Tag: Earth

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Editorial

Dancing in May?

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

Annette Wynne (Early twentieth century)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wish you a lovely month.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Categories
Musings

Us vs Them

By Shivani Agrawal

The best example of escaping reality comes alive in our relationship with the environment. Its pervasiveness and service to us at all times at no cost, makes it one of the most granted entities in human affairs. The sheer ease, simplicity and inconspicuousness with which it surrounds us makes it terribly easy for us to not notice it. Even our day to day seemingly harmless acts like drinking from thermocol glasses and reckless usage and disposal of plastic carry bags go a long way in affecting the dynamics of environment, at least, within our local limits.

Recently, I had a revelatory moment. It was a thing so simple yet it struck me after such a long time and much intellectual struggle. I was having tea at one of the tea stalls near my university. Sitting on a chair, by myself, I was enjoying my free space. Just then, a few birds (common mynahs and jungle babblers to be particular) came near me, chirping loudly (read irritatingly for me) hoping for some fallen crumbs for their food. However, I was a little more open-hearted and threw some pieces of snacks I had bought. Needless to say, they ate them hungrily. I continued the process and the birds left no chance to leave their share.  Soon after, another group of men sitting near me started throwing pieces of their snacks a little further away to two opposing groups of birds. As soon as the pieces were thrown to them, they would squeak loudly and fought with each violently to get hold of the titbits. This whole procedure was irritating as well as amusing.

Their noise irritated me. I felt as if the birds did not want to let us enjoy our tea siesta in peace and were determined to spoil every minute of it by creating a ruckus with their banter. However, after a moment, it struck me that maybe it was not they who were trespassing their space but we were who were encroaching on theirs. I realised that if we look around carefully, there seem to be very few places that we have left for these biological friends of ours. With our endless, large-scale, and unplanned constructions and lifestyles, there are hardly free spaces anymore where they can nest.

We have not left spaces for them where they can fend for and take care of themselves comfortably and find their ways out; places where their food would be available easily, sufficient ground to hop and skip and jump, habitats where they could build their homes and protect their young ones. They need spaces where they could grow and live comfortably and not be tress passers all the time. The earth belongs as much to them as us.

The earth has been inhabited by human beings in a hegemonic and an insensitive fashion. The living styles of humans have been conceived in such a manner that they leave little space for other creatures as if we are the only ones living on this planet. The intricacies of the interconnections are lost in this process. The fact of interdependence in the biological world is hardly remembered. There is great amount of interdependence among the creatures of the world which makes the earth sustainable. Without it, there could be little scope for life. The fact that the existence and survival of one species is dependent on others can no longer be ignored. All creatures great and small need to share the planet.

Physical spaces are increasingly cleared to make way for human activities with little thought for the habitats of other beings and their presence is seen as an encroachment. As our biological compatriots, they have an equal right on this planet as us. It should always be remembered that their existence that is dependent on ours but rather our presence in a chain of inter-linkages which makes our survival plausible.

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Shivani Agrawal is a Research Assistant on a project on Gujarat’s coastal security. She enjoys reading, writing, teaching, quizzing and playing table tennis.

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

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Categories
Editorial

And Wilderness is Paradise Enow…

Hope in Winter(2020) by Srijani Dutta
“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”

― Omar Khayyám (1048-1131); translation from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald (Rubaiyat, 1859)

I wonder why Khayyam wrote these lines — was it to redefine paradise or just to woo his beloved? I like to imagine it was a bit of both. The need not to look for a paradise after death but to create one on Earth might well make an impact on humankind. Maybe, they would stop warring over an invisible force that they call God or by some other given name, some ‘ism’. Other than tens of thousands dying in natural disasters like the recent earthquake at the border of Turkiye and Syria, many have been killed by wars that continue to perpetrate divides created by human constructs. This month houses the second anniversary of the military junta rule in Myanmar and the first anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian war that continues to decimate people, towns, natural reserves, humanity, economics relentlessly, polluting the environment with weapons of mass destruction, be it bombs or missiles. The more weapons we use, the more we destroy the environment of our own home planet. 

Sometimes, the world cries for a change. It asks to be upended.

We rethink, reinvent to move forward as a species or a single race. We relook at concepts like life and death and the way we run our lives. Redefining paradise or finding paradise on Earth, redefining ‘isms’ we have been living with for the past few hundred years — ‘isms’ that are being used to hurt others of our own species, to create exclusivity and divisions where none should exist — might well be a requisite for the continuance of our race.

Voices of change-pleaders rang out in the last century with visionaries like Tagore, Gandhi, Nazrul, Satyajit Ray urging for a more accepting and less war-bound world. This month, Ratnottama Sengupta has written on Ray’s legendary 1969 film, Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne: “The message he sent out loud and with laughter: ‘When people have palatable food to fill their belly and music to fill their soul, the world will bid goodbye to wars.’” Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri has given an essay on one of the greatest pacifists, Gandhi, and his attitudes to films as well as his depiction in movies. What was amazing is Gandhi condemned films and never saw their worth as a mass media influencer! The other interesting thing is his repeated depiction as an ethereal spirit in recent movies which ask for changes in modern day perceptions and reforms. In fact, both these essays deal with ghosts who come back from the past to urge for changes towards a better future.

Delving deeper into the supernatural is our interviewee, Abhirup Dhar, an upcoming writer whose ghost stories are being adapted by Bollywood. While he does investigative stories linked to supernatural lore, our other interviewee, Andrew Quilty, a renowned journalist who has won encomiums for his coverage on Afghanistan where he spent eight years, shows in his book, August in Kabul: America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban, what clinging to past lores can do to a people, especially women. Where does one strike the balance? We also have an excerpt from his book to give a flavour of his exclusive journalistic coverage on the plight of Afghans as an eyewitness who flew back to the country not only to report but to be with his friends — Afghans and foreigners — as others fled out of Kabul on August 14 th 2021. While culturally, Afghans should have been closer to Khayyam, does their repressive outlook really embrace the past, especially with the Taliban dating back to about only three decades?

The books in our review section have a focus on the past and history too. Meenakshi Malhotra’s review of Priyadarshini Thakur Khayal’s Padmini of Malwa: The Autobiography of Rani Rupmati, again focusses on how the author resurrects a medieval queen through visitations in a dream (could it be her spirit that visited him?). Somdatta Mandal writes of a book of history too — but this time the past and the people are resurrected through objects in Sudeshna Guha’s A history of India through 75 Objects. Bhaskar Parichha has also reviewed a history book by culinary writer-turned-historian Colleen Taylor Sen, Ashoka and The Maurya Dynasty: The History and Legacy of Ancient India’s Greatest Empire.

This intermingling of life and death and the past is brought to life in our fiction section by Sreelekha Chatterjee and Anjana Krishnan. Aditi Yadav creates a link between the past and our need to travel in her musing, which is reminiscent of Anthony Sattin’s description of asabiyya, a concept of brotherhood that thrived in medieval times. In consonance with wanderlust expressed in Yadav’s essay, we have a number of stories that explore travel highlighting various issues. Meredith Stephens travels to explore the need to have nature undisturbed by external interferences in pockets like Kangaroo Island in a semi-humorous undertone. While Ravi Shankar travels to the land’s end of India to voice candid concerns on conditions within Kerala, a place that both Keith Lyons and Rhys Hughes had written on with love and a sense of fun. It is interesting to see the contrasting perspectives on Southern India.

Hughes of course brings in dollops of humour with his travel to Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka as does Devraj Singh Kalsi who writes about camel rides in Chandigarh, a place I known for its gardens, town planning and verdure. Suzanne Kamata colours Japan with humour as she writes of how candies can save the day there! Sengupta continues to travel to the past delving into the history of the last century.

Poetry that evokes laughter is rare but none the less the forte of Hughes as pensive but beautiful heartfelt poetry is that of Asad Latif. This February, the edition features poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan that borders on wry humour and on poignancy by George Freek. More poems by Pragya Bajpai, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Chad Norman, John Grey, Amit Parmessur, Sister Lou Ella Hickman, Saranyan BV and many more bring in varied emotions collected and honed to convey varieties that flavour our world.

Professor Fakrul Alam has also translated poetry where a contemporary Bengali writer, Masud Khan, cogitates on history while Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the ocean tries to capture the vastness and the eternal restlessness that can be interpreted as whispers carried through eons of history. Fazal Baloch has also shared a poem by one of the most revered modern Balochi voices, that of Atta Shad. Our pièce de resistance is a translation of Premchand’s Balak or the Child by Anurag Sharma.

This vibrant edition would not have been possible without all the wonderful translators, writers, photographers and artists who trust us with their work. My heartfelt thanks to all of you, especially, Srijani Dutta for her beautiful painting, ‘Hope in Winter’, and Sohana for her amazing artwork. My heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless Journal, to our loyal readers some of whom have evolved into fabulous contributors. Thank you.

Do write in telling us what you think of the journal. We look forward to feedback from all of you as we head for the completion of our third year this March.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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

Categories
Slices from Life

Keep walking….

Ravi Shankar recommends walking as a panacea to multiple issues, health and climate change and takes us on a tour of walks around the world, including in the Everest region and the island of Aruba in the Caribbean

Walks in Kuala Lumpur where the author is located currently.

The Government Medical College, Thrissur, Kerala, India has a sprawling and densely wooded campus. The old TB sanatorium at Mulangunathukavu (quite a mouthful even for Malayalis) had been taken over and modified to establish a medical college. There were villages on the outskirts of the vast campus. My undergraduate medical education days at the sylvan campus introduced me to the joys of walking. There were several quiet spots, and you could easily get among nature. The campus was rocky in places and may not have been prime agricultural land. The place could reach 40 degrees Celsius during the peak of summer in April and May.       

We occasionally walked to the tea stalls located in the villages and the walk along unpaved roads among blooming nature was interesting. The campus was much less crowded than it is today, and we enjoyed a relatively sheltered experience. Many of us eventually took to jogging in the early morning. Hitting the tarmac early before the activities of the day begin is a cleansing experience.

The Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), a premier health science institution in the city of Chandigarh, north India, hosts a number of attractive sites for walking.  Chandigarh was the first planned city in the country and sector 12 where the institute is located is congested but just across the road, the vast expanses, and the green lawns of Punjab University were inviting. The city is spread out and expansive and offers good opportunities for walking. The rose garden and the rock garden are vast. The heat during summer can be a challenge but even at the peak of summer, Chandigarh is a bit cooler compared to the cities on the plains and lovely to explore on foot.

The lakeside city of Pokhara is situated in the middle of the Himalayan country of Nepal. The city and the surrounding hills offer plenty of opportunities for walking and hiking. I occasionally walked between the two campuses of the Manipal College of Medical Sciences (MCOMS). We had to walk through the Prithvi Narayan (PN) campus and cross a suspension bridge across the milky Seti River. Rivers cut spectacular gorges through the soft limestone rocks in the valley. Later PN campus blocked access to outsiders and we had to take a longer way. There are also magnificent walks to Damside and Lakeside. The walk to the village of Batulechaur from the Deep Heights campus of MCOMS is also spectacular. The city is full of magnificent walks and hikes. Winter is the best time, and the views of the snow-covered Himalayas are spectacular.

Walks along the Himalayas

Hiking in the hills of Nepal is a unique experience. Change is coming slowly to the hills. For city-born and bred folks stepping into the hills may mean stepping out of one’s comfort zone. It can often be a journey back in time to a simpler existence. The ascents and descents are long and steep. The trail can deteriorate very quickly, and landslides are common. New trails have been created and some have eventually become rough jeep friendly roads. The trail to Manang north of Pokhara is now blasted through solid rock. The trail passes very close to Annapurna II and in bad weather, the trail can seem threatening.  Walking through the magical Manang valley provides you with a view of the back side of the Annapurnas. The flat trail is mostly easy but can get very dusty. The trail climbs steadily uphill and after Manang village climbs through barren hillsides.  

View from Pokhara

Weather changes quickly in the mountains and can transform from bright and sunny to cloudy and snowy within an hour. Sunny weather elevates the mood while cloudy and snowy weather seems threatening. A trail with a risk of avalanches is the one to the Machapucchare base camp (MBC). The classical pyramidal fishtail (Machapucchare) seen from Pokhara is seen as two separate peaks from MBC. I had hiked to the base camp in March and saw avalanches coming down on the other side of the river.

The Everest region Nepal

In the Everest region, the hike to Everest Base Camp (EBC) from Gorak Shep is a rocky one along the moraine of the Khumbu glacier. I had done this hike while I was staying at Lobuche for a high-altitude research project. The weather was cloudy and low-lying clouds soon closed in. It started snowing steadily and fresh powdery snow soon covered the rocky trails making walking slippery and difficult. The psychological effect of bad weather and the threatening silhouettes of the highest mountains on earth made me deeply uneasy.

Dusk at Wilhemina Park. Photo Courtesy: Ravi Shankar

The island nation of Aruba like most other parts of the world is becoming increasingly obese and overweight. Aruba created a network of walking paths to encourage physical activity. Aruba advertises itself as ‘One happy island’. I used to walk along the Caribbean coast from Wilhelmina Park to the airport. Rains are rare in Aruba and the paved trail is well maintained.

Walking Paths, Aruba

The Sun can be hot though the trade winds keep the temperature bearable. The plan is to extend the linear park from palm beach in the tourist area to the airport. Aruba has beautiful sandy beaches, and a lot of effort is expended on their maintenance and care. The Atlantic coast is less settled, and the waves crash against the rocky shoreline. There are excellent walks among the barren hills and along the old gold mine.

The city of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia also has good walking paths. The Bukit Komanwel (Commonwealth hill) near my apartment has inviting walks. Due to the constant rains, the trail can be slippery in places, and caution is needed.

Dusk at Bukit Komanwel
Lake Garden trail in KL

The city is green and the Perdana Botanical Garden in the heart of the city is well-maintained and has several walking trails. The pavements are usually maintained though due to the constant heavy rains they may be wet and covered with moss.  

One of the most difficult cities for a walker in my opinion would be the city of Mumbai, India. It is crowded, the traffic is chaotic, and the pavements are blocked by hawkers, stalls, and parked vehicles, and most shop owners keep their goods on the pavements. The concept of the pavement as a protected area for pedestrians seems to be lacking. The pavements are often dug up and the perpetually ongoing metro railway projects ensure more than half of the road may be unusable. Most open areas and woodlands have long been converted into housing projects and/or slums. The situation has steadily deteriorated during the last four decades.

The modern age has several conveniences and labour-saving devices. With increasing prosperity most people now own cars. Families have multiple cars. Cars can be a double-edged sword in reference to health. I think cars are addictive and the convenience makes you take them everywhere. You end up waking less and less unless you properly plan and stick to your exercise routine. Studies now indicate that all steps taken by a person are useful and can add up over the course of a day. In Malaysia recently there have been several virtual races motivating people to accumulate steps over the course of a day and month. The university where I work has a corporate wellness program and several virtual races are held over the course of a year.      

We are facing one of our biggest challenges in the form of climate change. A steady increase in carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution has caused global temperatures to rise. Sea level rise, super hurricanes, extremely heavy and concentrated rainfall, forest fires, and scorching summers are all being experienced. We seem set for at least a two-degree celsius rise in global temperature and we are still learning the catastrophic changes this can bring. Walking results in insignificant carbon dioxide emissions and helps us do our bit to save the planet. We are only taking care of planet Earth for future generations as, currently, humanity does not have a planet B.

Though I am a teetotaller a good quote promoting walking may be the one provided by Johnnie Walker, the whisky distillery. After the shutdown due to the pandemic, they launched a new campaign to get the world moving again. Keep walking!

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*All the photographs have been provided by Ravi Shankar.

Dr. P Ravi Shankar is a faculty member at the IMU Centre for Education (ICE), International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He enjoys traveling and is a creative writer and photographer.

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

Categories
Story Poem

Around the World in Eighty Couplets

By Rhys Hughes

We set sail south from Dublin town
with forty-five sailors and one clown.

But before we reached the wide Atlantic
the frantic antics of the clown dismayed us.

Should we therefore throw him overboard?
we asked ourselves in urgent conference.

It would give us a chance to proceed
in peace and harmony, free from jokes.

Ah, to continue our voyage without fuss!
That was the issue we yearned to discuss.

And eventually we came to an agreement
that dunking was no cure for torment.

And murder was too extreme a measure
to improve the leisure of our journey.

The clown was a man, his painted smile
could be easily smudged with a frown.

There was no need to send his soul down
to the circus hell where clown ghosts go.

No! Let us find some alternative method
to restrain the fool and hobble his tricks!

We therefore employed him as a topsail
whenever the breeze turned into a gale.

And as his Pierrot costume billowed out
he would wail and occasionally shout.

Especially if he spied a distant whale
in a white dinner jacket, obviously male.

But that didn’t happen on a daily basis
for most of the whales had female faces.

Anyway, I have gone off on a tangent,
the sound of hornpipes is quite plangent.

And they call me back to my nautical duty
which is to lace up all the crew’s booties.

Not much else happened for several days
until mountains loomed through the haze.

We had reached Sierra Leone on our own,
just forty-five sailors and a lofty buffoon.

What an excellent marker of our progress!
It cheered us up and reduced our stress.

There was room in the hold for tropic fruits
and so we went ashore for an afternoon.

We bought bananas, mangoes and guavas
without anyone causing a hell of a palaver.

And then we set sail again, or should I say
we set clown again, and went on our way.

Shortly we passed the island of São Tomé
engorged on fruit with rather sore tummies.

It was at this point that symmetry suffered
a relatively modest but disturbing calamity.

For we had reached a latitude
where the second line of any couplet has an unbalanced longitude.

But we soon passed to happier frothy waters
full of strong mermen and their daughters.

A little later it was with squids we played
and afterwards with octopuses we prayed.

We safely rounded the Cape of Good Hope
and raised and lowered the clown on a rope.
 
By now he was fully reconciled to his position
and in fact embraced the ideals of our mission.

And those ideals were to circumnavigate Earth
and at the same time, to increase our girth.

Thus we devoured the fruit stored below deck
until juice ran out of our noses, flipping heck!

In the Indian Ocean we played deck test cricket
using the first mate’s wooden legs for a wicket.

Because there wasn’t much else for us to do
apart from stirring big barrels of strong glue.

Why the captain needed adhesive, I can’t say
but sticky wickets were the order of the day.

And that’s why we continued to bowl and bat
using avocado pears for balls that went splat.

But take care, shipmates! That was my shout
when beneath our hull erupted a waterspout.

It was so powerful that it lifted us up high
and then we were sailing through the sky.

Clouds filled the shrouds with damp fleece
and gulls in flight honked at us like geese.

Our altitude increased and we were chilled
and soon I supposed we would all be killed.

But when the waterspout turned itself off
we didn’t drop back into a terminal trough.

No! The clown on a mast extended his arms
and span on his axis to save us from harm.

Like a helicopter he was, but not a good one,
and for him, it can’t have been too much fun.

Yet his rotary action was certainly well-meant
and provided enough lift for our safe descent.

We landed in waters on the far side of Borneo
but jumbled up was our carefully stored cargo.

The clown was quite dizzy, but what of that?
So are rooms in which you might swing a cat.

Or is it the cat that is giddy thereafter? I can
never remember the exact categorical order.

The fruit in the hold had transformed into juice
and some nails in the planks had worked loose.

But we were still seaworthy and shipshape
and would remain so while on the seascape.

So we sloshed along like a wooden breakfast
with the clown, our saviour, sick on the mast.

But he would recover, he needed no physician,
for dizziness is merely a temporary condition.

And now we concentrated instead on the terrific
news that already our vessel was in the Pacific.

Leagues and leagues of unislanded blue water, see!
But is ‘unislanded’ a word that if used, oughta be?

I don’t know about that, I’m not a lexicographer,
and in fact I’m not even a competent geographer.

No matter! Onwards! We are circling the globe
and it doesn’t matter how quickly we are going.

Slow or fast, start and stop, and if the mate bellows:
“Avast!” we all know such a pause will hardly last.

And now we are sailing steadily east with no fruit
to feast on, but plenty of juice to swim in, undilute.

Solid food is what we require, growled the captain!
Though there’s no cellophane for it to be wrapped in.

Thus we stopped off at an island just beyond Fiji
to buy some cream fudge from a Heebie-Jeebie.

In nautical lingo a Heebie-Jeebie is a shrewd adventurer
marooned long ago who now has a commercial venture.

The fudge was copious and also coconut-flavoured
and he gave us extra portions as some sort of favour.

I think it was because he was originally from Dublin
and we reminded him of the things he was missing.

But there was sadly no room on board to take him along
so we departed while singing him a fudge-mangled song.

“Don’t worry too much and don’t make too big a fuss,
keep making your fudge and all will be fine, trust us!”

The lyrics of that song were probably a cruel deception
but when he heard them he gave them a good reception.

Anyway! Enough of that. Without wishing to fudge
the issue, we have other things to trouble our minds.

I’m a little bit concerned about how the lines of each couplet
seem to be getting longer and longer as this poem progresses.

They are almost twice the length of the opening lines
which, if you remember, formed the following rhyme:

“We set sail south from Dublin town
with forty-five sailors and one clown.”

So let us endeavour to sail closer to a shorter length
for the sake of the reader’s mental and poetic health!

And now we are nearing stormy Cape Horn,
as good a place as any for mariners to mourn.

Tossed on the waves for two and a half days
we were lucky to emerge wholly unscathed.

Back into the Atlantic we plunged in alarm
while the clown vibrated from the yardarm.

But finally in calmer waters we settled down,
the odds reduced that any of us might drown.

As for myself, I looked forward to docking
yet again in the harbour of old Dublin town.

Weary of travel and the fathomless blue deep,
tired of this poem and exhausted with sleep.

Lacing booties to furious hornpipe melodies
no longer fills me with joy but only self-pity.

But only a score of leagues or so left to go
and with this wind there is no need to row.

The night was dark like a pint of stout beer
and then I knew that home really was near.

How glad was I to spy right in our midst
the Emerald Isle looming out of the mist!

Mission accomplished, let’s all dance a jig
and finally discard our stale seaweed wigs!




Explanatory Notes

Why take a clown aboard a ship?
Because we were so very bored.

Yes, whales may go to formal dinners.
If they don’t, they will be much thinner

Hornpipes are musical unicorns,
piercing ears like mythical thorns.

Cricket on deck is such an odd sport,
umpires snort when a ball is caught.

Waterspouts are fountains malign,
always of brine and never of wine.

The South Pacific is a very nice place
unless your booties need to be laced.

Cape Horn is loud and rather sharp,
the diametric opposite of Cape Harp.

Ireland, my Ireland, how I love thee!
Two shots of whisky please in my tea.

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

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

Categories
Review

Explaining Life Through Evolution 

Book Review by Bhaskar  Parichha

Title: Explaining Life Through Evolution 

Author: Prosanta Chakrabarty

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Evolutionary biology is a branch of biology that deals with the processes responsible for the evolution and diversity of life on earth. From the very first ancestor to all life on earth to the very first modern human ancestor, a lot of questions remain answered. The emergence of related fields like genetics and specialised tools like radiocarbon dating has enabled scientists and evolutionary biologists to put together a clearer picture of how life would have probably evolved.

Explaining Life Through Evolution by Prosanta Chakrabarty opens a window to four billion years of eight million species that we see on this planet. It not only adds to existing literature but also gives straight answers to straight questions on the evolution of life on earth. Indeed, it is an unputdownable book that explains life. 

Chakrabarty is an evolutionary biologist at Louisiana State University where he is a professor and curator. A Senior Fellow at TED, a Fulbright Distinguished Chair, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this is his first and indeed a great work. 

The schema of the book is clear: it does not simply narrate the story of evolution; it is more than about where we came from. It brings to light who we are. As humans, we logically focus more on identifying differences between us; no matter how small they are. Chakrabarty demystifies the notion to emphasise our similarities with each other than many of us are willing to believe.

As more and more people take ancestry tests, sending their DNA samples and money to genealogy testing centres, Chakrabarty says, we need to be educated on what the results actually mean, scientifically; and we all have to decide together what it means socially. We should be celebrating the fact that this diversity comes from the same little drops of water and sunlight, each just shining a little differently. Like all species, we are defined by our differences as much as by our similarities.

He begins the book by saying: “There is a beautiful Sanskrit word, ‘ayurveda’ that translates in English to the science of life. Although generally relating to human health or homeopathic medicine, I’d like to see the shift of the usage of ayurveda to its literal translation as perhaps an enlightened synonym of biology, élan vital or perhaps of evolution. It is a term that makes me think of how words and phrases can have different meanings for different people and how words too can evolve. Even the word evolution’ evolved in Charles Darwin’s time from a meaning closer to development (in the sense of a developing embryo) to its current definition, essentially the accumulation of heritable changes in organisms that can lead to the formation of new species from ancestral forms.” 

He goes on: “Interestingly, Darwin and others instead used the now obsolete word transmutation, which then meant something closer to our current definition of ‘evolution. Over time, the meanings of words can change, but previous usages remain part of their history, just like species can retain the historical features of their ancestors. Except in biology, modifications often lead to entirely new species, so perhaps if we changed ‘ayurveda’ to ‘ayurvedology’ we’d have a better fit with the evolution analogy.”

Through this intelligent and aptly illustrated book, Chakrabarty encourages us to think of life which is always in the making.  If we look at the eight million species with who  we share this planet, we have to imagine them all as having evolved over four billion years. They’re all the product of that fruition. Visualise all as young leaves on this ancient and gigantic tree of life and we will appreciate that all of us are connected by invisible branches not just to each other, but to our extinct relatives and our evolutionary ancestors.

Divided into four parts (‘A Personal Prologue’, ‘The Evolution Revolution’, ‘Questions and Misconceptions’ and ‘Why Understanding Evolution Matters’), this book — all of the 230 pages– is a reader’s delight. Chakrabarty weaves his lived experiences into this poignant discussion on evolution, covering key concepts that are vital to the understanding of current conditions like change and natural selection. 

If it is important for any book on evolutionary biology to discuss how the discipline has been misused to puff up socially constructed categories like gender, Chakrabarty does that with precision. 

The glowing analysis sheds light on the problems with historical and present-day interpretations of evolution while enlightening us about those who work at the cutting edges of the field. Another important feature of the book is that it guides us through viral pandemics and social change, and provides the three R’s[1] to enable us to work together toward a thriving future.

Somewhere in the book Chakrabarty differentiates between science and religion. “Science is about observing and testing natural phenomena in order to give a reasoned, evidence-based explanation for those events. Religion, on the other hand, can provide answers to questions science doesn’t cover (e.g., what is the meaning of life?) but it can also provide answers that can’t always be tested. For instance, let’s say your answer to why apples drop to the ground when they fall out of a tree is ‘God made it happen’; that isn’t something I can prove false, because I can’t test it. There isn’t room for questioning things or scientific inquiry if you believe flatly that ‘God controls everything that happens’.” 

He further points out the pitfalls of deep-seated religious conviction in the present-day world: “The other problem with teaching religion in a science class is that there are many religions with a variety of beliefs. Faith-based beliefs about creation differ by your religious persuasion. In one version of the Hindu creation myth, the Earth was part of the lotus flower that grew from the navel of Vishnu, and then the world was populated by Brahma and will be destroyed by Shiva. If l taught that version of creation as the truth in my science class, [I] wouldn’t last very long as a teacher. However, maybe this religious take would do well in the so-called ‘Indian Science Congress’, especially among participants pushing fringe Hindutva ideas that take some religious ideas literally (e.g. Brahma discovered dinosaurs).” 

Chakrabarty presents one of the most accessible texts about evolution. It is a handy volume for an educator, scientist, or curious reader because the presentation of the theory of evolution provides a charmed balance between solid scientific research and hilarity that teaches, advises, and entertains.

Meaningful, wide-ranging and argumentative, this is a must-read book. It will propel us to imagine and reimagine life around us.

[1] Guiding principles like reading, writing Arithmetic

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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of 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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Categories
Mission Earth

Tuning in to Nature

By Kenny Peavy

With the exodus of throngs of kids running wildly in fields, climbing trees in the forests and roaming freely through neighbourhoods to the air conditioned, sterile comfort of malls and safe spaces free from the necessary challenges, risky play and scraped knees that used to define growing up has come another hurdle and barrier to the free range childhood of the days of yore.

That hurdle is an addictive and damaging wolf standing in plain sight. Disguised in the sheep’s clothing of endless fun, free games and the promised land of more social connection that ever we welcome the predator of our free time into our homes with swiping thumbs and addicted stares. The wolf is the ever pervasive hand phone and the deceptively innocuous sheep it is clothed in is endless connectivity to mindless entertainment and social media.

In many parts of the world children now spend a few minutes a day, measured in single digits, playing outside, while they spend upwards of 8, 10 and even 12 hours a day glued to their screens. Not only is this having numerous impacts on their physical health it also disconnects them from the natural world they would otherwise be exploring and discovering on a daily basis.

How do we leap over this hurdle and send the wolf back to its den?

How do we allow kids to reconnect with a wild childhood playing, discovering and learning outside?

As is with most things, the answer is deceptively simple yet seemingly difficult to do.

A few suggestions may help:

Take your kids for a Nature walk with no purpose, no objective, no particular aim. Just ramble around and see what you can see. Practice active observation and engage the sense. Ten minutes a day will suffice. More if you can! You’ll be amazed at the benefits to mind, body and spirit!

Find a stump, a shade tree, a stream bank or park bench. Write non-sensical lyrics, explore rhymes and rhythms you hear in the fields, sketch the nearest flower, capture the image of an intriguing insect. Take time to notice the small things. Do it often enough and you’ll start to notice things you never saw or heard before!

Make a list of things you might see in your local ecosystem. Go for a walk and check off how many you see in an afternoon. Even in the most seemingly barren neighbourhoods you’ll be amazed at what you find if you look close enough!

Climb a tree and just sit there for a while looking and listening. Feel the wind. Look at the world from a different perspective. What do you notice?

Flip over a log discover the microcosm of the soil ecosystem. Observe the ants, termites, spiders, worms and other organisms living on the decomposing tree fiber and imagine how they are all working in symphonic symbiosis to covert that log into soil that will sustain yet another generation of trees. And so the cycle goes on and on ad infinitum!

Plant a fruit tree or flower in your yard or in your home. Check it daily. Watch it grow. Record the lifecycle. Measure its growth. See how connected you feel to a plant you have helped bring to life!

And most importantly unplug, tune in, get out!

Unplug from your devices. Turn off your phone and leave it at home

Tune in to Nature. Engage the senses. Take notice of the small things. Smell the earthy soil, feel the cold water of muddy puddles, get caught in aesthetic arrest by a deep azure sky and it’s wispy cumulus companions lofty and floating around the heavens. Get carried away and intoxicated by Nature!

Get outside and play!

Play with no particular schedule, no purpose and welcome boredom to teach you for a while.

You’ll remember how you used to play unfettered, unrestricted and carefree and why that’s how it is supposed to be.

Photo Courtesy: Kenny Peavy

For more ideas on how to connect with Nature join us at https://web.facebook.com/groups/boxpeopleunboxed/.

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Kenny Peavy is an environmentalist who has a memoir called Young Homeless Professional. He has co-authored a pioneering environmental education handbook, As if the Earth Matters, and recently, an illustrated book, The Box People , was re-released digitally to enable children, young people and their parents and educators anywhere in the world to use the book. He also created Waffle House Prophets: Poems Inspired by Sacred People and Places. 

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, March 2022

Painting by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Where Have All the Sunflowers Gone?… Click here to read.

Ukranian Refrains

In ‘When will we ever learn? Oh, will we ever learn?’, Ratnottama Sengupta, comments on the current situation in Ukraine while dwelling on her memorable meeting with folk legend Pete Seeger, a pacifist, who wrote ‘Where have all the Flowers gone’, based on a folk song from Ukraine. Click here to read.

In Can Peace come Dropping by…,Candice Louisa Daquin explores war and peace pausing over the attack on Ukraine. Click here to read.

Three Poems from Ukraine by Leslya Bakun. Click here to read.

Translations

Manush: Nazrul’s Lines for Humankind: Translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Jibananda Das’s Where have all these Birds Gone & On the Pathways for Long…translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Munir Momin’s You & I translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Down the stairs by Nabendu Ghosh, a gripping story exploring the greyer areas of ethical dilemmas, has been translated by Sarmishta Mukhopadhyay with editorial input from Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Autumn is Long, a poem written in Korean and translated to English by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Anondodhara Bohichche Bhubone (The Universe reverberates with celestial ecstasy)…translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Pandies’ Corner

These narratives are written by youngsters from the Nithari village who transcended childhood trauma and deprivation. A letter to God by Tanveer Hussain  uses the epistolary technique to asks questions that would be relevant for all humankind. It has been translated from Hindustani by Vritika Thareja. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Kirpal Singh, Rhys Hughes, Sutputra Radheye, Jay Nicholls, Uma Gowrishankar, Mike Smith, Anasuya Bhar, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Supatra Sen, George Freek, Pramod Rastogi, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Ananta Kumar Singh, Michael R Burch, Shaza Khan

Nature’s Musings

In Storms & Seas, Penny Wilkes explores birds and the ocean during rough weather. Click here to read.

Poets, Poetry or Rhys Hughes

In Tall or Short Tales, Rhys Hughes explores the absurd. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Eva Zu Beck & Marco Polo

San Lin Tun writes of how, in Yangon, he spends the lockdown watching a travel blog by Eva Zu Beck. Click here to read.

Messages through Space and Time

Meredith Stephens explores how the art of letter writing creates links across borders of time and place. Click here to read.

It’s Amazing the Things We can Do

Erwin Coombs takes us through his life in Egypt and has a relook at Nazi occupied Europe with a dollop of humour to come to an amazing conclusion. Click here to read.

An Existential Dilemma

G Venkatesh uses the laws of thermodynamics to try to interpret the laws that define life. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

Devraj Singh Kalsi ponders on his Visit to a Book Fair. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Imagining a Possible Future: Filmmaker Felicity Tillack, Suzanne Kamata introduces us to an Australian film maker who is making films in Japan now and some are in Japanese. Click here to read.

Mission Earth

Kenny Peavy starts his column with Mama Calling, a cry to go back to living with nature. Click here to read.

Interviews

From the Himalayas to the Banks of Thames: In Conversation with Sangita Swechcha, a writer shuttles between England and Nepal and writes of her homeland. Click here to read.

At Home Across Continents : In Conversation with Neeman Sobhan, a Bangladeshi-born writer who writes of her experiences as an expat in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Italy and America. Click here to read.

Stories

The Man Who got Eaten

 Kieran Martin tells a tall tale or is it short? Click here to read.

Death Will Come

Munaj Gul Muhammed captures the wafting sadness of grieving in this short poetic narrative. Click here to read.

SofieMol

Sharika Nair paints a vignette of the past merging with the present in her narrative. Click here to read.

Faith & Fortune

Devraj Singh Kalsi shows how the twists of faith are aligned to wealth and fame. Click here to read.

Henrik’s Journey

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

Essays

The Kaleidoscopic World of Satyajit Ray

Anasuya Bhar takes us into the literary world of Satyajit Ray, the world famous film director. Click here to read.

Are Some of Us More Human than Others ?

Meenakshi Malhotra ponders at the exclusivity that reinforces divisions, margins and borders that continue to plague humankind, against the backdrop of the Women’s Month, March. Click here to read.

The Observant Immigrant

In The Paradox of Modern Communication, Candice Louisa Daquin takes us through the absurdities that haunt modern verbal communication. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Friends in Wild Places: Birds, Beasts and Other Companions by Ruskin Bond. Click here to read.

An excerpt of a short story by Yang Ming from Asian Anthology, edited by Ivy Ngeow. Click here to read an excerpt.

Book Reviews

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Mahasweta Devi, Our Santiniketan translated by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Indrashish Banerjee reviews The Tombstone in My Garden: Stories From Nagaland by Temsula  Ao. Click here to read.

Keith Lyons reviews Asian Anthology: New Writing Vol. 1: Stories by Writers from Around the World, edited by Ivy Ngeow. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Why They Killed Gandhi; Unmasking the Ideology and the Conspiracy by Ashok Kumar Pandey. Click here to read.

Special Issues

Imagine… Click here to read our World Poetry Day Special.

Categories
Mission Earth

Mama Calling

By Kenny Peavy

Courtesy: Kenny Peavy

The streetlights would dim. The magic hour when the sun sets over the horizon was settling in. Everything bathed in golden light.

It was the time of day that always beckoned for one last toss of the ball, one last kick, one last run.

Soon I would hear, “Keeeeeeeennnnnyyyyyyy! Keeeeeennnnnyyyyyy!!”

My mama would be shouting from the porch calling me home.

Time to scoot home before dark.

Whatever we happened to be doing that day was coming to its finale.

If we were playing some sort of ball, we’d have one last run. Screaming wildly as we knew it would be the last epic play of the day.

If we were in the woods, we’d scramble down the trail giggling the whole way. Stumbling over tree roots and errant rocks we’d make our way home before it got too dark to follow the path out into the clearing where it would still be bright enough to get home before it was pitch black out.

That was our life as kids. We had no idea it could be any different.

If you had this lifestyle, you were most likely born before the late 1980’s or early 1990’s. Most folks born in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s had a childhood growing up outdoors playing with other children.

Youngsters went to school until about 3 o’clock. After school, you changed clothes as fast as you could standing on one leg without falling over. You would gulp down some cookies and water and scamper out of the door not to be seen until the sun slid below the horizon.

That’s how it was.

We played all sorts of games. Half of them we just made up ourselves like stick ball, jump rope using a water hose, and plenty of variations of a ball game with the core theme to throw a ball up in the air and then pounce fiercely and tackle whoever caught it.

Gangs of youngsters voraciously roamed the neighborhood looking for fun and diversion. Boys and girls alike. Mostly from about age 8 to 12 years old. 

If I recall correctly, the teens were just a bit too cool for our childish games. They had their own club.

If we weren’t playing ball games, we were fishing, exploring trails or building tree huts and forts of all size and manner.

I particularly liked fishing and exploring the pond and nearby creeks. 

I was drawn to anything outdoors in the woods, really. A fascination for learning how nature works grew out of a natural curiosity to discover what might lie under half-decomposed logs, below the leaf litter or straddled on the creek banks.

Those days of endless outdoor play. Searching. Looking. Finding. With boredom as a major component of what spurred us into creating our own games and entertainment.

Those memories are burned in my soul like the Georgia sun on a sweltering August day. 

We were always hot and sweaty. Perpetually looking for adventure. Seeking new ways to play and ultimately connect with each other and the earthy soil where we’d lie down in the shade of a massive oak tree collapsed from exhaustion. 

I’m afraid children don’t get that sort of freedom anymore. Free to explore and roam and play with their peers unfettered, unsupervised and unafraid.

I am hoping we can recapture that. A time for kids to play and explore. 

I wish we could see that it is necessary. We all need to get outside and connect with Nature.

I invite you to listen. Listen carefully and you will hear.

Our mama is calling. Shouting our names, she is calling us home.

She needs us to play in her forests and streams. 

She beckons us to roam around seeking, searching and exploring the natural world.

The magic hour is once again upon us and it’s time to bathe in golden light.

Courtesy: Kenny Peavy

Kenny Peavy is an environmentalist who has a memoir called Young Homeless Professional. He has co-authored a pioneering environmental education handbook, As if the Earth Matters, and recently, an illustrated book, The Box People , was re-released digitally to enable children, young people and their parents and educators anywhere in the world to use the book. He also created Waffle House Prophets: Poems Inspired by Sacred People and Places. 

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

Categories
Poetry

A Poem for the Earth

By Ms. Mathangi Sunderrajan

A NEW BEGINNING

The dry, cracked lake bed hurts my eyes.
I shade them with my hand and squint 
Against the blinding glare of the fiery incandescence.
I look up to the azure canopy strewn sparsely,
With bright white cotton candies -- wispy, fluffy
Pretty too, but without a hint of a promise.

Mother Earth, not patient nor forbearing, 
But angry and thirsting, has drawn every of drop
Of the elixir, into her withered womb, shrivelled
From the constant sucking of insatiable Greed.
The gnarled tentacles of Her sole Saviours who escaped
The axe have probed the underground feverishly for survival.  
 
Not long ago, the surfeit basin had glistened 
In the soft sunshine of the kinder months.
Now cattle and human stroll the parched, sun-baked bed.
All has run dry akin to my poetic flourish.
Where are the words and the emotions they thrived on?
Has the thirst for the mundane or the roots of apathy taken hold?  

Shouts of laughter break my reverie. Village urchins --
Their dark chocolate skin blending with the bare Earth.
Freed from the confines of dreary, sultry classrooms- 
The arid bed a perfect pitch for 
a game of cricket--
Crude sticks for stumps, a coarse log for a bat,
And a joyous spirit untouched by the dry land and the harsh sun.

I look up again at the bright white cotton candies.
Charming cumulus! A hint of darkening edges?
A promise of an evening thunderstorm.
I picture the urchins frolic in the downpour
And splash in the muddy brown slush.
I hurry home with new insight and hope.

Mrs. Mathangi Sunderrajan has been teaching English for nearly 15 years across various boards- state, central and international. Having been an avid reader all her life, writing poetry has became a hobby , as well as  a means of expression about the things  that touch her, besides being therapeutic.

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