Tag: Earth

Categories
Editorial

As Imagination Bodies Forth…

Painting by Sybil Pretious
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name

 A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) by William Shakespeare

Famous lines by Shakespeare that reflect on one of the most unique qualities in not only poets — as he states — but also in all humans, imagination, which helps us create our own constructs, build walls, draw boundaries as well as create wonderful paintings, invent planes, fly to the moon and write beautiful poetry. I wonder if animals or plants have the same ability? Then, there are some who, react to the impact of imagined constructs that hurt humanity. They write fabulous poetry or lyrics protesting war as well as dream of a world without war. Could we in times such as these imagine a world at peace, and — even more unusually — filled with consideration, kindness, love and brotherhood as suggested by Lennon’s lyrics in ‘Imagine’ – “Imagine all the people/ Livin’ life in peace…”. These are ideas that have been wafting in the world since times immemorial. And yet, they seem to be drifting in a breeze that caresses but continues to elude our grasp.

Under such circumstances, what can be more alluring than reflective Sufi poetry by an empathetic soul. Featuring an interview and poetry by such a poet, Afsar Mohammad, we bring to you his journey from a “small rural setting” in Telangana to University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches South Asian Studies. He is bilingual and has brought out many books, including one with his translated poetry. Translations this time start with Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s advice to new writers in Bengali, introduced and brought to us by Abdullah-Al-Musayeb. Tagore’s seasonal poem, ‘Megh or Cloud’, has been transcreated to harmonise with the onset of monsoons. However, this year with the El Nino and as the impact of climate change sets in, the monsoons have turned awry and are flooding the world. At a spiritual plane, the maestro’s lines in this poem do reflect on the transience of nature (and life). Professor Fakrul Alam’s translation of Masud Khan’s heartfelt poetry on rain brings to the fore the discontent of the age while conveying the migrant’s dilemma of being divided between two lands. Fazal Baloch has brought us a powerful Balochi poet from the 1960s in translation, Bashir Baidar. His poetry cries out with compassion yet overpowers with its brutality. Sangita Swechcha’s Nepali poem celebrating a girl child has been translated by Hem Bishwakarma while Ihlwha Choi has brought his own Korean poem to readers in English.

An imagined but divided world has been explored by Michael Burch with his powerful poetry. Heath Brougher has shared with us lines that discomfit, convey with vehemence and is deeply reflective of the world we live in. Masha Hassan is a voice that dwells on such an imagined divide that ripped many parts of the world — division that history dubs as the Partition. Don Webb upends Heraclitus’s wisdom: “War is the Father of All, / War is the King of All.” War, as we all know, is entirely a human-made construct and destroys humanity and one cannot but agree with Webb’s conclusion.  We have more from Kirpal Singh, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Nivedita N, John Grey, Carol D’Souza, Vernon Daim, George Freek, Saranyan BV, Samantha Underhill and among the many others, of course Rhys Hughes, who has given us poetry with a unique alphabetical rhyme scheme invented by him and it’s funny too… much like his perceptions on ‘Productivity’, where laziness accounts for an increase in output!

Keith Lyons has mused on attitudes too, though with a more candid outlook as has Devraj Singh Kalsi with a touch of nostalgia. Ramona Sen has brought in humour to the non-fiction section with her tasteful palate. Meredith Stephens takes us on a picturesque adventure to Sierra Nevada Mountains with her camera and narrative while Ravi Shankar journeys through museums in Kuala Lumpur. We travel to Japan with Suzanne Kamata and, through fiction, to different parts of the Earth as the narratives hail from Bangladesh, France and Singapore.

Ratnottama Sengupta takes us back to how imagined differences can rip humanity by sharing a letter from her brother stationed in Bosnia during the war that broke Yugoslavia (1992-1995). He writes: “It is hard to be surrounded by so much tragedy and not be repulsed by war and the people who lead nations into them.” This tone flows into our book excerpts section with Red Sky Over Kabul: A Memoir of a Father and Son in Afghanistan by Baryalai Popalzai and Kevin McLean. Popalzai was affected by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 and had to flee. A different kind of battle can be found in the other excerpt from The Blue Dragonfly – healing through poetry by Veronica Eley – a spiritual battle to heal from experiences that break.

In our reviews section, KPP Nambiar reviews The Stolen Necklace: A Small Crime in a Small Town by Shevlin Sebastian and VK Thajudheen, a book that retells a true story. Sangeetha G’s novel, Drop of the Last Cloud, we are told by Rakhi Dalal, explores the matrilineal heritage of Kerala, that changed to patriarchal over time. Bhaskar Parichha reviews Burning Pyres, Mass Graves and A State That Failed Its People: India’s Covid Tragedy by Harsh Mander. Parichha emphasises the need never to forget the past: “It is a powerful book and sometimes it is even shattering. The narrative is a live remembrance of a national tragedy that too many of us wish to forget when we should, instead, etch it in our minds so that we can prevent another national tragedy like this one from recurring in the future.”  While we need to learn from the past as Parichha suggests, Somdatta Mandal has given a review that makes us want to read Ujjal Dosanjh’s book, The Past is Never Dead: A Novel. She concludes that it “pays tribute to the courage and tenacity of the human spirit and its capacity for hope despite all odds.”

We have more content than mentioned here… all of it enhances the texture of our journal. Do pause by our July issue to savour all the writings. Huge thanks to all our contributors, artists, all our readers and our wonderful team. Without each one of you, this edition would not have been what it is.

Thank you all.

Have a wonderful month!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Visit the July edition’s content page by clicking here

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

Categories
Stories

Arthur’s Subterranean Adventure

By Paul Mirabile

Courtesy: Creative Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2] A penny.

[3] A shilling.

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

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Categories
World Environment Day

Pangea to Plastics

Millions of years ago, 
Life bubbled into being 
In a world without walls…

While the World Environment Day steps in once a year, we live in an ever-changing environment every moment of our lives. The environment is what we make of it as it continues to evolve around us. It is impacted by our very presence. There was a time when all the world was a huge continent — Pangaea. Climate must have been as different as the flora and fauna then by what scientists tell us. 

Residents of Pangea
Pangea
Courtesy: Creative Commons

We have come a long way since that period. Looking at the concerns we face today, the United Nations has announced a plastic awareness drive. Plastic is not natural… but of human origin, just like United Nations. Climate change is the focus of the whole world, as temperatures rise, ice-caps melt and the weather turns more unpredictable. 

Polar Bear testing melting sea ice Courtesy: Creative Commons

In this special issue, we have poetry from around the world showcasing the evolution of Earth, climate change, the way life has evolved and will continue to evolve — 

Dreams of Disenchantment: Poetry by Michael Burch maps how man has contributed to global disasters through history. Click here to read. 

Two poems excerpted from Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry, edited by K. Sachitanandan and Nishi Chawla. Click here to read.

Specks & Spirits: Showcasing selected poetry excerpted from Rhys Hughes’ latest anthology of global voices, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Light Verse about Life & Other Heavy Things, these poems map the historic evolution of life on Earth, of humans, celebrate the diversity of flora and fauna and muse to wonder at our evolving place in the Universe… Click here to read. 

Painting by Gita Viswanath

Categories
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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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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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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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