The brown water swirls, Waves grow and break. Huge trees are tossed like toothpicks. Water flows over the weir. And the rain continues to fall. The brown water, heavy with sand, Scours the riverbanks. The water rises and broils. Nothing is safe. And the rain continues to fall. They say it’s a hundred-year storm, They say it’s a thousand-year storm. They say it’s the changing climate. They say the rain will stop. And the rain continues to fall. The brown water has secrets, terrible secrets. Friends need to know, Sisters need to grieve, Parents struggle with why? Why? And the rain continues to fall. And the rain continues to fall.
From Public Domain
Ron Pickett is a retired naval aviator with over 250 combat missions and 500 carrier landings. His 90-plus articles have appeared in numerous publications. He enjoys writing fiction and has published five books: Perfect Crimes – I Got Away with It, Discovering Roots, Getting Published, EMPATHS, and Sixty Odd Short Stories.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Our bags stay forever packed Notwithstanding any setbacks We are struck with wanderlust. Travelling is just part of who we are. Sure, the world may be in chaos But our knees and minds never dither When travel is on the cards.
“Too old!” they say. “Stay home. Be sensible!” Honestly, such needless wisdom Falls on deaf ears. For us, who never tire of seeing new skies, Stocked with coloured pills of different sizes, We boldly step outside.
We’ve trekked through Roy's Peak Track, With sanitiser bottles attached to our backpacks. On the way down, our knees did protest, Friendly hands did the rest. Travel, they say, brings out the best. Indeed, we have been through such tests.
“There's climate change!” experts declare, But we still carry the attitude of Columbus Questing for the unexplored, undiscovered, Where the adventurous and the young are bound. One little hiccup in Baku this May? Did we let that stop us? Not a chance. We’re off again soon to the seas This time, to savour Goan Feni.
So let the sceptics scoff and frown, We are the new age septuagenarians Those who refuse to slow down. With maps in hand, excitement in our hearts, Somewhat dented, broken in body parts, We continue to travel against all odds.
Snigdha Agrawal (nee Banerjee) has published five books, including Fragments of Time, her deeply personal memoir. A lifelong lover of storytelling, she blends fact and fiction with a keen eye for detail and emotion. Her works span diverse genres, reflecting her rich experiences and insightful observations.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Title: A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory
Author:Jagadish Shukla
Publisher: Pan Macmillan India
This is a fascinating autobiography – autobiography of an Indian who revolutionised monsoon forecasting. Raised in a rural area of India devoid of electricity, plumbing, or formal educational institutions, he participated in classes conducted within a cow shed. Shukla’s upbringing was marked by erratic weather patterns, including intense monsoons and severe droughts, which resulted in unpredictable agricultural yields. His resolve led him to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, despite having limited experience. Subsequently, he embarked on an unexpected journey to MIT and Princeton, reaching the pinnacle of climate science.
His contributions have made it possible to forecast weather further into the future than was previously deemed achievable, enabling us to nourish more individuals, preserve lives, and maintain hope in an increasingly warming world.
A Billion Butterflies by Shukla offers a remarkable insider’s perspective on climate science, alongside an extraordinary memoir of his life. Grasping the concept of dynamical seasonal prediction will transform our experience of thunderstorms and our interpretation of forecasts; the incredible narrative of the individual who uncovered this will alter our perception of the world.
The fundamental concept of this heartfelt narrative revolves around envisioning a world devoid of weather forecasting. How would we determine when to evacuate populations in anticipation of fires or floods, or decide what attire to don the following day? Until four decades ago, we were unable to predict weather conditions beyond a ten-day horizon.
Writes Shukla in the Prologue: “In the past one hundred fifty years, humans chopped down many of Earth’s carbon-sucking forests and began burning fossil fuels to heat their homes, power their factories, and propel their vehicles, releasing unprecedented amounts of CO2, into the atmosphere. Like the glass walls of a greenhouse, CO2, admits energy from the sun but prohibits energy from leaving the Earth. And so pretty quickly, our nicely balanced climate became imbalanced. In the century, as the amount of CO2, in the atmosphere has increased, Earth’s global mean surface temperature has ticked up from 14 to 15 degrees Celsius.
“This is called climate change. Climate change due to human activities is now firmly established by the observed facts and the laws of physics. The consequences of the phenomenon are becoming self-evident, but so are, I’d argue, the capabilities of the new generation of scientists to find a way forward.”
Shukla says in the book, on average, the Earth expels approximately 122,000 trillion watts of energy into space annually, which is roughly equivalent to the energy it receives from the sun. This equilibrium between outgoing and incoming energy is what establishes the average climate on our planet. For nearly ten millennia, the balance between incoming and outgoing energies was so well maintained that the global annual average temperature remained a comfortable 14 degrees Celsius, allowing life to persist and humanity to flourish. On Venus, this equilibrium results in an annual average temperature of 464 degrees Celsius. This is not unexpected, considering Venus’s proximity to the sun. However, there is another significant factor, aside from the energy a planet receives from the sun that affects climate: the chemical composition of its atmosphere. On Venus, carbon dioxide constitutes 95 percent of the atmosphere. In contrast, Earth’s atmosphere contains approximately 0.04 percent carbon dioxide—or at least, it did.
The book is meticulously crafted and filled with complex details about climate events, representing a significant effort that the author labels as chaos theory. Its importance is evident in a world facing the pressing challenge of addressing the devastating impacts of climate change.
For anyone who cares about the health of our planet, this book is a must-read.
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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Poetry, prose — all art forms — gather our emotions into concentrates that distil perhaps the finest in human emotions. They touch hearts across borders and gather us all with the commonality of feelings. We no longer care for borders drawn by divisive human constructs but find ourselves connecting despite distances. Strangers or enemies can feel the same emotions. Enemies are mostly created to guard walls made by those who want to keep us in boxes, making it easier to manage the masses. It is from these mass of civilians that soldiers are drawn, and from the same crowds, we can find the victims who die in bomb blasts. And yet, we — the masses — fight. For whom, for what and why? A hundred or more years ago, we had poets writing against wars and violence…they still do. Have we learnt nothing from the past, nothing from history — except to repeat ourselves in cycles? By now, war should have become redundant and deadly weapons out of date artefacts instead of threats that are still used to annihilate cities, humans, homes and ravage the Earth. Our major concerns should have evolved to working on social equity, peace, human welfare and climate change.
One of the people who had expressed deep concern for social equity and peace through his films and writings was Satyajit Ray. This issue has an essay that reflects how he used art to concretise his ideas by Dolly Narang, a gallery owner who brought Ray’s handiworks to limelight. The essay includes the maestro’s note in which he admits he considered himself a filmmaker and a writer but never an artist. But Ray had even invented typefaces! Artist Paritosh Sen’s introduction to Ray’s art has been included to add to the impact of Narang’s essay. Another person who consolidates photography and films to do pathbreaking work and tell stories on compelling issues like climate change and helping the differently-abled is Vijay S Jodha. Ratnottama Sengupta has interviewed this upcoming artiste.
Reflecting the themes of welfare and conflict, Prithvijeet Sinha’s essay takes us to a monument in Lucknow that had been built for love but fell victim to war. Some conflicts are personal like the ones of Odbayar Dorj who finds acceptance not in her hometown in Mongolia but in the city, she calls home now. Jun A. Alindogan from Manila explores social media in action whereas Eshana Sarah Singh takes us to her home in Jakarta to celebrate the Chinese New Year! Farouk Gulsara looks into the likely impact of genetic engineering in a world already ripped by violence and Devraj Singh Kalsi muses on his source of inspiration, his writing desk. Meredith Stephens tells the touching story of a mother’s concern for her child in Australia and Suzanne Kamata exhibits the same concern as she travels to Happy Village in Japan to meet her differently-abled daughter and her friends.
As these real-life narratives weave commonalities of human emotions, so do fictive stories. Some reflect the need for change. Fiona Sinclair writes a layered story set in London on how lived experiences define differences in human perspectives while Parnika Shirwaikar explores the need to learn to accept changes set in her part of the universe. Spandan Upadhyay explores the spirit of the city of Kolkata as a migrant with a focus on social equity. Both Paul Mirabile and Naramsetti Umamaheswararao write stories around childhood, one set in Europe and the other in Asia.
Do pause by our contents page for this issue and enjoy the reads. We are ever grateful to our ever-growing evergreen readership some of whom have started sharing their fabulous narratives with us. Thanks to all our readers and contributors. Huge thanks to our wonderful team without whose efforts we could not have curated such valuable content and thanks specially to Sohana Manzoor for her art. Thank you all for making a whiff of an idea a reality!
Ratnottama Sengupta introduces and converses with a photographer who works at the intersection of art and social issues, Vijay S Jodha
S Vijay JodhaLines, Shapes & Forms – Vijay S. Jodha’s group show is on view at Museo Camera Gurgaon till May 26, 2025Photo Courtesy: Vijay S Jodha
Vijay S Jodha was yet to become one of India’s leading lens-based artists at the intersection of art and social issues. Back then, in the 1990s, he had no inkling that 30 years later he would be the chairperson of UGC-CEC[1] jury for selecting the best educational films made in India. Or that he would be the national selector and trainer in photography for the National Abilympics Association of India.
When I first met him, he was mounting a collaborative exhibition of his work with the elderly, their contribution to society and the care they deserve. Little did I know that the entire bent of this journalist-turned documentary filmmaker-turned photo artist would go on to focus on subjects ranging from mob violence, riot victims, farmers’ suicide, 75 years of Indian constitution to Joys of Christmas and the Bus Art of Tamil Nadu.
Photo Courtesy: Vijay S Jodha
Not surprising that the International Confederation of NGOs has honoured Vijay with the Media Citizen Award for using media to drive social change. And it is only one among hundreds of honours he has received in two dozen countries. These include awards and grants, from Swiss Development Agency to Ford Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Screening of his films on 75 channels worldwide and in 250 festivals in 60 countries.
These seem tedious details? So, interestingly, two public showings of his work have been vandalised. And a false police case against him took eight years to be thrown out by India’s courts!
Conversation
Vijay how did you come into photography?
I’m a trained filmmaker – I mastered in film production – and have been making films for two decades. My films have shown on 75 stations including Discovery, CNN, BBC. But training in photography I have none. All my photography is non-fiction work. Actually my films are also non-fiction or reality based work. I just find still photography very relaxing because, unlike films where a director is responsible for so many things, here I’m on my own. But there’s no production deadline. No huge budget is needed. I can address any subject that catches my fancy and pursue it over several years, without any worry. Otherwise it’s the same: photos or films, you’re storytelling around substantial issues that interest you, in a manner that does justice to those issues, and — hopefully — engaging to the viewers.
So who was your inspiration?
In photography it is obviously the greats who defined the grammar of the medium itself such as Robert Frank[2] and Cartier Bresson[3]. They’ve inspired us all in some manner. I’m fortunate that, as a part time journalist in New York decades ago, I got to meet and interview top filmmakers and photographers like Gordon Parks and Richard Avedon.
I once did a course at New York’s School of Visual Arts where they honoured Mary Ellen Mark and she had come across. As a journalist, I covered Sebastião Salgado’s launch of his workers’ project that put him on the map (of photography). I met Raghubir Singh while doing a project on Ayodhya in India, and again in New York where we put up the same exhibition. He also photographed some of us – myself, Siddharth Varadarajan, the editor-publisher of The Wire who was then a student at Columbia University, and other Indian students — were protesting some human rights issue.
I’m also fortunate to have our finest photo-journalists and lens-based artists as friends. I can take across my work to get a feedback or pick their brains. This beats the best photo schools in the world. In fact years ago I did a book which had photos from all of them! This was the biggest photo project on the Tiranga[4] as listed in the Limca Book of Records. They have all done many books on their own but this is the only one where all these masters appear in a single volume, their works united thematically. Apart from Raghu Rai, Ram Rahman, Prashant Panjiar, Dayanita Singh, T Narayan, and the late TS Satyan, I’d also interviewed people across India, from the then Prime Minister Vajpayee to those selling flags at traffic lights for a few meagre rupees.
You did not go to any international school to train in the art or the technology aspect. So what prompted your PhD?
Three decades back when I decided to go into mass communication as a career there were few computers, no internet, no private TV channels, or mobile phones. Sorry if that makes me seem Jurassic but it was a world with very few media opportunities. Post college, I had got admissions into a trainee programme with a newspaper as well as in the MA programme in International Relations at India’s premier Jawaharlal Nehru University. My father felt that a masters and exposure at JNU would be a better investment for journalism – probably the single best advice I’ve got in my entire career — and I followed that.
Then for some time I worked in print media: I freelanced for newspapers, edited and published a journal for a business house, scripted for a film and worked on a book with one of my journalism heroes – late Kuldip Nayar. But in the pre-internet era newspaper articles had a very short life, so I felt the need to produce something that would last longer such as film. So I decided to get a degree in Film. It also encompassed all my interests, from writing to art to music, travel and photography.
You’ve not been a photo-journalist working for any journal or newspaper. Yet you felt inclined to do projects on environment, elder care, survivors of riots and mob violence, farmer suicide, art that travels. Was it inevitable, given your father’s background?
Actually I’ve done a bit of photo journalism too. During my film school days at NYU I was a writer-photographer for their student-run newspaper, Washington Square News. I’ve also been a stringer for mainstream dailies including The Economic Times where I shot images parallel to my writing. I did stills for Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding and of course stills for my own film projects. So I’ve a lot of published images in papers worldwide though my main gig has been films.
Frankly I don’t see much difference between these mediums. Be it words, stills or moving images; an academic paper, photo books, or films, short or long – all this is story telling. I’m a story teller.
And subjects? I’ve filmed every possible subject except wildlife: I just don’t have the patience for that. Otherwise everything, from artist biopics — on Paritosh Sen and Prokash Karmakar, whose inaugural screening you also attended in Calcutta years ago — to films on environment. My The Weeping Apple Tree (2005) was among the first ones on climate change in India. It won the UK Environment Film Fellowship Award 2005 and had multiple screenings on Discovery, with an introduction by Sir Mark Tully.
At that time, few knew about climate change. So Delhi govt organised a special screening for their MLAs and officers of water, electricity and sanitation departments. It was screened at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi and in various festivals. UNIDO and other grassroots level NGOs used it to create awareness. Some years back an IFS {Indian Forest Service} officer told me that Himachal government uses it to train their forest officers.
My film on gender, Pedalling to Freedom (2007) revisited an old initiative in one of the poorest parts of the world. It traced the life-changing impact of teaching 100,000 women to ride the bicycle. That film is in the US Library of Congress. It was also chosen for archiving at OSA Budapest, world’s premier repository of materials dealing with human rights.
Then there are films that get food on the table. Training films. Corporate films. I once did a ‘funeral film’ on a well-known personality whose passing received a lot of press coverage in India but the NRI son could not come for the funeral.
What motivates you Vijay — money, international honour, or the possibility of social change?
Well, all this is livelihood so the money part is important. But doing work that gets recognised far and wide, that is substantial, to hold good for a long time – that’s a huge motivator.
I have a slightly spiritual take towards this. I feel that regardless of our profession we are all bound by a dharmic or sacred duty. A teacher’s duty is to teach and a doctor’s is to heal. For those in the business of storytelling — including photographers — the sacred duty is to document, bear witness, push things forward. And believe you me, this has little connect with means or accessibility.
To give you an extreme example: After the Nazis lost the war and Berlin fell, soldiers from the victorious allies army raped virtually every woman in Berlin. Few rapists were taken to task and to top it, despite all the extensive coverage of the allies victory by forgotten photographers as well as superstars like Margaret Bourke-White (known to us through her famous Gandhiji with charkha portrait) or Robert Capa (regarded as the greatest war photographer of all time), there was no coverage of this mass outrage in Berlin by anyone be it in photo essays in Life Magazine, or World War photo books. It appears in no Hollywood film or TV series.
Likewise, fifty years ago, when India came under the draconian Emergency, our courts also endorsed the robbing of our Constitutional rights. Nobody documented, then or since, the forced sterilisation of 6,000,000 who were stripped of their reproductive rights. We, as photographers and filmmakers, failed on this front.
The First Witnesses is my project around farmer suicides. It is not an unheard issue nor something hard to get access. But how many have found it worth their while to document the issue? How many are documenting a disappearing art form or livelihood? Or our urban heritage being torn down? Our movie theatres once represented cinema as an inexpensive and readily accessible mass culture. Now they are being torn down even in smaller towns. Each had a unique character. Is anyone documenting that?
I documented Durga Puja in Kolkata 20 years ago when I was working with painters there. Durga astride a tiger, slaying the demonic Mahisasur emerging out of a buffalo: these elements get interpreted in hundreds of ways across the city each year. Each pandal has a different aesthetic interpretation, inside and outside. The religious aspect is no less important. But these are also like site-specific installation art works shaped by the imagination of so many talented people but designed for impermanence. How many books of photos exist around this work now recognised by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity?
How successful have you been in achieving this?
The merit of my work is for others to judge. I’m happy that, though India doesn’t have many foundations or support for non-commercial oriented art, I’ve been able to do at least a few things that are genuinely pathbreaking, substantial and have gone around the world. To be invited to UNESCO headquarters in Paris to screen a film and address delegates from 193 countries, or be honoured by our President for India’s best ever performed at Abilympics — these are certainly my career highlights.
Vijay S Jodha at UNESCO introducing his film. Photo provided by Vijay S Jodha
My work has received over a hundred honours across 24 countries, but what truly motivates me is when people I look up to, my heroes, appreciate what I do. That kind of recognition carries a different weight. For instance, Magsaysay awardee P Sainath, whose ground-breaking reportage has long inspired me, saw my farmers project when it was exhibited alongside his photographic work at the Chennai Photo Biennale 2019. We hadn’t met before, so when he praised my effort, it felt like receiving a medal.
Another moment that has stayed with me was post my time at NYU. My professor, George Stoney, referred to as the father of public access television and mentioned in history books on documentary cinema, mentored Oscar-winning directors like Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, and Ang Lee. When he watched The Weeping Apple Tree, he said, “Vijay, this is better than Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. That was a glorified PowerPoint by comparison.” That one comment meant more to me than most awards ever could.
As a photo artist what is the biggest moment of joy for you — technical hurray or the joy of the subjects?
As I just said, recognition and praise of my heroes gives the maximum joy. There are other honours. Two photo projects listed in Limca Book of Records for being the biggest and path breaking. The first was on ageing that I did over eight years with my brother Samar Jodha – he did the images while I did the concept research, writing and interviews. The other was the aforementioned Tiranga. My film Poop on Poverty (2012) won a Peabody award, the oldest honour for documentary films, and more international honours than any non-fiction film produced out of India.
After landmark exhibitions in Hong Kong and New York I donated two complete sets of The First Witnesses, my farming crisis project, to two farmer unions including our oldest and biggest All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS). They are using it for awareness raising across villages. That’s a real high as a photographer.
Then there’s high coming from those we pass down our expertise to. Among those I’ve taught or mentored is a highly talented though physically challenged youngster from Vijayawada with missing digits and motoring issues. His family runs a Kirana shop. When he started school, they sent him back saying he cannot even hold a pencil. He won a bronze medal in photography for India at the last Abilympics in France. Another student has himself become a photography teacher in a school for hearing impaired. This is the kind of stuff that gets me very excited.
Thirty years ago as a volunteer writer and researcher I helped Sanskriti Foundation set up India’s first international artist retreat. That novel venture raised crores in grants and set up three museums. Today it is being scaled back as its founder O P Jain is in his 90s. But that idea caught on and you have scores of artist retreats across India.
How has digital technology influenced photography as an art form? Has it done more harm? Or widened its spread?
Digital has been a mixed experience. It democratised the process of production and dissemination — be it still images or movies. This is a fantastic thing. But it killed a lot of the processes and livelihoods such as the printing labs, film production and processing facilities. It has also killed an art form like print making. It’s a specialised skill in itself, so a lot of artistry, understanding, appreciation and sustenance of it has got compromised.
The emergence of deep fake images and piracy of work is bad news too. But it has allowed more people to become story tellers. They now bear witness, as filmmakers and photographers, of issues and events that was earlier impossible.
I can cite examples from my work. I’m National Selector and Trainer in photography for National Abilympics Association of India (NAAI) and my students are in different parts of India. Two are hearing impaired, two others have motoring issues and physical challenges. Thanks to digital tools, we’re running long distance classes every week. NAAI provides me sign language interpreter but I can send and receive digital files, use zoom to conduct classes, use google translate to send instructions in Tamil, English and Marathi to my students. Now one student, despite hearing challenge, is running a photo studio. The student who has issues with his leg also works as wedding photographer. Workshops with institutions and festivals, within and outside India, are now easy and inexpensive thanks to these digital tools and communication modes.
Has selfies on mobile camera shortened the life of portraiture?
It has certainly democratised the process while the average person’s patience to study or appreciate any art work — portrait or landscape photo — is shrinking by the minute. Of course, good portraiture requires some skill to make as well as appreciate – that cultural literacy is a challenge everywhere, not just in photo medium. As a seasoned art critic you would have noticed that in the world of painting and sculpture too. Sadly we don’t have that education in our schools.
You have continued with still images even after doing many documentaries. What is the joy in either case?
I’m doing still photography and movies parallel to each other. Last month I had a book on public policy, as I mentioned. Also launched last month – by our defence minister –was my film on our Armed Forces Medical Corps – it’s one of the oldest divisions in the world, going back 260 years. I’m working on a project on the Indian Constitution and a biopic on Amitabh Sen Gupta, the artist whose retrospective exhibition this year is organised by Artworld Chennai. My still photography project on the farmers crisis is also going on for the past 7-8 years.
All projects are joyous and offer their own challenges. It’s like bringing children into the world. You do the best you can, hope they’ll do well and go far, but you don’t know which one will. Regardless of their line of work you feel happy with each of them and what they achieve.
What is the future of Arriflex, Mitchell, Kodak Brownie? And that of Yashica, Nikon, Canon, Leica, Olympus…?
Some old camera brands like Konica and Minolta have merged, or evolved into digital Avatars like Arriflex. Others, like Kodak, have faded into history. Interestingly, a small Indian company has licensed their name to market TVs under Kodak brand name now. For those of us from the analogue generation, it’s a bittersweet feeling. When a beloved brand disappears, it feels like saying goodbye to an old friend. But such is the nature of change.
My friend Aditya Arya, one of India’s eminent photographers and a passionate camera collector, has created a remarkable space to preserve this legacy. He established the Museo Camera in Gurgaon, a non-profit centre promoting photographic art, which has become not only a camera museum but also a leading art and culture hub in the Delhi national capital region. If you’re an old time photographer passing through Delhi, it’s a wonderful place to revisit these “old friends.”
[1]University Grants Commission-Consortium for Educational Communication
[2] Robert Frank (1924-2019) was a photographer and documentary filmmaker.
[3] Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was a humanist photographer, a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. One of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947, he pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and writes books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Poems of Longing by Jibananada Das homes two of his poems translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Clickhereto read.
Four cantos from Ramakanta Rath’sSri Radha, translated from Odiya by the late poet himself, have been excerpted from his full length translation. Clickhere to read.
Naramsetti Umamaheswararao takes us back to school. Click here to read.
Conversation
Ratnottama Sengupta talks to filmmaker and author Leslie Carvalhoabout his old film, The Outhouse, that will be screened this month and his new book, Smoke on the Backwaters. Clickhere to read.
Drops of water gather to make a wave. The waves make oceans that reshape land masses over time…
Five years ago, on March 14th, in the middle of the pandemic, five or six of us got together to start an online forum called Borderless Journal. The idea was to have a space that revelled with the commonality of felt emotions. Borderless was an attempt to override divisive human constructs and bring together writers and ideators from all over the Earth to have a forum open to all people — a forum which would be inclusive, tolerant, would see every individual as a part of the fauna of this beautiful planet. We would be up in the clouds — afloat in an unbordered stratosphere— to meet and greet with thoughts that are common to all humans, to dream of a world we can have if we choose to explore our home planet with imagination, kindness and love. It has grown to encompass contributors from more than forty countries, and readers from all over the world — people who have the same need to reach out to others with felt emotions and common concerns.
Borderless not only celebrates the human spirit but also hopes to create over time a vibrant section with writings on the environment and climate change. We launch the new section today on our fifth anniversary.
Devraj Singh Kalsi with a soupçon of ironic amusement muses on humans’ attitude to the fauna around him and Farouk Gulsara lays on a coating of sarcasm while addressing societal norms. Meredith Stephens brings us concerns for a green Earth when she beachcombs in a remote Australian island. Prithvijeet Sinha continues to familiarise us with his city, Lucknow. Suzanne Kamata, on the other hand travels to Rwanda to teach youngsters how to write a haiku!
Professor Fakrul Alam takes us to libraries in Dhaka with the hope that more will start writing about the waning of such paradises for book lovers. Other than being the month that hosts World Environment Day, March also homes, International Women’s Day. Commemorating the occasion, we have essays from Meenakshi Malhotra on the past poetry of women and from Ratnottama Sengupta on women in Bengali Cinema. Sengupta has also interviewed Poulami Bose Chatterjee, the daughter of the iconic actor Soumitra Chatterjee to share with us less-known vignettes from the actor’s life. Keith Lyons has interviewed Malaysian writer-editor Daphne Lee to bring to us writerly advice and local lores on ghosts and hauntings.
We also have a translation by Lourdes M Supriya from Hindustani of a student’s heartrending cry to heal from grief for a teacher who faced an untimely end — a small dirge from Tanvir, a youngster with his roots in Nithari violence who transcended his trauma to teach like his idol and tutor, the late Sanjay Kumar. With this, we hope to continue with the pandies corner, with support from Lourdes and Anuradha Marwah, Kumar’s partner.
Borderless has grown in readership by leaps and bounds. There have been requests for books with writings from our site. On our fifth anniversary, we plan to start bringing out the creative writing housed in Borderless Journal in different volumes. We had brought out an anthology in 2022. It was well received with many reviews. But we have many gems, and each writer is valued here. Therefore, Rhys Hughes, one of our editorial board members, has kindly consented to create a new imprint to bring out books from the Borderless Journal. We are very grateful to him.
We are grateful to the whole team, our contributors and readers for being with us through our journey. We would not have made it this far without each one of you. Special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork too, something that has almost become synonymous with the cover page of our journal. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Wish you all happy reading! Do pause by our content’s page and take a look at all the wonderful writers.
Tumi Kon Kanoner Phulby Tagore andAnjali Loho Morby Nazrul, love songs by the two greats, have been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click hereto read.
One Life, One Love, 300 Children : Keith Lyons writes of Tendol Gyalzur, a COVID 19 victim, a refugee and an orphan who found new lives for many other orphans with love and an ability to connect. 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.
Dilip Kumar: Kohinoor-e-Hind: In a tribute to Bollywood legend Dileep Kumar, Ratnottama Sengupta, one of India’s most iconic arts journalists, recollects the days the great actor sprinted about on the sets of Bombay’s studios …spiced up with fragments from the autobiography of Sengupta’s father, Nabendu Ghosh. Click here to read.
Are Some of Us More Human than Others ?: Meenakshi Malhotra ponders at the exclusivity that reinforces divisions, margins and borders that continue to plague humankind, against the backdrop of the Women’s Month, March. Click here to read.
Reminiscences from a Gallery: MF Husain: Dolly Narang recounts how she started a gallery more than four decades ago and talks of her encounter with world renowned artist, MF Husain. Click hereto read.
Baraf Pora (Snowfall) by Rabindranath Tagore,gives a glimpse of his first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Clickhere to read.
Cherry Blossom Forecast: Suzanne Kamata brings the Japanese ritual of cherry blossom viewing to our pages with her camera and words. Clickhere to read.
Two Pizza Fantasies, Rhys Hughes recounts myths around the pizza in prose, fiction and poetry, Click here to read.
An Alien on the Altar!: Snigdha Agrawal writes of how a dog and lizard add zest to festivities with a dollop of humour. Click here to read.
Where it all Began: Sybil Pretious recounts her first adventure, an ascent on Mt Kilimanjaro at the age of sixty. Clickhere to read.
Conversations
Rabindranath Tagore: A Universal Bard.: This conversation between Aruna Chakravarti and Sunil Gangopadhyay that took place at a Tagore Conference organised by the Sahitya Akademi in Kochy in 2011. Click here to read.
Sriniketan: Tagore’s “Life Work”: In Conversation with Professor Uma Das Gupta, Tagore scholar, author of A History of Sriniketan, where can be glimpsed what Tagore considered his ‘life’s work’ as an NGO smoothening divides between villagers and the educated. Click here to read. (Review & Interview).
In conversation with the late Akbar Barakzai, a Balochi poet in exile who rejected an award from Pakistan Academy of Letters for his principles. Click here to read.
Jim Goodman, an American traveler, author, ethnologist and photographer who has spent the last half-century in Asia, converses with Keith Lyons. Click here to read.
InBridge over Troubled Waters, the late Sanjay Kumar tells us about Pandies, an activist theatre group founded by him that educates, bridging gaps between the divides of university educated and the less fortunate who people slums or terror zones. Click here to read.
In Lessons Old and New from a Stray Japanese Cat, Keith Lyons talks with the author of The Cat with Three Passports, CJ Fentiman who likes the anonymity loaned by resettling in new places & enjoys creating a space for herself away from her birthplace. Click hereto read.
Fiction
Aparichitaby Tagore: This short story has been translated as The Stranger by Aruna Chakravarti. Click hereto read.
Hena by Nazrul has been translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read.
Playlets byRabindranath Tagore: Two skits that reveal the lighter side of the poet. They have been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.
Abhagi’s Heaven, a poignant story by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.
An Eternal Void, a Balochi story by Munir Ahmed Badini translated by Fazal Baloch. Click hereto read.
The Witch, a short story by renowned Bengali writer Tarasankar Bandopadhyay (1898 to 1971), translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Clickhere to read.
I Grew into a Flute: Balochi Folktale involving magic retold by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Give Me A Rag, Please:A short story by Nabendu Ghosh, translated by Ratnottama Sengupta, set in the 1943 Bengal Famine, which reflects on man’s basic needs. Click here to read
Rakhamaninov’s Sonata: A short story by Sherzod Artikov, translated from Uzbeki by Nigora Mukhammad. Click hereto 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.
Khaira, the Blind, a story by Nadir Ali, has been translated from Punjabi by Amna Ali. Click here to read.
The Browless Dolls by S.Ramakrishnan, has been translated from Tamil by B Chandramouli. Click hereto read.
No Man’s Land: Sohana Manzoor gives us surrealistic story reflecting on after-life. Click hereto read.
The Protests Outside: Steve Ogah talks of trauma faced by riot victims in Nigeria. Click here to read.
Flash Fiction: Turret: Niles M Reddick relates a haunting tale of ghosts and more. 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 hereto read.
Does this Make Me a Psychic?; Erwin Coombs tells a suspenseful, funny, poignant and sad story, based on his real life experiences. Click here to read.
Phôs and Ombra: Paul Mirabile weaves a dark tale about two people lost in a void. Click here to read.
A Queen is Crowned: Farhanaz Rabbani traces the awakening of self worth. Click here to read.
Ghoom, Darjeeling, is almost 2.5 km above sea level. Standing in the rarified air of Ghoom, you can watch the Kanchenjunga turn gold as it gets drenched in the rays of the rising sun. The phenomenon lasts for a short duration. The white pristine peak again returns to its original colour blending and disappearing among the white cirrus clouds that flit in the sky. Over time, it’s shrouded by mists that hang over this region. The event is transitory and repeats itself on every clear morning like life that flits in and out of existence over and over again…
Witnessing this phenomenon feels like a privilege of a lifetime as is meeting people who shine brightly and unusually, like the Kanchenjunga, to disappear into mists all too early. One such person was the founder of pandies’ 1 who coordinated the pandies’ corner for Borderless Journal, the late Sanjay Kumar (1961-2025). The idea of starting this column was to bring out the unheard voices of those who had risen above victimhood to find new lives through the work done by pandies’. In his book, Performing, Teaching and Writing Theatre: Exploring Play, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, he described his scope of work which in itself was stunning. His work ranged from teaching to using theatre and play to heal railway platform kids, youngsters in Kashmir, the Nithari survivors and more — all youngsters who transcended the scars seared on them by violations and violence. We hope to continue the column in coordination with pandies’.
Another very renowned person whose art encompassed a large number of social concerns and is now lost to time was the artist, MF Husain (1915-2011). This issue of Borderless is privileged to carry an artwork by him that has till now not been open to the public for viewing. It was a gift from him to the gallerist, Dolly Narang, on her birthday. She has written nostlgically of her encounters with the maestro who walked bare-feet and loved rusticity. She has generously shared a photograph of the sketch (1990) signed ‘McBull’ — a humorous play on his first name, Maqbool, by the artist.
Drenched with nostalgia is also Professor Fakrul Alam’s essay, dwelling on more serious issues while describing with a lightness his own childhood experiences. Many of the nonfiction in this issue have a sense of nostalgia. Mohul Bhowmick recalls his travels to Bhutan. And Prithvijeet Sinha introduces as to a grand monument of Lucknow, Bara Imambara. Lokenath Roy takes us for a stroll to Juhu, dwelling on the less affluent side. Suzanne Kamata describes her source of inspiration for a few stories in her new book, River of Dolls and Other Stories. A darker hue is brought in by Aparna Vats as she discusses female infanticide. But a light sprays across the pages as Devraj Singh Kalsi describes how his feisty grandmother tackled armed robbers in her home. And an ironic tone rings out in the rather whimsical musing by Farouk Gulsara on New Year days and calendars.
Everyone was at each other's throats, insistent that the world was ending. But I felt differently, as though I were just beginning, or just beginning again…
Poets, like visionaries across time and cultures, often see hope where others see despair. And humour always has that hum of hope. In a lighter tone, Rhys Hughes makes one laugh or just wonder as he writes:
I once knew a waiter who jumped in alarm when I somersaulted across his restaurant floor after entering the front door on my way to my favourite table: he wasn’t able to control his nerves and the meal he was bearing ended up on the ceiling with people staring as it started to drip down.
Translations feature poetry. Lyrics of Nazrul (1899-1976) and Tagore (1861-1941) appear together in Professor Alam’s translations of their love songs from Bengali. He has also transcreated a Bengali poem by Jibananada Das (1899-1854). Profoundly philosophical lines by Atta Shad (1939-1997) in Balochi has been rendered to English by Fazal Baloch for his birth anniversary this month. Ihlwah Choi has translated his poem from Korean, taking up the poignant theme of transience of life. A Tagore poem called ‘Kheya (Ferry)’, inspired by his rustic and beautiful surroundings, has been brought to us in English.
Huge thanks to all our contributors, the Borderless team for all these fabulous pieces. Thanks to Gulsara, Kamata, Bhowmick and Sinha for the fabulous photography by them to accompany their writings. Heartfelt gratitude to Sohana Manzoor for her cover art and to Dutta for her artwork accompanying her poem. Without all your efforts, this issue would have been incomplete. And now, dear readers, thank you for being with us through this journey. I turn the issue over to all of you… there is more as usual than mentioned here. Do pause by our contents page.
pandies’ was started in 1987. It’s spelled with a small ‘p’ and the name was picked by the original team. Read more about pandies’ by clicking here. ↩︎
How can a 470-page long book turn into a page-turner when it is neither a historical novel nor a whodunit thriller that compels the reader to go on reading as quickly as he/she can? That too when it is a motley collection of twenty-six essays written on different occasions and on different topics for the last twenty-five years. The answer is of course Amitav Ghosh who can literally mesmerise his readers with his multi-faceted interests and subjects ranging from literature and language, climate change and the environment, human lives, travels, and discoveries. Divided into six broad sections, Ghosh clearly mentions in the Introduction that the pieces in this collection are about a wide variety of subjects, yet there is one thread that runs through most of them: of bearing witness to a rupture in time, of chronicling the passing of an era that began 300 years ago, in the eighteenth century. It was a time when the West tightened its grip over most of the world, culminating ultimately in the emergence of the US as the planet’s sole superpower and the profound shocks that began in 2001.
A subject very close to his heart and that is reflected in all the books that he has been writing over the last decade or more, the six essays of the first section are on “Climate Change and Environment.” Ghosh writes about different aspects of migration (both in the sub-continent and in Europe), about the storm in the Bay of Bengal, cyclones, the tsunami affecting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and about Ternate, the spice island in Indonesia. According to him, by knowing about anthropogenic greenhouse emissions and their role in intensifying climate disasters, it is no longer possible to cling to the fiction of there being a strict division between the natural and the political. Climate change and migration are, in fact, two cognate aspects of the same thing, in that both are effects of the ever-increasing growth and acceleration of processes of production, consumption and circulation.
According to Ghosh, each of the six essays in the second section entitled “Witnesses” grew out of the research he undertook for his four historical novels, The Glass Palace, and the Ibis Trilogy. All the essays in it “are attempts to account, in one way or another, for the recurrent absences and silences that are so marked a feature of India’s colonial history”. While looking for accounts written by Indian military personnel during the First World War, Ghosh came across two truly amazing books, both written in Bengali, on which three pieces in this section are based. The first of these books is Mokshada Devi’s Kalyan-Pradeep (‘Kalyan’s Lamp’; 1928), an extended commentary on the letters of her grandson, Captain Kalyan Mukherji, who was a doctor in the Indian Medical Service. The second, Abhi Le Baghdad (‘On to Baghdad’), is by Sisir Sarbadhikari, who was a member of the Bengal Ambulance Corps, and is based on his wartime journal. Both Mukherji and Sarbadhikari served in the Mesopotamian campaign of 1915-16; they were both taken captive when the British forces surrendered to the Turkish Army in 1916 after enduring a five-month siege in the town of Kut-al-Amara – the greatest battlefield defeat suffered by the British empire in more than a century. He also writes about how these two prisoners of war witnessed the Armenian genocide.
Regarding the exodus from Burma, Ghosh narrates the plight of one Bengali doctor, Dr. Shanti Brata Ghosh from whose diary (written in English) we are given incidents of events that are a striking contrast to British accounts of the Long March. What the doctor remembered most clearly were his conflicts with his white colleagues and his diary represents a personal assertion of the freedom that his nation’s hard-won independence had bestowed upon him.
Section Four entitled “Narratives” consists of three essays. Speaking about the etymology of the word ‘banyan’, and a short personal anecdote about 11 September 2001, we come to the essay from which the title of this collection – Wild Fictions – is taken. It shows us how the policies and administrative actions have divided landscapes between the ‘natural’ and the ‘social.’ Discussing several environmental issues related to the manner in which over many decades there has been a kind of ethnic cleansing of India’s forests and how the costs of protecting nature have been thrust upon some of the poorest people in the country, while the rewards have been reaped by certain segments of the urban middle class, Ghosh warns us why the exclusivist approach to conservation must be rethought. Before environmental catastrophe happens, we have to find some middle way, one in which the people of the forest are regarded not as enemies but as partners. The idea of an ‘untouched’ forest is none other than a wild fiction.
As mentioned in the beginning, Ghosh’s intellectual curiosity ranges from exploring themes of history, culture, colonialism, climate change and the interconnectedness of human and natural worlds and the readers will get a sample of these different topics in this rich collection. Over the years, we had read some of the essays in journals like Outlook, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Hindu, The Economic and Political Weekly, The Massachusetts Review, Conde NastTraveller and so on, and some of the articles have been the product of his detailed research before he commenced writing a novel. The five essays in the penultimate section titled “Conversations” begins with a long correspondence that Ghosh had with Dipesh Chakraborty via email after Provincilaizing Europe was published in 2000. The two never met personally as Chakraborty was in Australia at that time, but the exchanges between these two scholars on such wide-ranging issues is surely a reader’s delight. The pieces on Shashi Tharoor’s An Era of Darkness and Priya Satia’s Time’s Monster which were written as reviews also form parts of ongoing dialogue. As Ghosh states, Sattia’s work “has given me new ways of understanding the role that ideas like ‘progress’ have played in the gestation of this time of monsters”. In ‘Storytelling and the Spectrum of the Past’, we are told about the historians versus the novelists view of seeing and documenting themes.
The final and sixth section comprises of three pieces that were originally conceived as blogposts or presentations, accompanied by a succession of images – “the texts that accompany my presentations are scripts for performances rather than essays as such”. In the first one, Ghosh gives us new insights from his diary notes (the Geniza documents) about how he chose to study social anthropology and how In an Antique Land was made—about the Muslim predominance in the Arab village where he stayed and how he evaded the attempt at conversion. In a lecture he delivered at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Ghosh asks us to think back for a moment to the intellectual and historical context that led to the foundation of such institutions as the IITs, the IIMs and the outstanding medical institutions of contemporary India. He tells us how we cannot depend on machines alone to provide the solution to our social problems and talks about mercenaries, prisons, the hegemony of the Anglo-American power and how the empires kept close control over rights to knowledge. One of the great regrets of Ghosh’s life was that he never met A.K.Ramanujan and in the concluding essay of this section, he tells us how he considered Ramanujan to be “one of the foremost writers and intellectuals of the twentieth century and how one of the most important aspects of his work is the context from which it emerged.
In the introduction to this collection Ghosh wrote that we were now in a time between the ending of one epoch and the birth of another – ‘a time of monsters’, in the words of Antonio Gramsci. In the Afterword he mentions how the strange thing about this interstitial era is that it could also be described as a ‘time of benedictions’ in that it has suddenly become possible to contemplate, and even embrace, potentialities that were denied or rejected during the age of high modernity. He reiterates that it is the elevation of humans above all other species, indeed above the Earth itself, that is largely responsible for our current planetary crisis. “The discrediting of modernity’s anthropocentricism is itself a part of the ongoing collapse that we are now witnessing.” The only domains of human culture where doubt is held in suspension are poetry and fiction. Though it is not possible to discuss all other aspects that Ghosh deals with in this anthology as the purview of the review is rather limited, I would like to conclude it by quoting the last couple of sentences written by Ghosh himself when he categorically states: “High modernity taught us that the Earth was inert and existed to be exploited by human beings for their own purposes. In this time of angels, we are slowly beginning to understand that in order to hear the Earth, we must first learn to love it.”
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Somdatta Mandal is a critic and translator and a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.
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