Tag: Daisy Rockwell

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Contents

Borderless, October 2026

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Stories, Spooks, AIs and More…Click here to read.

Translations

Nazrul’s ‘Aamar Shyamla Boron Bangla Mar Roop’ (The Dusky Beauty of My Mother Bengal) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Who can Blow Out the Sun?, a Balochi poem by Ghulam Hussain Shohaz, has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Chapter 3 of Isa Kamari’s novel, The Throne, has been translated by the author from Malay. We will be running the whole novel as serial through the year. Click here to read.

Half-a-beat Behind, a poem, has been written by and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Pothik (Traveller), a poem by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

John Swain, Ananya S Guha, George Freek, Laila Brahmbhatt, Joseph C. Ogbonna, Ajeeti S, Anne Whitehouse, Ahaduzzaman M. Ali, Jenny Middleton, Jahnavi Gogoi, John Britten, Goutam Roy, Stephen House, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Curtains for You, Rhys Hughes takes on the persona of a lovelorn curtain. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Headwinds to Port Hedland

Meredith Stephens shares more sailing adventures around Australia with photographs by Alan Noble. Click here to read.

Watch your Words!

Jun A. Alindogan reflects on linguistic forays among people. Click here to read.

The Changing Face of Deolali

Saeed Ibrahim takes a nostalgic relook at a small hill station. Click here to read.

Luck and Life

Kuldip Raj Chopra muses on luck and life from a long-term perspective. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Bedsheet Bedlam, Devraj Singh Kalsi takes us shopping for bedding with a sprinkling of humour. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Art among the Fallen Leaves, Suzanne Kamata takes us on a fiesta of outdoor art in Japan. Click here to read.

Essays

Who can be the Modern Hero in the Age of AI?

Ravi Varmman K Kanniapan explores what values are needed while creating rules to survive with AI. Click here to read.

A Cyclist’s Diary: Ride through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

Farouk Gulsara cycles through the untamed landscape of Central Asia and shares his narrative and photographs from his trip. Click here to read.

Women Writers in Kazi Nazrul Islam’s ‘Dhumketu’

Niaz Zaman writes of Bengali women writers in Nazrul’s magazine in the last century. Click here on the link to read.

Stories

The Algorithms

Brindley Hallam Dennis explores a world run by algorithms. Click here to read.

Two Small Town Girls that Dressed Up for Wednesday

Jonathon Ferrini sprinkles a bit of magic to find hope. Click here to read.

Oasis

Sayan Sarkar shares a story set in Santiniketan. Click here to read.

The Oil-press Ox and the Ceremonial Bull

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives a fable set in Southern India. Click here to read.

Conversation

Keith Lyons converses with Dr Hannah Stevens, author of On the Bodies of Strangers and In their Absence. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from The Raj in Ghostly Light, edited by B.C.Dutt. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Janaki Ballav Patnaik: An Unfinished Memoir, translated from Odia by Bhaskar Parichha. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Geetanjali Shree’s Once Elephants Lived Here: Stories, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Teresa Rehman’s Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assam. Click here to read.

Farah Imam reviews Raina/Rituparna Khan’s Her Story: Beyond Dimension. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Reetika Khera’s Freebies or Rights: Rethinking India’s Social Policy. Click here to read.

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

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

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Editorial

Stories, Spooks, AIs and More…

Art by Salvador Dali (1904-1989). From Public Domain

Humans for a long time lived in a world that was centred around them. The planets, plants, animals existed to serve them. The resultant effect was not exactly what could be called ‘pleasant’. Climate change and extinctions are proof of that. One cannot of course be held responsible for the extinction of giant dinosaurs for they were long gone before us. Would we have existed in our current form if they had not become extinct?

Perhaps, part of evolution is extinction of the old and birth of the new. However, we are the only species to have used the planet to suit our own needs. We evolved technology. Technology birthed computers and eventually, artificial intelligence. Almost a century ago, Isaac Asimov spun out science fiction about robots terraforming worlds for men. In these novels, he had instituted the laws of robotics, so that they would not harm humans. His robots were humanoids with AI.

As humanity races towards a tech savvy existence with AI taking on roles which were essentially human tasks, perhaps, we have to ask ourselves some salient questions. Ravi Varmman K Kanniapan has voiced such valid concerns over the deployment of AI in his essay. He writes: “The question should not merely be whether artificial intelligence can make institutions faster, cheaper, or more productive. The deeper question is, for whom?”  While pondering over this issue, if we take a look at Farouk Gulsara’s experiences pedalling through Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan, one wonders if AI impacts the whole world or will it deepen divides between technocrats and people who live closer to nature! Sailing through the Australian seas, Meredith Stephens takes us on an adventure to Port Hedland. Her narrative is accompanied by beautiful photographs by Alan Noble.

While Suzanne Kamata introduces us to mores on the artistic ethos of Japan, Jun A Alindogan expresses concerns over linguistic forays. Saeed Ibrahim steps into nostalgia taking us to a tiny town called Deolali and Kuldip Raj Chopra muses philosophically gazing back and forth to reflect on life lessons. In a contrary vein, Devraj Singh Kalsi splashes comic frivolity as he describes his attempts at purchasing bedsheets!

Niaz Zaman has shared a learned essay on women writers in Nazrul’s magazine, Dhumketu (Comet), in the early twentieth century, while Professor Fakrul Alam has translated the lyrics of a song by the poet from Bengal. Fazal Baloch has brought to us a powerful Balochi poem by the late Ghulam Hussain Shohaz in English. Isa Kamari has shared the third chapter of his self-translated Malay novel, The Throne, weaving in life in the newly-minted Singapore of the mid-twentieth century. Ihlwha Choi has translated his own Korean poem on how he found poetry. Winding up the translations, is a poem by Tagore called Pothik (traveller). 

Poetry brings to us different aspects of existence. Goutam Roy reflects on children’s issues through an analogy with nature while Stephen House critiques how 585 trees would be cut in his area to give way to buildings. We have more variety in verses with John Swain, George Freek, Laila Brahmbhatt, Joseph C. Ogbonna, Ajeeti S, Anne Whitehouse, Ahaduzzaman M. Ali, Jenny Middleton, Jahnavi Gogoi, John Britten and Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal. Ryan Quinn Flanagan paints a vision of merry, swaying boats parked at sea with words. Ananya S Guha gives us a glimpse of the rain and misty ambience of Shillong. Rhys Hughes as usual wafts absurdity and humour by taking on the persona of a (male) curtain in love in rather a funny poem.

AI or rather algorithms are woven into a quirky fiction by Brindley Hallam Dennis. Sayan Sarkar shares a story reflecting the need for compassion while Jonathon B Ferrini sprinkles a bit of magic between a father and daughter in a poignant tale. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao weaves a fable with traditions of rural Southern India.

We have an interesting excerpt from a ‘The Brown Hand’, a spooky story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from The Raj in Ghostly Light, edited by B.C.Dutt. One has to realise while reading such stories that what is seen as a controversial attitude in today’s world could well have been an accepted norm a century or two ago. We have another excerpt from a more modern non-fiction — Bhaskar Parichha’s recent translation from Odia of Janaki Ballav Patnaik: An Unfinished Memoir. Describing the art of tattooing is yet another excerpt from a story by Hannah Stevens, a writer shortlisted for the W&A Working Class Writers’ Prize, which follows her conversation with Keith Lyons.

Short stories have wound their way into our reviews section too. Somdatta Mandal has discussed Geetanjali Shree’s Once Elephants Lived Here: Stories, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Mandal writes: “The book…presents a great challenge to the layman reader who cannot simply pick it up and start reading at leisure. One must read meticulously, ponder over the distortion of the usual short story genre, keep track of the convoluted or sometimes half-finished sentences and wonder where the narrator or the protagonist of the story is leading you – sometimes round and round and without reaching a denouement. All said and done, one must pick up this book to savour how post-modern storytelling can become an art in itself.” Rakhi Dalal has written about Teresa Rehman’s Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assam while Farah Imam elaborates on Raina/Rituparna Khan’s Her Story: Beyond Dimension. Parichha has brought to us Reetika Khera’s Freebies or Rights: Rethinking India’s Social Policy. He writes: “Freebies or Rights presents a case for seeing social protection not as charity, but as part of the infrastructure of a democratic society. Its central message is both simple and consequential: dignity cannot be secured by economic growth alone. For millions of Indians, it also depends on whether the state can make basic rights real in everyday life.”

Though we reflect on diverse themes in this issue, the collective concern is for the welfare of our species, our planet and our very existence, occasionally drizzled with humour.  Do pause by our contents page to browse on our October issue.

We are hugely grateful to all the contributors, our team who step in to help create the content and put it before all our readers, especially Sohana Manzoor for her wonderful artwork. We remain thankful to all our readers without who our efforts would be in vain.

Have a wonderful October!

Happy reading.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE CONTENTS FOR THE OCTOBER 2026 ISSUE

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Review

Once Elephants Lived Here by Geetanjali Shree

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Once Elephants Lived Here: Stories

Author: Geetanjali Shree

Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

Publisher: Penguin Random House India

When an author residing in India writes in Hindi and then gets translated into English by a foreigner who resides in the United States, the result is awesome. When Geetanjali Shree along with her translator Daisy Rockwell managed to secure the International Booker Prize in 2022 for the novel Tomb of Sand, the first thing that struck the readers is the exceptional stylistic experimentalism that made the book unique.  Now with this new publication entitled Once Elephants Lived Here, comprising of eleven short stories that covers a wide variety of themes, the first thing that draws our attention is how the author dismisses conventional storytelling patterns and unfurls before us entirely new ways of conceiving and presenting storytelling to the readers. Interestingly, the stories included here were published in Hindi way back in 2012, proving the fact that experimentalism is the author’s forte where there are layers of subtext and one often must grasp the unwritten meanings floating around the words and phrases.

 The titular story, ‘Once Elephants Lived Here’, is about the narrator and an old woman — about two generations –encompassing the destruction of an old city and it’s reconstruction. The topographical changes on both sides of the river remind one of the destructions after the Partition, and in the end the old woman is found literally and metaphorically dead on the bench. ‘These Days’ talks about the day before Holi, when there is a curfew and it is a period of community divide. A man sits quietly on the veranda of an old house belonging to his friend when he watches a shadow jump over the boundary wall and goes into the house to collect some things in a duffle bag. The twist of the tale comes in the end when he realises that it was his Muslim friend who had come as a shadow in order to break into his own house.

‘The End’ is a wonderful tale about an eighty-five-year-old unnamed patriarch of a house who after his retirement seems a misfit and annoys everyone with his behaviour and feels that giving orders is his birthright. The real twist in the tale comes after his death and the reaction of Ma, his wife. Another domineering grandfather is found in the story ‘And I Saw Myself Running’ where the grandson narrator, Raja, tells us about an out and out patriarch who worshipped Lord Shiva and played with snakes. The twist in the story comes when he suddenly passes on.

Middle-aged angst comes out clearly in ‘Out for a Spin’ where a woman spends all day compulsively walking in circles around her housing complex. She is a misfit of sorts, basically a loner who can’t communicate with anyone in the housing society. She gives us detailed observations about the different kinds of morning walkers but there is no introduction, no explanation, no denouement. In another story ‘So Much Sky’, a woman goes on a writer’s retreat, and in a pseudo-sci-fi turn of events, falls passionately in love with the sky. The other participants in the retreat are like robots. In ‘Butterflies’, a narrator staying in a cottage in Kerala is overwhelmed with the grief over past events but is surprised out of her self-indulgence by a mysterious group of young women who are either nurses or diabetes patients; she’s never sure which, but they come to the charity hospital to die. In most of the stories, plots break, sentences shatter midway, new words are formed, and new narrative structures are erected and felled.

The three final stories are set in Japan, which are spare and elegant and remind us of Japanese minimalist aesthetics. In ‘March, Ma and Sakura’, we have a mother who blooms with the cherry blossoms. In ‘Bulldozer’, a patient travelling on the Shinkansen train to Tokyo comes with her family for further treatment, narrates the sights and sounds she sees outside and is reminded how as a child she had complete faith that her Papa’s daily promise was true, and each day, she was convinced he would bring her a bulldozer. The last story in the collection is called ‘Fatigue’. It beautifully describes the ambience inside a Japanese graveyard built of gleaming grey stones and covered with offerings of bowls of water and vases full of flowers. The conversation between the nameless narrator and the visitor is interesting to read.

The book, therefore, presents a great challenge to the layman reader who cannot simply pick it up and start reading at leisure. One must read meticulously, ponder over the distortion of the usual short story genre, keep track of the convoluted or sometimes half-finished sentences and wonder where the narrator or the protagonist of the story is leading you – sometimes round and round and without reaching a denouement. All said and done, one must pick up this book to savour how post-modern storytelling can become an art in itself. The bond between the writer and the translator has worked out so nicely that one expects such collaborations in future as well.

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India.

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

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

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Contents

Borderless, October 2023

Artwork by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

We had Joy, We had Fun … Click here to read

Conversations

A conversation with Nazes Afroz, former BBC editor, along with a brief introduction to his new translations of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Tales of a Voyager (Jolay Dangay). Click here to read.

Keith Lyons converses with globe trotter Tomaž Serafi, who lives in Ljubljana. Click here to read.

Translations

Barnes and Nobles by Quazi Johirul Islam has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Cast Away the Gun by Mubarak Qazi has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

One Jujube has been written and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

A Hymn to an Autumnal Goddess by Rabindranath Tagore,  Amra Beddhechhi Kaasher Guchho ( We have Tied Bunches of Kaash), has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Gopal Lahiri, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Hawla Riza, Reeti Jamil, Rex Tan, Santosh Bakaya, Tohm Bakelas, Pramod Rastogi, George Freek, Avantika Vijay Singh, John Zedolik, Debanga Das, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry, and Rhys Hughes

In Do It Yourself Nonsense Poem, Rhys Hughes lays some ground rules for indulging in this comedic genre. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Onsen and Hot Springs

Meredith Stephens explores Japanese and Californian hot springs with her camera and narrative. Click here to read.

Kardang Monastery: A Traveller’s High in Lahaul

Sayani De travels up the Himalayas to a Tibetan monastery. Click here to read.

Ghosts, Witches and My New Homeland

Tulip Chowdhury muses on ghosts and spooks in Bangladesh and US. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Red Carpet Welcome, Devraj Singh Kalsi re-examines social norms with a scoop of humour. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Baseball and Robots, Suzanne Kamata shares how both these have shaped life in modern Japan. Click here to read.

Stories

The Wave of Exile

Paul Mirabile tells a strange tale started off by a arrant Tsunami. Click here to read.

Glimpses of Light

Neera Kashyap gives a poignant story around mental health. Click here to read.

The Woman Next Door

Jahanavi Bandaru writes a strange, haunting tale. Click here to read.

The Call

Nirmala Pillai explores different worlds in Mumbai. Click here to read.

Essays

The Oral Traditions of Bengal: Story and Song

Aruna Chakravarti describes the syncretic culture of Bengal through its folk music and oral traditions. Click here to read.

Belongingness and the Space In-Between

Disha Dahiya draws from a slice of her life to discuss migrant issues. Click here to read.

A City for Kings

Ravi Shankar takes us to Lima, Peru with his narrative and camera. Click here to read.

The Saga of a Dictionary: Japanese-Malayalam Affinities

Dr. KPP Nambiar takes us through his journey of making a Japanese-Malyalam dictionary, which started nearly fifty years ago, while linking ties between the cultures dating back to the sixteenth century. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Kailash Satyarthi’s Why Didn’t You Come Sooner?: Compassion In Action—Stories of Children Rescued From Slavery. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Coffee Rubaiyat. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Usha Priyamvada’s Won’t You Stay, Radhika?, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Click here to read.

Aditi Yadav reviews Makoto Shinkai’s and Naruki Nagakawa’s She and Her Cat, translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori. Click here to read.

Gemini Wahaaj reviews South to South: Writing South Asia in the American South edited by Khem K. Aryal. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews One Among You: The Autobiography of M.K. Stalin, translated from Tamil by A S Panneerselvan. Click here to read.

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Categories
Editorial

We had Joy, We had Fun…

Pre-historic cave painting in France

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a wonderful festive season!

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

[1] Wild long grass

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Review

Won’t You Stay, Radhika?

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Won’t You Stay, Radhika?

Author: Usha Priyamvada

Translator: Daisy Rockwell

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

In an essay written several years ago, the India-born Canadian author Uma Parameswaran had defined the plight of diasporic people by using the mythic metaphor of ‘Trishanku’ borrowed from the Ramayana where this character wanted to go to heaven alive but denied entry there, he was sent back and since then resided neither on earth nor in heaven but was suspended forever in an illusory middle space in-between. The state of diasporic individuals is somewhat similar; they are neither here nor there, and the present novel under review, published way back in 1967, brings out the angst of one such individual who, like the author Usha Priyamvada, herself went for higher studies to the United States and became the usual victim of culture shock. The only difference is that in real life Priyamvada stayed back in America and spent her long teaching career in universities there, whereas the protagonist of her novel Won’t You Stay, Radhika? went there only for a couple of years.

The storyline of the novel, originally written in Hindi, is rather simple. After her widowed father marries a younger woman called Vidya, Radhika’s world falls apart. She feels betrayed—the emotional and intellectual bond that she had forged with her father since the early death of her mother breaks with that sudden marriage. This is because their bond was not just emotional, but intellectual, as Radhika helped her father with his art history writing. To escape the unbearable situation at home—the growing rift between her and her father—Radhika fought for her personal freedom. Finding a simple way to avenge her father, she moved to Chicago along with an American teacher called Dan to pursue her master’s in fine arts. By leaving her father and going to live with Dan, Radhika had acquired several years of experience and matured quickly. But her living with Dan had only been a means to an end.

She returned to India two years later, burdened by a sense of alienation and homesickness, only to realise that while nothing had changed in her country, everything had. A growing sense of despair engulfed her. She started wondering whether she had a home anywhere. The family that she had longed to be reunited with barely acknowledged her arrival. The sense of belonging was missing, leaving her in ‘an emotional state of in-between-ness, of universal unbelonging’. As days pass, Radhika is paralysed with ennui, which is not just boredom. She avoids people, romance, family, as she lies still, or wanders listlessly through her neighbourhood. This sense of unbelonging tinges all her relationships—romantic or filial. So, she lies listlessly on her takht[1], bored, immobile, and uninspired.

This is not to say that Radhika is without love interests in the novel; after all there are three men in her life. She does not always feel detached from these men; there are many situations in the novel when we as readers feel that she has overcome her ambivalence or boredom or ennui, that she will start living a more meaningful life, but nothing positive takes place in the end. She seems to jell well with Akshay for a while and thinks probably she might marry him as there is no room in her life for a playboy. She wants a partner, someone steady, generous, someone who will accept her with all her flaws. But though she has great respect for him, she finally decides not to fall into the traditional trap of marriage. Akshay, like a traditional Indian male, also cannot subconsciously stop thinking about Radhika’s past. He feels confused as the more he wants to steer clear of Radhika, the more he feels she looms over his life. He also keeps on thinking about her past affairs with other men.

The other gentleman with whom Radhika had developed a relationship was Manish, who was diametrically opposite in nature to Akshay. They knew each other for a long time in many different contexts. Manish had also desired her, but Radhika had kept him at a distance. After several indecisive moments, she openly turned down his marriage proposal too, stating that she didn’t want to get involved again. Though she felt warmed by Manish’s touch, she did not turn to look at him. But Manish decided to wait till such time she changed her mind and voluntarily went to him. This ambivalence continues till the end of the novel, which Priyamvada leaves rather open-ended.

Though the title of the novel refers to a particular scene in the end when Radhika goes to meet her father once again and he wants his daughter to stay with him like before, that question mark hovers over the entire work: What will you do Radhika? Will you get up off the takht? Will this ennui ever come to an end? She was surprised at how her emotions had become so dull that she felt very little at all.

An extraordinary chronicler of the inner lives of the urban Indian woman, Usha Priyamvada is a pioneering figure in modern Hindi literature. Won’t You Stay, Radhika? written so many years ago, expertly explores the stifling and narrow-minded social ideals that continue to trap so many Indian women in the complex web of individual freedom, and social and familial obligation. A sense of alienation is also famous not only as a hallmark of Hindi literature of the 1960s, where it is usually traced to urbanization and the breakdown of traditional family structures, but also finds representation in Indian English novels too. Here one is reminded of Anita Desai’s famous novel Cry, the Peacock, published in 1963, that also delves deep into human emotion by focusing on topics like existential depression, psychological discontent, and the fragility of sanity as expressed through the female protagonist Maya. Though the theme of incompatibility and lack of understanding in marital life is one of the main themes of Desai’s novel, one notices a similarity of dealing with trapped feminine psyche in both the novels. Of course, reading the story of Priyamvada so many decades later, it seems nothing has changed in the Indian context and the situation in which the characters find themselves is equally true even today.

Before concluding, one must specifically put in a word of appreciation for the translation as well as the translator. On the first impression one is surely bound to think whether an American writer is the appropriate choice for translating a novel in Hindi. Apart from holding a PhD in South Asian literature from the University of Chicago and writing her doctoral dissertation on the Hindi author Upendranath Ashk, Daisy Rockwell has over the years to her credit translations of several Hindi authors including Usha Priyamvada’s debut novel Fifty-five Pillars, Red Walls (2021). But what brought her into limelight was her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (2018) which became the first novel translated from an Indian language to win the International Booker Prize in 2022.  Thus, apart from bringing this poignant Hindi novel to a new set of readers fifty-five years later, Rockwell’s expertise in translation makes one feel that this is not translated text at all. Though not a mystery thriller, her narrative skill makes the novel a definite page-turner and one will surely be tempted to finish reading it as fast as possible.

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[1] Bed

Somdatta Mandal, an academic critic and a translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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Review

Geetanjali Shree’s Mai

Rakhi Dalal reviews Geetanjali Shree’s Mai, Silently Mother, a Sahitya Akademi winning translation of the Hindi novel by Nita Kumar

Title: Mai, Silently Mother

Author: Geetanjali Shree, Translator: Nita Kumar

Publisher: Niyogi Books

To live in a South Asian country means to grow up with an absolute idea of a mother. A mother is always giving, nurturing, sacrificing and working. Her day begins and ends with looking after the household. In context with India, this notion also seems to be defined by the structures of caste and class. Although an opinion of her position, based upon the ideas imbedded in conscience, takes on different interpretations when seen broadly from the lenses of patriarchy or feminism. With the former, it is more of a responsibility or duty that is taken for granted and in many cases not even given a second thought. In the case of latter, it might be considered as oppression in some situations, where the mothers are deliberately subjugated into drudgery of family grind by the patriarchal structure.

Mai by Geentajali Shree presents to us the complexities brought about by the conflict between both of these ideas in a domestic realm. However more than that it compels us to think when we talk of a mother, exactly whose opinions are being discussed and whether we also explore it from the point of view of the mother herself.

It is the debut Hindi novel of the author and is centred on the world of a mother as observed by her daughter. The English translation of Mai by Nita Kumar had won Sahitya Academy Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award in 2001. Ret Samadhi by Geetanjali Shree, whose English translation Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell won International Booker this year, also has at its centre a mother.

Shree writes stories and novels in Hindi. Her much acclaimed novels Tirohit and Khali Jagah have also been translated into English. She has written a biography of Premchand in English and is also associated with theatre. Nita Kumar, the translator of Mai, is a Brown Family Professor of South Asian History at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California. She has also authored several books and is engaged in innovative education in Varanasi since 1990.

The household in Mai is a typical middle class in a small North-Indian town where the patriarch set the diktats rolling for a joint family. Governed by the binaries of outside and inside, the roles of each member are clearly defined. ‘Outside’ is a world to be conquered by the men whereas the confines within the house are to be looked after and cared for by the women. Three generations of a family living under the same roof offer resonance with confirmations and contradictions inherent to the structure they are bound by.

With this backdrop, the author successfully pulls strings to present an image closer to the familiar realities of such a household. Silently mother, the subtitle of Mai, is the identifier which Sunaina, the third generation daughter, associates with her mother. From her early childhood, she has watched her mother attending to the call of her family silently. Always bent, always working, from behind her purda, the mother seemed weak. Slowly however, and with much subtlety, Shree offers the reader certain glimpses into the character of silent Mai. Instances which, as Kumar suggests, mean that her silence does not equate with being speechless. At the most crucial points, we witness the mother speaking up for her children, even if it is only a single word or sentence is being uttered. She never questions their choices or decisions, thereby giving them freedom to get on with their own lives, something which makes them closer to her than to their father or grandparents.

The reader also finds that mother does have her own moments of joy when she retires at night to the bedroom she shares with her children, lets go off her veil and laughs at their jokes, when she appears in the forbidden courtyard humming a song or when she takes on the responsibility of entire house after her husband meets a tragic accident.  

For Sunaina and her brother Subodh however, her silence equates with oppression. They are obsessed with the idea of rescuing her from the fetters which they believe are afflicted upon her. So much so that it becomes the sole purpose of their lives. With passage of time, their mission nevertheless remains unaccomplished as they realise in frustration that their mother doesn’t need to be saved. It is only towards the end that they realise her strength and contribution in building their lives.

In the afterword, Kumar says, “We do not know ‘what’ mothers are, we do not know if a given mother is ‘fulfilled’ in what she does, or what else she ‘wants’. But we could progressively know whether to ask certain questions, how to ask some others, what any of them might imply, how to refrain from asking and retrack, how to pause and begin to comprehend little glimpses better. We could start evaluating silence differently from what we do in our dichotomous, rationalist world, like Subodh and Sunaina’s tells us to. We could question agency, strength and weakness anew.” 

With an impressive 50 page critique of Mai, the afterword is an added treat to the reader. Kumar writes on the matter of mother and looks at it from the point of history and anthropology. She discusses the challenges associated with the task of translation and her discourse engages the reader, bringing focus on her work which is done exceptionally well. 

This splendid novel by Geetanjali Shree, with its nuanced portrayal of sensibilities across class, gender and age, invites the reader to look closely into the preconceived as well as acquired notions around ‘mother’. It stresses profoundly that the mothers are not only made invisible by the veil which patriarchy forces upon them but also by the partial and opinionated understanding of their desires. Maybe if we try to catch the little glimpses better, we may start seeing her coming out of shadows.

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Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .

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