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Review

‘…Water is achromatic and otherwise called life…’

Book Review by Pradip Mondal

Title: Selected Poems

Author: Kiriti Sengupta

Publisher: Transcendent Zero Press (Texas)

Sir Philip Sidney, in his An Apology for Poetry, argues that the primary purpose of poetry is to “teach” and “delight”. Kiriti’s Sengupta’s Selected Poems serves both purposes though the poems do not preach at any point but leave the readers mulling over the ideas with the play of words. The book contains more than 125 poems, selected by Dustin Pickering, a writer and the founding editor of Transcedent Zero Press. The content covers an eclectic range of subjects—from personal musings to ecology, memory to myths and more — mostly republications from his earlier collections and some from journals.

An award-winning poet, publisher, editor, translator and critic, Sengupta believes himself twice-born as he states in his poem of the same name — ‘Twice Born’, written specially for this collection.  He has embraced the calling of a poet, forsaking the lucrative profession of a doctor. It’s not that he doesn’t vacillate: “The ink has dried on the paper; the pot can’t be refilled with scribbles. Do I now surrender my pen?” But poetry is his vocation; it would sound ludicrous if someone could ask a noted poet, “What if you weren’t a poet?”(“Intrinsic’)

There is a sense of flow in the poems despite his stylistic terseness. Water permeates his poetry. The poet believes: “…water is achromatic and otherwise called life.” As the poet is a deep observer of nature and its surroundings, he observes that water carries out its own duty: “Water has no call, no décor either; it floats the bone and/ the ash free.” In ‘Evening in Varanasi’, the poet assigns the water of the Ganges with exceptional qualities: “The water here is not/a fire extinguisher. /Flames rise through the water.” He connects the water to the Sun: “O Sun, I remember/I’ve bathed your feet/with the water of the Ganges”. ‘River of Tears and Mother’ airs the deep concern about the recalcitrance of those who ignore ecological issues: “Ganga has her stories to tell;/wish she had someone to listen to her.”

Ecological strains seep through Sengupta’s poems. In ‘The Pillars of Soil’, he draws a fine connection between human beings and trees through the image of the roots. The poet invokes a supreme spirit: “the world would need another maestro/who could sing for the seasoned flesh—/those who walked the earth—/whose roots ran deep into the ground”. In ‘Hibiscus’, he evocatively draws a curious connection between the colour of hibiscus flower and human blood: “…I’ll bloom/like a hibiscus:/the blush will endorse/my bloodline.” The epigraph of the poem, translated by Sengupta from a poem by the noted ‘rebellious’ Bengali poet, Sukanta Bhattacharya, re-enforces his stance.  

Concern for extreme air pollution in cities yields sardonic poetry: “Nature made the nasal frame fragile. /How do they breathe the vain air?” He also highlights pollution caused by plastics: “The earth has grown plastic. Water takes eons to seep”.

Some of Sengupta’s poems convey a sense of domesticity. “Clarity”deals with gastronomy as the poet succinctly invites the reader to succor ghee with all their five senses. In this piece, the poet reminisces about the aroma of ghee that his mother used to prepare. The poet here compares his mother’s organic ghee with his organic memory: “So organic is my memory—/the granular residue lifted us to heaven. /Ah! Pious Ghee, and incorrigible.”

In poems such as ‘Experience Personified’, the poet records his experience of the commonplace things: “Tiny droplets envelop my feet/and permeate the toes. /I don’t call it a feeling, I will name it/my experience”. It reminds a me of lines by Tagore: “But I haven’t beholden/what lies two steps away from my home/on a blade of paddy grain, a dazzling drop of dew”. Sengupta also doesn’t shy away from the recent happenings in India. In ‘The Untold Saga’, the poet recalls the abominable “Nirbhaya episode” and rues that, unlike Durga, Nirbhaya could not create an epic due to her untimely death.

The poet turns metaphysical – almost like John Donne[1]— when he asserts, “I now look beyond the flesh, bone and keratin, /I’ve been told/the finer body dwells undressed.” Though most of the poems are contemplative, the book offers some light-hearted ones too: “To my complete bewilderment, if the ghost appears, I’ve decided to offer it a chair first, and then I’ll plead, ‘Take a seat and relax! Let us share our stories.’” In ‘Gravity’, the poet offers a lighter note for the turbulence caused in the aircraft due to the inclement weather. He gives solace to his terrified son: “Relax, Bumps help us/ realize the earth.” In a haiku, punning on the word ‘wisdom’, the poet realises that it’s a test of a surgeon’s wisdom to pluck out a wisdom tooth (biologically called ‘the third molar’) of a patient.

Sengupta’s Selected Poems is a fabulous collection. These poems are like chosen seeds that contain intrinsic vigour to sprout through the age-old concrete floor, giving a message of hope in the face of all odds. Sengupta’s penetrating observations, coupled with his poetic prowess, can be vividly experienced by delving into the rich treasures hidden in between the covers.

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[1] John Donne (1572-1631), Metaphysical poet

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Pradip Mondal teaches at L. B. S. Govt. P. G. College Halduchaur, Nainital (India). He has been published in journals like Suburban Witchcraft (Serbia), Muse India (India), and Indi@logs (Spain).

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Editorial

Storms that Rage

Storm in purple by Arina Tcherem. From Public Domain

If we take a look at our civilisation, there are multiple kinds of storms that threaten to annihilate our way of life and our own existence as we know it. The Earth and the human world face twin threats presented by climate change and wars. While on screen, we watch Gaza and Ukraine being sharded out of life by human-made conflicts over constructs made by our own ‘civilisations’, we also see many of the cities and humankind ravaged by floods, fires, rising sea levels and global warming. Along with that come divides created by economics and technology. Many of these themes reverberate in this month’s issue.

From South Australia, Meredith Stephens writes of marine life dying due to algal growth caused by rising water temperatures in the oceans — impact of global warming. She has even seen a dead dolphin and a variety of fishes swept up on the beach, victims of the toxins that make the ocean unfriendly for current marine life. One wonders how much we will be impacted by such changes! And then there is technology and the chatbot taking over normal human interactions as described by Farouk Gulsara. Is that good for us? If we perhaps stop letting technology take over lives as Gulsara and Jun A. Alindogan have contended, it might help us interact to find indigenous solutions, which could impact the larger framework of our planet. Alindogan has also pointed out the technological divide in Philippines, where some areas get intermittent or no electricity. And that is a truth worldwide — lack of basic resources and this technological divide.

On the affluent side of such divides are moving to a new planet, discussions on immortality — Amortals[1] by Harari’s definition, life and death by euthanasia. Ratnottama Sengupta brings to us a discussion on death by choice — a privilege of the wealthy who pay to die painlessly. The discussion on whether people can afford to live or die by choice lies on the side of the divide where basic needs are not an issue, where homes have not been destroyed by bombs and where starvation is a myth, where climate change is not wrecking villages with cloudbursts.  In Kashmir, we can find a world where many issues exist and violences are a way of life. In the midst of such darkness, a bit of kindness and more human interactions as described by Gower Bhat in ‘The Man from Pulwama’ goes some way in alleviating suffering. Perhaps, we can take a page of the life of such a man. In the middle of all the raging storms, Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in a bit of humour or rather irony with his strange piece on his penchant for syrups, a little island removed from conflicts which seem to rage through this edition though it does raise concerns that affect our well-being.

The focus of our essays pause on women writers too. Meenakshi Malhotra ponders on Manottama (1868), the first woman-authored novel in Bengali translated by Somdatta Mandal whereas Bhaskar Parichha writes on the first feminist Odia poet, Bidyut Prabha Devi.

Parichha has also reviewed a book by another contemporary Odia woman author, Snehaprava Das. The collection of short stories is called Keep it Secret. Madhuri Kankipati has discussed O Jungio’s The Kite of Farewells: Stories from Nagaland and Somdatta Mandal has written about Chhimi Tenduf-La’s A Hiding to Nothing, a novel by a global Tibetan living in Sri Lanka with the narrative between various countries. We have an interview with a global nomad too, Neeman Sobhan, who finds words help her override borders. In her musing on Ostia Antica, a historic seaside outside Rome, Sobhan mentions how the town was abandoned because of the onset of anopheles mosquitos. Will our cities also get impacted in similar ways because of the onset of global ravages induced by climate change? This musing can be found as a book excerpt from Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome, her book on her life as a global nomad. The other book excerpt is by a well-known writer who has also lived far from where he was born, MA Aldrich. His book, From Rasa to Lhasa: The Sacred Center of the Mandala is said to be “A sweeping, magnificent biography—which combines historical research, travel-writing and discussion of religion and everyday culture—Old Lhasa is the most comprehensive account of the fabled city ever written in English.”

With that, we come to our fiction section. This time we truly have stories from around the globe with Suzanne Kamata sending a story set in the Bon festival that’s being celebrated in Japan this week for her column. From there, we move to Taiwan with C. J. Anderson-Wu’s narrative reflecting disappearances during the White Terror (1947-1987), a frightening period for people stretched across almost four decades.  Gigi Gosnell writes of the horrific abuse faced by a young Filipino girl as the mother works as a domestic helper in Dubai. Paul Mirabile gives us a cross-cultural narrative about a British who opts to become a dervish. While Hema R touches on women’s issues from within India, Sahitya Akademi Award Winner, Naramsetti Umamaheshwararao, writes a story about children.

We have a powerful Punjabi story by Ajit Cour translated by C.Christine Fair. Our translations host two contemporary poets who have rendered their own poems to English: Angshuman Kar, from Bengali and Ihlwha Choi, from Korean. Snehaprava Das has brought to us poetry from Odia by Aparna Mohanty. Fazal Baloch has translated ‘The Scarecrow’, a powerful Balochi poem by Anwar Sahib Khan. While Tagore’s Shaishabshandha (Childhood’s Dusk) has been rendered to English, Nazrul’s song questing for hope across ages has been brought to us by Professor Fakrul Alam.

Professor Alam has surprised us with his own poem too this time. In August’s poetry selection, Ron Pickett again addresses issues around climate change as does Meetu Mishra about rising temperatures. We have variety and colour brought in by George Freek, Heath Brougher, Laila Brahmbhatt, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Snigdha Agrawal, William Miller, Ashok Suri, Scott Thomas Outlar, Dustin P Brown, and Ryan Quinn Flanagan. Rajorshi Patranabis weaves Wiccan lore of light and dark, death and life into his delicately poised poetry. Rhys Hughes has also dwelt on life and death in this issue. He has shared poems on Wales, where he grew up— beautiful gentle lines.

 In spring warm rain will crack
the seeds of life: tangled
roots will grow free again. 

('Tinkinswood Burial Chamber' by Rhys Hughes)

With such hope growing out of a neolithic burial chamber, maybe there is hope for life to survive despite all the bleakness we see around us. Maybe, with a touch of magic and a sprinkle of realism – our sense of hope, faith and our ability to adapt to changes, we will survive for yet another millennia.

We wind up our content for the August issue with the eternal bait for our species — hope. Huge thanks to the fantastic team at Borderless and to all our wonderful writers. Truly grateful to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork and many thanks to all our wonderful readers for their time…

We wish you all a wonderful reading experience!

Gratefully,

Mitali Chakravarty.

borderlessjournal.com

[1] Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2015) by Yuval Noah Harari

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Click  here to access the contents for the August 2025 Issue

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Review

An Insider’s Perspective on Climate Science

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

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.

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Categories
Slices from Life

From Cape Canaveral to Carnarvon

Narrative by Meredith Stephens & photographs by Alan Noble

The Prime Meridian Line.

Whenever we visit another city, Alex and I always head straight for a science or maritime museum. When we spent a day in London several years ago, Alex insisted that we visit the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and then the Royal Observatory. The highlight of the latter was John Harrison’s marine timekeepers, which made the calculation of longitude at sea possible, therefore making navigation safer. A fun part of visiting the Observatory was standing on either side of the Prime Meridian Line, which defines zero longitude and divides the eastern and western hemispheres of the earth. If you are facing north, the person on the left is in the western hemisphere, and the person to the right is in the eastern hemisphere. We had to queue behind other couples to stand either side of the line. The couple in front of us were taking an inordinate amount of time to have their photo taken here, from which global time is calculated.

“Time’s up!” quipped someone behind us.

“What’s time?” came a philosophical comment from someone else.

The quick banter between strangers is one of the many reasons why I love visiting London.

During our short stay we devoted hardly any time to visiting any other tourist sites. The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace held little allure. After visiting the Royal Observatory, we strolled past the historic British clipper ship “Cutty Sark” and then caught a ferry back from Greenwich to Central London. We briefly hopped off to see the Houses of Parliament, but after having visited the Royal Observatory Alex’s curiosity was sated.

Fast forward to March 2025 and we found ourselves in a remote town in Western Australia called Carnarvon. The first attraction Alex wanted to visit was the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum. Carnarvon has a little-known relationship to Cape Canaveral in Florida. Many people have heard of Cape Canaveral and its rocket launching site, but who has heard of the not dissimilar-sounding town of Carnarvon?

Unlike the grand public museums in Western Australia, this one is self-funded and run by volunteers. NASA established a tracking station at Carnarvon in 1964, which played a critical role for both the Gemini and Apollo programs. Carnarvon was strategically located as the most distantly located site on the earth diametrically opposite from Cape Canaveral, providing the ability to track spacecraft over the Indian Ocean that were out of range from Cape Canaveral. The most famous launch was Apollo 11 in July 1969, which achieved humanity’s dream of landing humans on the Moon and safely returning them to Earth.

Radio Astronomy Dish
Apollo 11 Lunar Lander Module (replica)
Exhibits at Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum

This museum was different from public museums in that when we visited it was managed by a grey nomad couple from the east coast. (“grey nomad” is an Aussie term for retirees who embark on an extended period of travel around the country, usually in a caravan.) A resident cat curled himself into a ball proudly on the reception desk. It was the only museum we visited in Western Australia that required a fee to enter. The first experience we sought was to hop in the replica of the Apollo capsule to get a feel for the astronauts during the July 1969 launch. I was worried about a panic attack coming on in a confined space but the manager assured me that he would open the door to let me out at any time if I felt uncomfortable. We lay down with the lower half of our bodies propped up on a platform in what we hoped was an astronaut launching posture, while footage from the 1969 launch played out on the screen in front of us. Countdown on the screen was followed by lift-off. Not only did I not have a panic attack, it felt exhilarating to be transported to Cape Canaveral in 1969. Having watched this on black and white television when we were in primary school, it was all the more meaningful to watch it as adults. After touring the rest of the museum, we returned to the Apollo capsule to experience it a second time, like the space nerds we were.

We braced ourselves to face the oppressive heat as we headed outside to view the original satellite dish. Rather than languishing as ancient technology the dish has been leased to an overseas company who were upgrading it to track satellites orbiting Earth.

After viewing numerous 1960s space memorabilia, such as a replica of a Gemini capsule, which had preceded the Apollo series of capsules, and a life-sized replica of the lunar lander module, we bought some tourist T-shirts, chatted with the manager couple, and bade farewell to the resident cat. This was the most thrilling of the magnificent museums we visited in Western Australia. Thanks to Alex, we had a bias to visit maritime museums, including The WA Maritime Museum in Fremantle, The Museum of Geraldton, and The WA Shipwrecks Museum. They provided rich accounts of the many arrivals from distant lands to the west Australian shores since Dutchman Dirk Hartog’s nearby landing at Shark Bay in 1616. All visits were immensely educational and informative, but somehow the less glamorous Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum stood out. Unlike the public museums, it was somewhat ramshackle, but this was more than made up for in terms of authenticity and charm. Who would have thought that this outpost in regional Western Australia that even many Australians have not heard of, could have played such a pivotal role in the tracking of Apollo 11? This museum enjoys none of the fame of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, but the role it played in history is just as moving.

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Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her recent work has appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal, Continue the Voice, Micking Owl Roost blog, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, and Mind, Brain & Education Think Tank. In 2024, her story Safari was chosen as the Editor’s Choice for the June edition of All Your Stories.

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Poetry

Poetry by Allan Lake

Allan Lake 
ON EARTH

Such a nice, perhaps one-of-a-kind, planet. 
Spacious. Water, oxygen, fertile earth. 
Let’s simply name it after what it is. 
Look at that waterfall, taste it, take a cold 
shower. You wouldn’t want to be anyone 
or anywhere else. Build shelter, pick fruit, 
grow food then share it with neighbours, 
invent language so you can compete with 
birds that make poems and songs to express 
the wonder of it all and praise Mother Nature 
and their luck for having survived arrival.
You have never seen anywhere else except 
this generous plain but, surely, this must be 
a paradise without one flaw.

Allan Lake, originally from Canada, has lived in Saskatoon, Cape Breton Island, Ibiza, Tasmania, and Melbourne, Australia. His latest chapbook of poems, My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press. Such journals as The Hong Kong Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, New Philosopher and The Fabians Review have published his poems.  

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Contents

Borderless, May 2025

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

“Imagine all the people/ Living life in peace”… Click here to read.

Translations

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

Arise O Woman and Two Flowers on One Leafstalk, lyrics by Nazrul, have been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Five poems by Bipin Nayak have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das. Click here to read.

Identity by Munir Momin has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

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

Asha or Hope by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Ryan Quinn Flangan, Jim Bellamy, Snehprava Das, George Freek, Niranjan Aditya, Christine Belandres, Ajeeti S, Ron Pickett, Kajoli Krishnan, Stuart McFarlane, Snigdha Agrawal, Arthur Neong, Elizabeth Anne Pereira, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Did He Ever?, Rhys Hughes gives fun-filled verses on Lafcadio Hearn, a bridge between the East and West from more than a hundred years ago. Click here to read.

Musings/ Slices from Life

Will Dire Wolves Stalk Streets?

Farouk Gulsara writes of genetic engineering. Click here to read.

The Boy at the Albany Bus Stop

Meredith Stephens dwells on the commonality of human emotions. Click here to read.

The Word I Could Never Say

Odbayar Dorj muses on her own life in Mongolia and Japan. Click here to read.

Social Media Repetition

Jun A. Alindogan discusses the relevance of social media. Click here to read.

Shanghai in Jakarta

Eshana Sarah Singh takes us to Chinese New Year celebrations in Djakarta. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In My Writing Desk, Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of the source of his inspiration. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Feeling Anxious in Happy Village, Suzanne Kamata relates a heartwarming story. Click here to read.

Essays

Reminiscences from a Gallery: The Other Ray

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

This Garden Calls Out to Me: A Flaneur in Lucknow’s Sikandar Bagh

Prithvijeet Sinha takes us back to a historical landmark, made for love but bloodied by war. Click here to read.

Stories

Going to Meet the Hoppers

Fiona Sinclair writes a layered story on human perspectives. Click here to read.

The Ritual of Change

Parnika Shirwaikar explores the acceptance of change. Click here to read.

The Last Metro

Spandan Upadhyay explores the spirit of the city of Kolkata. Click here to read.

Nico Finds His Dream

Paul Mirabile narrates how young Nico uncovers his own yearnings. Click here to read.

The Bequest

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives a story reflecting a child’s lessons from Nature. Click here to read.

Conversation

Ratnottama Sengupta introduces and converses with photographer, Vijay S Jodha. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Devabrata Das’s One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam, translated by multiple translators from Assamese. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Ryan Quinn Flangan’s Ghosting My Way into the Afterlife. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Arundhathi Nath‘s translation, The Phantom’s Howl: Classic Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings from Bengal. Click here to read.

Andreas Giesbert reviews Rhys Hughes’ The Devil’s Halo. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Aubrey Menen’s A Stranger in Three Worlds: The Memoirs of Aubrey Menen. Click here to read.

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

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Categories
Editorial

“Imagine all the people/Living life in peace”

God of War by Paul Klee (1879-1940)
The sky weeps blood, the earth cannot contain
The sorrow of the young ones we've slain.
How now do dead kids laugh while stricken by red rain?

— from Stricken by Red Rain: Poems by Jim Bellamy

When there is war
And peace is gone
Where is their home?
Where do they belong?

— from Poems on Migrants by Kajoli Krishnan

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.

As prose weaves humanity together, so does poetry. We have poems from Jim Bellamy and Kajoli Krishnan both reflecting the impact of war and senseless violence on common humanity. Ryan Quinn Flanagan introduces us to Canadian bears in his poetry while Snigdha Agrawal makes us laugh with her lines about dogs and hatching Easter eggs! We have a wide range of poems from Snehprava Das, George Freek, Niranjan Aditya, Christine Belandres, Ajeeti S, Ron Pickett, Stuart McFarlane, Arthur Neong and Elizabeth Anne Pereira. Rhys Hughes concludes his series of photo poems with the one in this issue — especially showcasing how far a vivid imagination can twist reality with a British postman ‘carrying’ sweets from India! His column, laced with humour too, showcases in verse Lafcadio Hearn, a bridge between the East and West from more than a hundred years ago, a man who was born in Greece, worked in America and moved to Japan to even adopt a Japanese name.

Just as Hearn bridged cultures, translations help us discover how similarly all of us think despite distances in time and space. Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s concerns about climate change and melting icecaps does just that! Professor Fakrul Alam’s translation of Nazrul’s lyrics from Bengali on women and on the commonality of human faith also make us wonder if ideas froze despite time moving on. Tagore’s poem titled Asha (hope) tends to make us introspect on the very idea of hope – just as we do now. At a more personal level, a contemporary poem reflecting on the concept of identity by Munir Momin has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. From Korean, Ihlwah Choi translates his own poem about losing the self in a crowd. We start a new column on translated Odia poetry from this month. The first one features the exquisite poetry of Bipin Nayak translated by Snehprava Das. Huge thanks to Bhaskar Parichha for bringing this whole project to fruition.

Parichha has also drawn bridges in reviews by bringing to us the memoirs of a man of mixed heritage, A Stranger in Three Worlds: The Memoirs of Aubrey Menen. Andreas Giesbert from Germany has reviewed Rhys Hughes’ The Devil’s Halo and Somdatta Mandal has discussed Arundhathi Nath’s translation, The Phantom’s Howl: Classic Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings from Bengal. Our book excerpts this time feature Devabrata Das’s One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam, translated by multiple translators from Assamese and Ryan Quinn Flangan’s new book, Ghosting My Way into the Afterlife, definitely poems worth mulling over with a toss of humour.

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!

Let’s hope for peace, love and sanity!

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents page for the May 2025 Issue

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

Categories
Musings

Will Dire Wolves Stalk Streets?

Farouk Gulsara ponders over trends in scientific research which makes controversial claims about reviving extinct species…

Dire wolves. From Public Domain

Life evolves. The new replaces the old, and fresh ideas overshadow previous ones. What was once an avant-garde style one day may appear unattractive the next. We sometimes feel embarrassed by the clothes we wear and the trends we embrace decades after models showcased them on the catwalk.

Trends come and go constantly. Species become extinct at a background rate of one species per million each year. Human activities, such as habitat destruction and chemical pollution, have accelerated this decline by hundreds or thousands of times. 

At times, cataclysmic accidents of Nature expedite this decline, such as meteoritic impacts and the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Neanderthals lost the survival game to Homo sapiens because they did not adapt to environmental demands, though not without infusing their DNA into the latter. Should we consider this an inevitable consequence of our existence, or should we strive to rectify it with our current level of scientific advancement?

It was recently reported that a rare species of wolf, the dire wolf, last roamed the Earth 13,000 years ago. Three dire wolves have been recreated using CRISPR technology[1] and surrogacy, allowing them to roam the Earth once more. Part of their DNA was extracted from an ancient fossil and transplanted into an artificial grey wolf egg. The grey wolf differs genetically from the dire wolf and is related to the domesticated dog. Dire wolves were fierce apex predators that existed before humans, when the world was a much more hostile place.

The scientists who embarked on this experiment thought it was a necessary first step towards preventing further species extinction. Their next objectives include recreating the dodo bird, which humans hunted to extinction due to its ease of capture, and the Tasmanian tiger. Scientists are particularly fascinated by Tasmanian tigers because they belong to a rare group of marsupials mainly found in Australasia. Additionally, rats with woolly mammoth genes are also being developed in laboratories somewhere.

Are these all really necessary? On one hand, humans pose the greatest threat to all living beings. We not only kill each other but also other species to assert our dominance. Our mere existence on Earth leaves a significant carbon footprint, which could potentially destroy the planet before its expiration date. Logically, we are a greater threat to the species than Nature’s natural selection. We should not exist at all. We only expedite doomsday. Yet, we carry the notion that the burden of preserving the third rock from the Sun for eternity lies squarely upon our shoulders.

A real example of the danger of our manipulation of Nature’s order can be seen in our irritation with pathogenic insects.  DDT[2] was introduced to control mosquitoes. We believed we were doing a great service by reducing arthropod-borne diseases, only to realise the crucial roles insects play in pollination and, by extension, our food chain. Rachel Carson’s [3]now-famous 1962 line, “the spring with no chirping birds”, serves as a grim reminder of Nature’s intricate web of interdependency and the detrimental effects of chemical pesticides. Every being has a specific role in the grand scheme of things.

Wolves regulate the overpopulation of large herbivores, such as elk and deer, which helps maintain plant health and diversity. Mosquitoes and many other insects may be pests, but they are also essential for plant pollination and are integral to the food chain that helps balance the ecosystem. Dodos and Tasmanian tigers may have had their significance at one time. Nature, the greater equaliser, must have its reasons for ending its existence. To act against Nature, to correct something we perceive as wrong, is foolhardy.

Hollywood offers a fictional reminder, as was seen in Jurassic Park, of what occurs when humanity meddles with Nature, regardless of how thoroughly we believe we have crossed the ‘t’s and dotted the ‘i’s. The seed of life possesses a mind of its own. Its innate drive to propagate may lead to the creation of dangerous hybrids, mutants, and chimaeras or even result in hermaphrodites within species to ensure continuity. 

Even before the dire wolves’ secret whereabouts are made public, Elon Musk has already expressed his desire to have one as a pet. This shows that these freak products will just end up as rich men’s playthings. It is unlikely that this technology will significantly change the day-to-day life of the average person. The tech moguls may view these baby steps as precursors to transhumanism, a better version of humanity, where human capabilities are enhanced synthetically through technology, bypassing Nature’s selection.

Anyway, the last thing we want to see in our lifetimes is new breeds of vicious, ferocious dire wolves joining forces with woolly-toothed mice and bloodthirsty Tasmanian tigers in our streets, searching for us as food in a borderless world as far as these beasts can see.

From Public Domain

 

[1] CRISPR technology, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is a gene-editing technique.

[2] Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, is a synthetic chemical compound that was once widely used as an insecticide and a key component in malaria control efforts.

[3] Rachel Louise Carson (1907-1964), Marine Biologist, whose books addressed conservation.

References and Notes:

1. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/paleontology/extinction-over-time

2. https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/

3. https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/CRISPR

4. https://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/ddtgen.pdf

5. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

6. Transhumanism is a philosophical and scientific movement that advocates the use of current and emerging technologies, such as genetic engineering, cryonics, artificial intelligence (AI), and nanotechnology, to enhance human capabilities and improve the human condition.

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Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.

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

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
World Poetry Day

Raindrops, Roses and Pandas…

Art by Sohana Manzoor

World Poetry Day falls in March — the same month that houses the World Wildlife Day. Our beautiful planets’ flora and fauna, impacted by the changing climate, might have to adapt or alter. Part of the land masses are likely to return to rest under rising tides. And humanity, how will we respond or survive these phenomena?

We have here responses in poetry from our newly-minted section on Environment and Climate. We celebrate with poetry on our home and hearth, the Earth.

From Public Domain

We start with poetry on fires that seems to have razed large parts of our planet recently…

Fires in Los Angeles by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal. Click here to read.

Wildfires in Uttarakhand by Gazala Khan. Click here to read.

Hot Dry Summers, covering the fires in Australia, by Lizzie Packer. Click here to read.

We move on to more extreme weather phenomenons like heatwaves, droughts and floods.

Extreme Drought or California Dreaming by Ron Picket. Click here to read.

Hurricane Laura’s Course by Jane Hammons. Click here to read

This Heatwave by John Grey. Click here to read.

This Island of Mine by Rhys Hughes. Click here to read.

And yet some weep for things we take for granted, for the pollution and the rapacity exhibited by our species.

Unanswered by Vernon Daim. Click here to read.

Under the Rock Crags by Peter Magliocco. Click here to read.

The New Understanding by Peter Cashorali. Click here to read.

Art by Gita Viswanath

Meanwhile, we continue to want to celebrate nature as we did of yore…and some just do continue to turn to it for inspiration.

Eco Poetry by Adriana Rocha. Click here to read.

Green by Mark Wyatt. Click here to read.

Sunrise from Tiger Hill by Shamik Banerjee. Click here to read.

Whistle & Fly by Shaza Khan. Click here to read.

Seeds Fall to the Ground by Ryan Quinn Flanagan. Click here to read.

Quietly by Ashok Suri. Click here to read.

Carnival of Animals by Rhys Hughes. Click here to read.

Categories
Editorial

Celebrating Borderless… Five Years and Counting…

Emerging by Sybil Pretious

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.

Adding to the wealth of our newly minted climate and environment section are poems by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal on the LA fires, Green by Mark Wyatt and Ecopoetry by Adriana Rocha in our March issue. We also have poetry on life in multiple hues from Kiriti Sengupta, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Snehaprava Das, Stuart McFarlane, Arshi Mortuza, George Freek, Ahmad Al-Khatat, Jyotish Chalil Gopinathan, Michael Burch, Bibhuti Narayan Biswal, Owais Farooq and Rakhi Dalal. Tongue-in-cheek humour in poetry is Rhys Hughes forte and he brings us just that in his sign poem.

 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. 

Our fiction truly take us around the world with Paul Mirabile giving us a story set Scotland and Naramsetti Umamaheswararao giving us a fable set in a Southern Indian forest. Swati Basu Das takes us on an adventure with Peruvian food while sitting by the Arabian Sea. Munaj Gul gives a heart-rending flash fiction from Balochistan. And Zoé Mahfouz shares a humorous vignette of Parisian life, reflecting the commonality of felt emotions.

Celebrating the wonders of the nature, is a book excerpt from Frank S Smyth’s The Great Himalayan Ascents. While the other excerpt is from Hughes’ latest novel, The Devil’s Halo, described as: ‘A light comedy, a picaresque journey – like a warped subterranean Pilgrim’s Progress.’ We have reviews that celebrate the vibrancy of humanity. Bhaskar Parichha writes of Sandeep Khanna’s Tempest on River Silent: A Story of Last 50 Years of India, a novel that spans the diversity that was India. Malashri Lal reviews Rachna Singh’s Raghu Rai: Waiting for the Divine, a non-fiction on the life and works of the famous photographer. Somdatta Mandal discusses two book by Tsering Namgyal Khortsa reflecting the plight of Tibetan refugees, a non-fiction, Little Lhasa: Reflections in Exiled Tibet and a fiction, Tibetan Suitcase.

One of features that we love in Borderless is that language draws no barriers — that is why we have translations by Professor Alam of Jibananada’s short poems on the impact of war on the common masses. We have a small vignette of Korea from Ihlwha Choi’s self-translated poem. And we have a translation of Tagore’s verses invoking the healing power of spring… something that we much need.

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.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents page for the March 2025 issue

Happy Birthday Borderless… Click here to read.

Vignettes from a Borderless World… Click here to read a special fifth anniversary issue.