our book excerpt from Shazi Zaman’s Akbar: A Novel of History. The excerpt does not showcase his elephant taming skills as did the Bollywood blockbuster Jodha Akbar but is focussed on bringing out the syncretism in the Mughal monarch’s outlook which made him seek out exponents of other religions. Sangita Swechcha’s and Andrée Roby’s anthology, A Glimpse Into My Country, with excerpts of short stories from Nepal and Zimbabwe, like Kenny Peavy, cycle across multiple borders as does our fiction. We feature stories from within and without the continent with Fazal Baloch recombining a couple of folklores from Balochistan to a single tale. Fiction from young writers highlight compassion and a varied perspective. Steve Ogah has a story from Nigeria which almost rings with overtones of Alex Haley’s Roots. Sohana Manzoor has given us a poignant narrative with an inspiring twist at the end, an absolute antithesis of the humorous one she rolled out for us last month. Candice Louisa Daquin has also given us an exceptional short fiction along with her column where she discusses the changing face of families in the current context.

While Daquin’s focus is mainly towards the West, we have an essay from Sanjay Kumar on families that live in the greyer zones of big cities, children from an outcropping called Nithari in Delhi, where they or theirs suffered neglect, abuse, carnage and cannibalism in their formative years. Introducing the impacted children, Kumar explains how they transcended the wounds that lacerated their lives. This piece is a precursor to a column called ‘Children of Nithari’. Starting February, the abuse victims will give us a story a month which will be translated by young volunteers from pandies’, an activist theatre group founded by Kumar, and published in Borderless. Another article from Balochistan reflects on the lack of literacy and efforts to bring children into the folds of schooling. Pakistan ranked 99th out of 132 countries on the literacy survey in 2021. We are privileged to be the voice of the unheard.

Two essays that ring of concerns raised in the Kenny Peavy interview are to do with climate crisis in the Sunderbans and waste disposal in Delhi. Both of these are written by researchers who are working on these issues.

We have travel pieces from Australia – one is a sailing adventure by Meredith Stephens and the other is about a trip to the Sand Dunes of Western Australia by Shernaz Wadia. Ravi Shankar has also taken us through winters from the Everest to New York with his globe-trotting non-fiction. Penny Wilkes takes us on a flight of creativity with beautiful photography.

We have a stellar layout of translations. Professor Fakrul Alam translated another poem by Jibananada Das and Borderless is honoured to publish it to the world for the first time. We have a translation from Korea and another of a Brahmo hymn, Aji Shubho Dine, by Tagore, which is sung often during festivals. The icing in our Tagore section in this issue is Ratnottama Sengupta’s translation of the Kobiguru’s ‘Two Birds’ (Khanchar Pakhi Chhilo) along with a musing which reflects on the perspectives of the two contemporaries, Tagore and Saratchandra. She has also translated a well-known Bengali poet, Michael Madhusudan Dutt. Dutt wrote just before the advent of Tagore and had an interesting past which has been vividly depicted by Sunil Gangopadhyay in Those Days (Sei Somoy in Bengali), a novel that has been translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Bhaskar Parichha has given us a tribute on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Fakir Mohan Senapati, who, he claims, has the same standing in Odia literature as Tagore in Bengali or Premchand in Hindi.

Parichha has also reviewed Amit Ranjan’s John Lang; Wanderer of Hindoostan; Slanderer in Hindoostanee; Lawyer for the Ranee. It looks like an interesting read where an immigrant Australian came supported Rani of Jhansi in India. Rakhi Dalal has reviewed Selma Carvalho’s Sisterhood of Swans, again a story of migrants and their lives. The theme seems to echo among the books that have been reviewed this time, including Gracy Samjetsabam’s take on Anuradha Kumar’s The Hottest Summer in Years, a story about a German immigrant to India in the twentieth century. Meenakshi Malhotra’s review of Somdatta Mandal’s translation of A Bengali Lady in England by Krishnabhabini Das (1885) highlights the views of a traveller rather than an immigrant as the lady did return home after a ten-year sojourn in Britain. As Meenakshi contends, “The process of travel offers opportunities for emancipation where exposure to other cultures offers her a way of viewing and of gaining a perspective on her own experiences and that of her sisters in India. Krishnabhabini constantly refers to her Indian sisters and bemoans their sorry state and ignorance when she sees how active British women were in their families and societies…”

I was supposed to try my hand at a humorous editorial, but I realise that is tough when the ground is small. For humour, we need rolling acres where we can etch out each detail till it cannot be milked further for laughter. But I promise you I will keep trying to please the readers till one evolves to write like Ruskin Bond.

I would like to thank my fabulous team who even if not actively contributing to content are always at hand to advise and help. I would especially want to thank both Sohana Manzoor and Sybil for their fantastic artwork, which is as wonderful as their writings. I would like to give heartfelt thanks to all the contributors who have made this journal possible and each reader who comes back to our journal for more every month. Some of the pieces remain unmentioned adding to the mystery of the content, just like, Christmas gifts which need to be unwrapped and continue a reality even in January in some parts of the world – the Russians celebrate on January 7^th and the Spaniards extend their festivities to January 6^th.

Do take a look at this month’s edition for not just the stories mentioned here but for more.

I wish you all a wonderful New Year filled with laughter.

Mitali Chakravarty

Borderless Journal

Tags A Bengali Lady in England by Krishnabhabini Das (1885), Akbar: A Novel of History, Amit Ranjan, Anasuya Bhar, Andrée Roby, Anuradha Kumar, Aruna Chakravarti, Australia, Balochistan, Bhaskar Parichha, Boggart, Borderless Journal, Brahmo hymn, Candice Louisa Daquin, Children of Nithari, Christmas, climate change, Climate crisis, Delhi, Devraj Singh Kalsi, EVEREST, Fakir Mohan Senapati, Fakrul Alam, Fazal Baloch, Gracy Samjetsabam, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, James Bond 007, Jay Nicholls, Jibanananda Das, Jodha Akbar, John Lang; Wanderer of Hindoostan; Slanderer in Hindoostanee; Lawyer for the Ranee, Keith Lyons, Kenny Peavy, Khanchar Pakhi Chhilo, Korea, Laughing Gas, Meenakshi Malhotra, Meredith Stephens, Michael Burch, Mitali Chakravarty, Nepal, New Year, New York, Nigeria, Nithari, Pakistan, Penny Wilkes, PG Wodehouse, Rakhi Dalal, Rani of Jhansi, Ravi Shankar, Rhys Hughes, Ruskin Bond, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Sangita Swechcha, Sanjay Kumar, Saratchandra, Selma Cavalho, Shazi Zaman, Shernaz Wadia, Sisterhood of Swans, Sohana Manzoor, Steve Ogah, Sunderbans, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sybil Pretious, The Hottest Summer in years, Vernon Daim, William Miller, Zimbabwe

Greetings from Borderless

Merry Christmas

Christmas Candle: Painting by Sybil Pretious

Christmas brings not just the end of the year closer to us but also the spirit of loving and giving. The festival generates a feeling of hope in our hearts for a better New Year. The world links up together to celebrate this day which has a touch of beliefs from earlier times. Some connect to the festival with religious beliefs but others join in with the feeling of goodwill generated by the season, to celebrate in winter, summer or tropical weather with the same zest. In the same spirit, we at Borderless wish all of you fabulous Christmas holidays.

For your entertainment, we have put together some pieces which not only showcases writings around the festival but the spirit that revives hope unfailingly each year. As a special Christmas bonanza to our readers, we would like to also present a selection of a few eminent authors who have added lustre to the gems in our treasure chest.

Enjoy our oeuvre & Merry Christmas!

Poetry

Christmas Poems by Rhys Hughes. Click here to read.

One Star by Ihlawha Choi. Click here to read.

Christmas Cheer by Malachi Edwin Vethamani. Click here to read.

Prose

Rakhamaninov’s Sonata

A short story by Sherzod Artikov, translated from Uzbeki by Nigora Mukhammad. Click here to read.

Hold the Roast Turkey Please Santa !

Celebrating the festive season off-season with Keith Lyons from New Zealand, where summer solstice and Christmas fall around the same time. Click here to read.

Authors from Around the World

We have an amalgam of writers from across borders who will bring the flavours of their part of the world right up to your doorstep.

Jared Carter: Click here to read.

Akbar Barakzai: Click here to read

Suzanne Kamata: Click here to read

Arundhathi Subramaniam: Click here to read

Aruna Chakravarti: Click here to read

Fakrul Alam: Click here to read

Ratnottama Sengupta: Click here to read

Somdatta Mandal: Click here to read

Tags Christmas, Ihlwha Choi, Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Nigora Muhammad, Rakhamaninov, Rhys Hughes, Sherzod Artikov, Uzbeki

Editorial

Towards a Brave New World

With Christmas at our heels and the world waking up slowly from a pandemic that will hopefully become an endemic as the Omicron seems to fizzle towards a common cold, we look forward to a new year and a new world. Perhaps, our society will evolve to become one where differences are accepted as variety just as we are fine with the fact that December can be warm or cold depending on the geography of the place. People will be welcomed even if of different colours and creed. The commonality of belonging to the same species will override all other disparities…

While we have had exciting developments this year and civilians have moved beyond the Earth — we do have a piece on that by Candice Louisa Daquin — within the planet, we have become more aware of the inequalities that exist. We are aware of the politics that seems to surround even a simple thing like a vaccine for the pandemic. However, these two years dominated by the virus has shown us one thing — if we do not rise above petty greed and create a world where healthcare and basic needs are met for all, we will suffer. As my nearly eighty-year-old aunt confided, even if one person has Covid in a remote corner of the world, it will spread to all of us. The virus sees no boundaries. This pandemic was just a start. There might be more outbreaks like this in the future as the rapacious continue to exploit deeper into the wilderness to accommodate our growing greed, not need. With the onset of warmer climates — global warming and climate change are realities — what can we look forward to as our future?

Que sera sera — what will be, will be. Though a bit of that attitude is necessary, we have become more aware and connected. We can at least visualise changes towards a more egalitarian and just world, to prevent what happened in the past. It would be wonderful if we could act based on the truth learnt from history rather than to overlook or rewrite it from the perspective of the victor and use that experience to benefit our homes, planet and all living things, great and small. In tune with our quest towards a better world, we have an interview with an academic, Sanjay Kumar, founder of a group called Pandies, who use theatre to connect the world of haves with have-nots. What impressed me most was that they have actually put refugees and migrant workers on stage with their stories. They even managed to land in Kashmir and work with children from war-torn zones. They have travelled and travelled into different dimensions in quest of a better world. Travelling is what our other interviewee did too — with a cat who holds three passports. CJ Fentiman, author of The Cat with Three Passports, has been interviewed by Keith Lyons, who has reviewed her book too.

This time we have the eminent Aruna Chakravarti review Devika Khanna Narula’s Beyond the Veils, a retelling of the author’s family history. Perhaps, history has been the common thread in our reviews this time. Rakhi Dalal has reviewed Anirudh Kala’s Two and a Half Rivers, a fiction that focusses on the Sikh issues in 1980s India from a Dalit perspective. It brought to my mind a family saga I had been recently re-reading, Alex Haley’s Roots, which showcased the whole American Revolution from the perspective of slaves brought over from Africa. Did the new laws change the fates of the slaves or Dalits? To an extent, it did but the rest as fact and fiction showcase were in the hands that belonged to the newly freed people. To enable people to step out of the cycle of poverty, the right attitudes towards growth and the ability to accept the subsequent changes is a felt need. That is perhaps where organisations like Pandies step in. Another non-fiction which highlights history around the same period and place as Kala’s novel is BP Pande’s In the Service of Free India –Memoirs of a Civil Servant. Reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha, the book explores the darker nuances of human history filled with violence and intolerance.

That violence is intricately linked to power politics has been showcased often. But, what would be really amazing to see would be how we could get out of the cycle as a society. With gun violence being an accepted norm in one of the largest democracies of the world, perhaps we need to listen to the voice of wisdom found in the fiction by Steve Davidson who meets perhaps a ghost in Hong Kong. Musing over the ghost’s words, the past catches up in Sunil Sharma’s story, ‘Walls’. Sharma has also given us a slice from his life in Canada with its colours, vibrancy and photographs of the fall. As he emigrated to Canada, we read of immigrants in Marzia Rahman’s touching narrative. She has opted to go with the less privileged just as Lakshmi Kannan has opted to go with the privileged in her story.

Sharma observes, while we find the opulence of nature thrive in places people inhabit in Canada, it is not so in Asia. I wonder why? Why are Asian cities crowded and polluted? There was a time when Los Angeles and London suffered smogs. Has that shifted now as factories relocated to Asia, generating wealth in currency but taking away from nature’s opulence of fresh, clean air as more flock into crowded cities looking for sustenance?

Humour is introduced into the short story section with Sohana Manzoor’s hilarious rendering of her driving lessons in America, lessons given to foreigners by migrants. Rhys Hughes makes for more humour with a really hilarious rendition of men in tea cosies missing their…I think ‘Trouser Hermit’ will tell you the rest. He has perhaps more sober poetry which though imaginative does not make you laugh as much as his prose. Michael Burch has shared some beautiful poetry perpetuating the calmer nuances of a deeply felt love and affection. George Freek, Anasuya Bhar, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Dibyajyoti Sarma have all given us wonderful poetry along with many others. One could write an essay on each poem – but as we are short shrift for time, we move on to travel sagas from hiking in Australia and hobnobbing with kangaroos to renovated palaces in Bengal.

We have also travelled with our book excerpts this time. Suzanne Kamata’s The Baseball Widow shuttles between US and Japan and Somdatta Mandal’s translation of A Bengali lady in England by Krishnabhabi Das, actually has the lady relocate to nineteenth century England and assume the dress and mannerisms of the West to write an eye-opener for her compatriots about the customs of the colonials in their own country.

While mostly we hear of sad stories related to marriages, we have a sunny one in which Alpana finds much in a marriage that runs well with wisdom learnt from Kung Fu Panda. Devraj Singh Kalsi has given us a philosophical piece with his characteristic touch of irony laced with humour on statues. If you are wondering what he could have to say, have a read.

In Nature’s Musings, Penny Wilkes has offered us prose and wonderful photographs of the last vestiges of autumn. As the season hovers between summer and winter, geographical boundaries too can get blurred at times. A nostalgic recap given by Ratnottama Sengupta along the borders of Bengal, which though still crossed by elephants freely in jungles (wild elephants do not need visas, I guess), gained an independence from the harshness of cultural hegemony on December 16th, 1971. Candice Louisa Daquin has also looked at grey zones that lie between sanity and insanity in her column. An essay which links East and West has been given to us by Rakibul Hasan about a poet who mingles the two in his poetry. A Bengali song by Tagore, Purano shei diner kotha, that is almost a perfect trans creation of Robert Burn’s Scottish Auld Lang Syne in the spirit of welcoming the New Year, has been transcreated to English. The similarity in the content of the two greats’ lyrics showcase the commonalities of love, friendship and warmth that unite all cultures into one humanity.

Our first translation from Uzbekistan – a story by Sherzod Artikov, translated from Uzbeki by Nigora Mukhammad — gives a glimpse of a culture that might be new to many of us. Akbar Barakzai’s shorter poems, translated by Fazal Baloch from Balochi and Ratnottama Sengupta’s transcreation of a Tagore song, Rangiye Die Jao, have added richness to our oeuvre along with one from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Professor Fakrul Alam, who is well-known for his translation of poetry by Jibonanda Das, has started sharing his work on the Bengali poet with us. Pause by and take a look.

There is much more than what I can put down here as we have a bumper end of the year issue this December. There is a bit of something for all times, tastes and seasons.

I would like to thank my wonderful team for helping put together this issue. Sohana Manzoor and Sybil Pretious need double thanks for their lovely artwork that is showcased in our magazine. We are privileged to have committed readers, some of who have started contributing to our content too. A huge thanks to all our contributors and readers for being with us through our journey.

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful transition into the New Year! May we open up to a fantastic brave, new world!

Mitali Chakravarty

Borderless Journal

Tags A Bengali lady in England by Krishnabhabini Das, Africa, Akbar Barakzai, Alex Haley, Alpana, American Revolution, Anasuya Bhar, Anirudh Kala, Aruna Chakravarti, Auld Lang Syne, Australia, Balochi, Bengal, Beyond the Veils, Bhaskar Parichha, BP Pande, Canada, Candice Louisa Daquin, Christmas, CJ Fentiman, COVID, Dalit, Devika Khanna Narula, Devraj Singh Kalsi, Dibyajyoti Sarma, Earth, Fakrul Alam, Fazal Baloch, George Freek, Gun violence, Hermit Trousers, Hong Kong, Ihlwha Choi, In the Service of Free India, Japan, Jibonananda Das, Kangaroo, Keith Lyons, Korean, Kung Fu Panda, Lakshmi Kannan, London, Los Angeles, Marzia Rahman, Michael Burch, New Year, Nigora Muhammad, Pandemic, Penny Wilkes, Purano Shei Diner kotha, Rakhi Dalal, Rakibul Hasan Khan, Ratnottama Sengupta, Rhys Hughes, Robert Burns, Roots, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Sanjay Kumar, Sherzod Artikov, Sohana Manzoor, Somdatta Mandal, Steve Davidson, Sunil Sharma, Suzanne Kamata, Sybil Pretious, Tagore, The Baseball Widow, The Cat with Three Passports, Two and a Half Rivers, USA, Uzbekistan