Tag: George Freek

Categories
Contents

Borderless, October 2026

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

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

Translations

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

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

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

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

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

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

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

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

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

Musings/Slices from Life

Headwinds to Port Hedland

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

Watch your Words!

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

The Changing Face of Deolali

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

Luck and Life

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

Musings of a Copywriter

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

Notes from Japan

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

Essays

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

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

A Cyclist’s Diary: Ride through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

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

Women Writers in Kazi Nazrul Islam’s ‘Dhumketu’

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

Stories

The Algorithms

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

Two Small Town Girls that Dressed Up for Wednesday

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

Oasis

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

The Oil-press Ox and the Ceremonial Bull

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

Conversation

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

Book Excerpts

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

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

Book Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duotrope listing:https://duotrope.com/magazine/borderless-39488

Follow us on FB; Instagram  @borderless_journal

Published from Singapore, ISSN: 2737-4688.

Categories
Editorial

Stories, Spooks, AIs and More…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a wonderful October!

Happy reading.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE CONTENTS FOR THE OCTOBER 2026 ISSUE

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READ THE LATEST UPDATES ON THE BORDERLESS ANTHOLOGIES BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK

Categories
Poetry

A Moment in September & Other Poems by George Freek

From Public Domain 
A MOMENT IN SEPTEMBER 

Leaves fall in the moonlight,
as a solitary girl strolls
down the darkening street. 
Leaves blow like rose petals
before her hurrying feet.
The leaves will fall
throughout the night,
as the moon becomes like glass.
It reveals nothing, 
and that girl is soon gone,
like last summer’s leaves.
She’s left me with a memory
of other things that pass,
but that will also not last.


A POEM WITH NO FOCUS 

Tonight, the moon appears 
as if it had worries
that were almost too much
for it to bear. 
I’ve been there,
and beyond that moon,
there’s only emptiness.
I feel lost in this universe,
with nothing to steer by.
I see a distant star
shining above my head.
It seems courageous,
but it’s probably long dead.
What goes on in the sky?
It’s alive with sounds,
which I can’t hear.
They drift through
the lonely cosmos,
and will never come near. 


WRITTEN DURING AN ECLIPSE

The day has no face,
as it dies anonymously.
It reflects my feelings,
without emotion or grace,
leaving darkness in its place.
Clouds drift like dead sailors
in that merciless sky.
They look at nothing
when they pass me by.
That relentless sky
is a lonely place 
even for a star to die.
I talk to myself as someone apart.
I think of many words, 
but they all seem absurd.
Like other men and women,
I sit in the dark.
My soul is buried in ashes,
as if it were somehow
simply waiting
for my real life to start.

George Freek’s poetry has recently appeared in The Ottawa Arts Review, Acumen, The Lake, The Whimsical Poet, Triggerfish and Torrid Literature.

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

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

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, September 2026

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Because We Are… …Click here to read.

Translations

Nazrul’s lyrics of Mor Ghumogore Elo Monohor (In my sleep, came the one who won my heart) have been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Chapter 2 of Isa Kamari’s novel, The Throne, has been translated by the author from Malay. We will be running the whole novel as serial through the year. Click here to read.

A Tiny Piece of Homeland, an autobiographical narrative by Kallol Lahiri in Bengali, has been translated by V. Ramaswamy. Click here to read.

Walking Together, a poem, has been written and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

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

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Mary Pomfret, Ananya S Guha, Jim Bellamy, Veerashetty Aurad, George Freek, T. Manjunath, Ron Pickett, Hassan Ismail Adekunle, SR Inciardi, Subramaniam Cheemalapati, John Zedolik, Shazia Khatoon, Richard D. Houff, Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Emily’s Ghost, Rhys Hughes gives us an elusive story poem. Click here to read.

Musings/ Slices from Life

Switching Sails for Saddles

Meredith Stephens writes of a camel ride in Australia with photographs by Alan Noble. Click here to read.

We Come with Nothing…

Farouk Gulsara muses on the importance of getting rid of belongings collected over time. Click here to read.

Anchors

Shruti Keskar responds to changes in her life. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In  Art, Artist & a Copywriter , Devraj Singh Kalsi visits an art museum. Click here to read.

Essays

Kazi Nazrul Islam: Bringing the Ghazal Home

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri shows how cultures can intermingle to enrich and create a unique fusion as in Nazrul’s lyrics and style. Click here to read.

Harmonising a Symphony

Yatish Kumar S explores what One World means to him. Click here to read.

Rise, You Magnificent Mess

Charudutta Panigrahi writes with the hope of transcending the darknesses of our times. Click here to read.

Stories

Small Town Journal Entry: The Red Wagon and Red Robin

Jonathon Ferrini tells a poignant story about a child and an injured bird. Click here to read.

The Weight She Carries

Gowher Bhat brings a vignette of a young girl’s life in the hills of Kokernag. Click here to read.

A Family Wedding

Fiona Sinclair writes of family interactions during a wedding. Click here to read.

A Clever Verdict

Naramsetti Umamaheswara Rao gives a story set in Southern India. Click here to read.

Feature

A conversation with Kanupriya Dhingra with a brief introduction to her book, The Sunday Book Bazaar: Delhi’s Book Street and the Making of a Reading Public. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

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

An excerpt from Shubha Apte’s When the Road Becomes the Teacher. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Omair Ahmad’s Homecoming. Click here to read.

Mudassar Javed Baryar reviews Saima Begum’s The First Jasmines. Click here to read.

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Romila Thapar’s Just Being: A Memoir. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Shanta Gokhale’s Of Ancestors and Friends: A Life with Books. Click here to read.

.

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

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

Duotrope listing: https://duotrope.com/magazine/borderless-39488

Follow us on FB; Instagram  @borderless_journal

Published from Singapore, ISSN: 2737-4688.

Categories
Editorial

Because We Are…

Melting Glaciers
Peat Fires
From Public Domain

We have started feeling the impact of climate change with a bevy of natural disasters this August. Glacial ice melts, peat fires, haze, rising seas, more storms, warmer climes and fires wiping out greenery are just a few that come to the mind. But, long ago, our ancestors — without the support of technology — survived climate events. Göbekli Tepe (Turkey), an ancient human settlement, more than 11,000 years ago was lush and green. People moved as it turned arid. Humankind was nomadic then. They moved with shifting riverbeds. In Europe, humans survived the last glacial age, about 20,000 years ago. Then, now when we are faced with the reality of climate change, why is it we tremble with trepidation? We even have technology in hand. Ideators and writers like Asimov found solutions. In Caves of Steel (1954), Isaac Asimov had humanity move underground to survive unfriendly surface conditions. He created a huge city underground for humanity while some moved into other planets. Perhaps, the time has come for us to think out of the box. And that is what we hope all of you will join to do in Borderless.

September has thrown up varied content. We have non-fiction which reflects on how changes are a part of human lore and how diverse cultures can co-exist to enrich each other. Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri dwells on this idea while talking of Nazrul’s approach to the Persian Ghazal. He writes, the poet through his adaptation of this form “showed how a culture can absorb another culture without losing itself, and how, in the process, both cultures can become something larger than they were before.” And perhaps from that largeness of thought will emerge a one-world community — that Yatish Kumar S espouses. Maybe from people who think beyond borders, we will find the solution to tackling and adapting to climate change. We have an essay from Charudutta Panigrahi where he attempts to arouse the survival instinct in humans. Young Shruti Keskar writes of how she finds a new lease to life by accepting and adapting to changes while Farouk Guslara philosophises on living and possessions. We have Meredith Stephens adding to the vivacity of non-fiction with a recount of her sailing adventures with wonderful photographs by Alan Noble. And Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in sardonic humour with his piece on art and artists.

Humour is woven into poetry with ‘Emily’s Ghost‘ by Rhys Hughes. We have poetry on rain and silences by Ananya S Guha and SR Inciardi. Ron Pickett explores nature as does T Manjunath. Diverse themes resonate in poems by Jim Bellamy, Veerashetty Aurad, George Freek, Hassan Ismail Adekunle, Mary Pomfret, Subramaniam Cheemalapati, John Zedolik, Shazia Khatoon, Richard D. Houff and Ryan Quinn Flanagan. We have a translation of a Korean poem by Ihlwha Choi that reflects how putting aside differences and walking together can make for a happier world, thus reflecting themes from our non-fiction section. Perhaps, the best illustration of this idea is in Nazrul’s Bengali lyrics translated by Professor Fakrul Alam.

A story-poem by Tagore, Swopno (Dream), has also been brought to us in English. An interesting memoir by Kallol Lahiri centring around his childhood in Bengal has been translated by V Ramaswamy. Translations offer fiction from Isa Kamari. He has transcribed in English the second chapter of his Malay novel, The Throne. The novel focussing on psychological torment is being serialised in Borderless.

Our stories trot around the world with a narrative about a wedding by Fiona Sinclair. While she talks of a world where the basics of life are taken for granted, Gowher Bhat brings to us an account about a young girl who has to work hard to have her daily needs met. Jonathon B Ferrini on the other hand shares a tale about a young child, using the epistolary technique. Naramsetti Umamaheswara Rao narrates a tale of two brothers.

In this issue, we seem to have gathered a number of reviews and excerpts based on memoirs. Teresa Rehman has shared women pilgrim’s narratives in Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assam and in the excerpt we carry, we have her reflecting on how she gathered these gems. The other excerpt is from Shubha Apte’s memoir, When the Road Becomes the Teacher.

Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed a rare book-centric memoir by Shanta Gokhale. He tells us, “Of Ancestors and Friends: A Life with Books is an unusual kind of literary memoir. It is neither a conventional autobiography nor a conventional work of criticism. Instead, it occupies an intimate space between the two, tracing a life’s intellectual and emotional history through books.” Meenakshi Malhotra has discussed the renowned historian Romila Thapar’s memoir, Just Being, a book that reflects not only her own journey but the freedom and outreach that privilege and capability can bestow on women in South Asia. On the other hand, Mudassar Javed Baryar refers to the plight of birongonas, war time widows during the 1971 conflict that birthed Bangladesh, while discussing Saima Begum’s The First Jasmines. He reflects: “Begum’s profound innovation is to turn the narrative back not just to these women’s trauma but to their ‘humanity, resilience and heart’, depicting them as ‘architects of family and community’.” Somdatta Mandal has praised Omair Ahmad’s novel, Homecoming.

We have also featured Kanuprya Dhingra, who has written a book on a unique book bazaar. In a candid exchange, she tells us her non-fiction, The Sunday Book Bazaar: Delhi’s Book Street and the Making of a Reading Public, “is for the reader in Singapore, or Mumbai, or London, or Lahore who has their own version of this informal, unruly, necessary space and sees it reflected here. It is a book about books, the people who read them, and the people who make that possible…the book is for everyone.” It’s an interesting read almost inviting you to stroll into the serendipitous democratic reading space full of local colour and stories.

We would like to thank not only Dhingra but all our contributors for their wonderful work. Huge thanks to the fabulous Borderless team for their input and to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork. Thank you all — without all of you and our wonderful readers, it would be difficult to have a journal. In the spirit of ubuntu, heartfelt thanks.

Do pause by our September content’s page. And let’s look forward to the hope for happier climes and times.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE CONTENTS FOR THE SEPTEMBER 2026 ISSUE

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READ THE LATEST UPDATES ON THE BORDERLESS ANTHOLOGIES BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK

Categories
Poetry

Winter in a Dark Wood

By George Freek

Painting by René Holm (Born 1967). From Public Domain 

WINTER IN A DARK WOOD

The night is a black tar pit.
Creatures of the dark
crawl blindly from their holes.
Some will die in it,
and then blow away
like petals from a dead rose.
The moon stumbles
across the sky,
but the moon is also blind.
I take little notice of the moon.
The stars are distractions
from the remains
of an ordinary day.
They’re as frail
As ornaments of paper mache,
hanging from a paper tree.
They’re unreachable
In my search for things  
I’ll never find.
The stars are somewhere,
but they’re also deaf and blind.

George Freek’s poetry has recently appeared in The Ottawa Arts Review, Acumen, The Lake, The Whimsical Poet, Triggerfish and Torrid Literature.

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

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

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, August 2026

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Bells, Corners, Changes and Life… Click here to read.

Translations

Robihara 2 (Sunless 2) by Nazrul has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Chapter 1 of Isa Kamari’s novel, The Throne, has been translated by the author from Malay. We will be running the whole novel as serial through the year. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Aslam Dostain‘s novel, Sótkál, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

A Sudden Shower has been written and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Jhor or Storm, a poem by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Akil Contractor, George Freek, Pramod Rastogi, Khayelihle Benghu, John Grey, Mary Tina Shamli Pillay, John Britten, Bharti Mehra, David Francis, Laila Brahmbhatt, Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Bell Poems, Rhys Hughes shares a series of poems inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Bell’. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

The Elusive Horizontal Falls

Meredith Stephens writes about her sailing adventures in Australia as Alan Noble shares his photographs. Click here to read.

Reading, Writing, and the Long, Dark Tunnel of Despair

Jeena R. Papaadi explores her own literary journey. Click here to read.

Another Waterworld?

Jun A. Alindogan writes of typhoons that are on the rise in Philippines. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In The Zine Scene, Suzanne Kamata participates at ‘The Zine Festival’ in Kobe. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Riverside Reflections, Devraj Singh Kalsi gives a dark satire which almost reads like fiction. Click here to read.

Essays

When Life gives us Lemons, make Lemonade!

Farouk Gulsara looks at the impact of climate events and climate change. Click here to read.

On Both Sides of the Border: The Techno-Political Erasure of Bureaucracy, Memory, and Refugee Lives

Rengin Uçkan takes a look at the plight of refugees. Click here to read.

Neither Automaton nor Oracle: A Satirical Inquiry into Morality, Conditioning, Football, and the End of Human Civilisation

Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan muses on the modern civilisation and its outlooks. Click here to read.

Stories

Shadow Play

Yi-jung Chen shares a unique love story set in Taiwan. Click here to read.

Fairway

Brindley Hallam Dennis shares a short narrative about a dog. Click here to read.

The Space Between Notifications

Jay Samanta shares a modern day relationship. Click here to read.

My Brother’s Room

Devraj Singh Kalsi gives a story of two brothers. Click here to read.

A Walk Through Nature

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao shares a fable set in a village in Andhra Pradesh. Click here to read.

Interview

Keith Lyons interviews author, Jayanthi Sankar, who also shares an excerpt from one of her stories. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Biscuit Thief. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Ramananda Bharati’s The Forest of Snow, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Aruna Chakravarti has reviewed Ramananda Bharati’s The Forest of Snow, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Arupa Patangia Kalit’s The Moonlight Saga, translated from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, co-authored by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson. Click here to read.

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

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

Duotrope listing: https://duotrope.com/magazine/borderless-39488

Follow us on FB; Instagram  @borderless_journal

Published from Singapore, ISSN: 2737-4688.

Categories
Editorial

Bells, Corners, Changes and Life

Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844, Painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner

Perhaps, the only constant that makes a difference in this ever-transforming world is how we react to changes around us. How do we interact with not just humans but our whole planet with its climate, contours, its plethora of flora and fauna?  Will that impact our survival in the long run? And yet with our focus on legacies, traditions, beliefs, we tend to ignore the call to adapt to the new that might help us move towards an unpredictable future. We forget perhaps that these systems had all been made by our ancestors to ensure survival. Somewhere along the way, these have become like fences caging us into small subsets. The strange thing is we continue to allow that to happen and create enclosures which we fight to maintain. The future that we face now seems even more tumultuous with climate change, rising sea levels and global warming taking a front seat while influx of refugees from war and natural disasters have already started making themselves felt. Add to that the shortages of resources that we have taken for granted for centuries. How would we survive these?

Is it by redefining the constructs we have created or just meeting in corners and finding commonalities as suggested by Ryan Quinn Flanagan in his poem ‘Corners’?

Corners are a meeting place, 
they hold a room together

Our poetry section often reflects what we experience, feel or see around us. We have poems on how nature overrides human constructs by Khayelihle Benghu. In ‘Passport for the Rain‘, she writes:

If rain possessed a passport, it would read:
Citizen of every place that drinks.

We have variety from around the world with poems from Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Akil Contractor, George Freek, Pramod Rastogi, John Grey, Mary Tina Shamli Pillay, John Britten, Bharti Mehra, David Francis and Laila Brahmbhatt. Rhys Hughes has given us poetry inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Bell. While Poe wrote one poem in 1848 ( published posthumously in 1849), Hughes has written nine sprinkled with his brand of humour, including on cowbells and bell peppers!

We also have poetry in our translations with Ihlwha Choi giving us a glimpse of Korean life. Professor Fakrul Alam has brought to us in English a Bengali poem by Nazrul written on the death of Tagore, a poem that was read out in Calcutta radio by the poet himself in 1941. Tagore’s poem, Storm, has been translated in keeping with the heavy downpours in Asia this season. Fazal Baloch has shared an excerpt in English, which reads like a short story, from Aslam Dostain’s Balochi novel, Sótkál, giving us a flavour of the hard life in their region, where self-reliance is a felt need for survival. We have mental heath issues woven into this section with Isa Kamari’s translation of his own Malay novel into English, The Throne. We will be running a chapter every month from this novel.

Book excerpts also has a translation this time with Ramananda Bharati’s Bengali travelogue, The Forest of Snow, brought to us in English by Somdatta Mandal. Aruna Chakravarti has reviewed this non-fiction for us. The other excerpt is from Hughes’ The Biscuit Thief, a book that reflects his distinct brand of absurd humour. Keith Lyons’ interview this time features an excerpt from interviewee Jayanthi Sankar’s short story set in Singapore. Mandal has written on yet another translation from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas of Arupa Patangia Kalita’s The Moonlight Saga. Bhaskar Parichha has discussed Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, co-authored by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson. He claims that this book is “is indispensable reading for anyone interested in literature, intellectual history, cultural modernity, or the life of a man whose vision of humanity continues to speak powerfully to an increasingly interconnected world.”

This month’s non-fiction section has trotted around the globe. We have Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan’s essay discussing how to redefine norms. His take is a bit different from Flanagan’s. He tells us, using Huck Finn, Terminator and Sangam Literature, people need to ask not, “What is right?” but “How did I come to believe this is right?” Rengin Uçkan’s writes on the need for framing rules that are compassionate for refugees. And Farouk Gulsara with his inevitable gruff humour talks of climate change while stating things as it is: “Climate change not only shrinks our summer beachwear but also makes outdoor living impossible. Additionally, it’s proving to be more expensive to consume anything…”  Jun A. Alindogan narrates how typhoons have increased in number in Philippines and how it affects them while Jeena R. Papaadi reflects on her literary journey. Meredith Stephens shares her sailing adventures in Australia with stunning photographs by Alan Noble. And Suzanne Kamata has brought us a flavour of the unique Zine Fest in Kobe, where both groceries and books find a place!

Devraj Singh Kalsi hovers between fact and fiction. He has a musing which seems like a hash of dark fiction but based on his experiences. He has also shared a story that is purely fictional. Yi-jung Chen brings to us a quirky love story set in Taiwan across time and space while Brindley Hallam Dennis tells a tale about a dog who sits at a table and sips drinks with a straw! Jay Samanta gives a narrative about a modern relationship based on social media output. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao has shared a fable that talks of freeing nature. The issue is, can we really?

In Borderless Journal, we hope to create a space which will help reflect not just the times but also look forward to ideas that can move us towards surviving in a happier world, built on the basis of accepting differences, filled with love, kindness and compassion. While this may sound clichéd and repetitive, given the current climes, these values cannot be emphasised often enough and perhaps our content to an extent does reflect that, sometimes with a soupçon of humour. Do pause by our contents page for this August and tell us what you think.  

Winding up this issue, we would like to thank our all contributors for their wonderful writings and photographs. Huge thanks to the Borderless team without who this issue would not have been as vibrant. Special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Thank you all. All of you together make this journal come alive.

Enjoy the reads!

Cheers,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE CONTENTS FOR THE AUGUST 2026 ISSUE

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Categories
Poetry

Patio Poems by George Freek

KNOWLEDGE IS HARD TO COME BY

Wind plays the leaves
like tambourines,
but the stars aren’t listening.
Clouds swim in the sky,
Like fish out of water,
but they’re only clouds,
and they depart
as the night’s illusions
quickly pass by.
Things I can’t see
often affect me.
It makes me feel
I’m more stupid than a tree.
I imagine such irrelevancy
will emerge as poetry.
Thinking like this
has become my deepest need.
As subterfuge,
it’s a way 
of avoiding reality.


AFTERNOONS ON THE PATIO  

Three evenings, with long
afternoons and a way
of forgetting words,
which probably
shouldn’t even be spoken.
The thoughts
I recall and a drink
called something pink.
At its bottom, tomorrow
stretched and curled
like a cat, toying
with a lazy afternoon.
The shadows were blue,
and the roof went ping,
when you touched 
your earring.
Then it rained,
and the day became long,
and suddenly there were
other people here. 
Something was always wrong.

Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

George Freek’s poetry has recently appeared in The Ottawa Arts Review, Acumen, The Lake, The Whimsical Poet, Triggerfish and Torrid Literature.

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

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

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, June 2026

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Changes, Ruskin, Snakes and Frogs… Click here to read.

Translations

Nazrul’s lyrics of Mor Ghumogore Elo Monohor (In my Sleep, Came the Enchanting One) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Four of his own Malay poems have been translated by Isa Kamari. Click here to read.

The Heartless, a Balochi story by  Abdul Qayum Sarbazi, has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Dragonfly 2 has been composed and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Tagore’s poem, Amra Choli Somukhpane (We Look Forward and March), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Pandies Corner

Songs of Freedom: Pink Dreams is an autobiographical narrative by Priyanka, written and compiled by Deeksha Vats. These stories highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms, with the support from organisations like Shaktishalini and Pandies. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Erik Kennedy, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Anne Whitehouse, Snehaprava Das, George Freek, Pramod Rastogi, SR Inciardi, Aardhra Chandran, John Grey, Heera Unnithan, Jim Bellamy, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In A Few More Rhysop Fables, Rhys Hughes shares more absurdist fables. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

The Stars that Watch Us…

Sai Abhinay Penna muses during his morning jog. Click here to read.

Vignettes from the Past

Gowher Bhat mulls over his conversation with a debut author who published his first book at ninety-three. Click here to read.

Salvaging the Furling Line in the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf

Meredith Stephens takes us on a sailing adventure with photographs by Alan Noble. Click here to read.

Looking for that Goodness…

Farouk Gulsara explores why ‘evil’ exists with the help of experiments in science. Click here to read.

The Gift of Grace

Jun A. Alindogan talks of blessings and narrow escapes, including from the Typhoon Ondoy. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In On Consulting a Physician, Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of doctors and patients with a touch of humour. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In It’s in the Bag, Suzanne Kamata explores Japanese etiquettes. Click here to read.

Essays

Homecoming

Larry S Su, who migrated from a mud cave in Shaanxi province to America, shares his story of the changes he sees during three visits to his home and muses on the gaps he has observed between these two places. Click here to read.

One Soul, Two Seas

Charudutta Panigrahi explores similarities across two geographically separated regions. Click here to read.

A Cyclist’s Diary: Criss-crossing Titiwangsa

Farouk Gulsara explores local colours as he cycles in the highlands of Malaysia. Click here to read.

Stories

The Sea of Loneliness

Keiran Martin journeys to the depths of the ocean. Click here to read.

The Silent Valley

Jeena R Papaadi builds a mystery around an experience. Click here to read.

The Art of Letting Go

Plamen Vasilev shares a human interes story set in Europe. Click here to read.

The City that Refused to be Found

Rabiya Rehman sets her fiction in Lahore. Click here to read.

The Village that Chose Trees

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao imagines a utopian, environment friendly village. Click here to read.

Interview

Keith Lyons converses with Erik Kennedy, a migrant poet who lives in New Zealand. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

Excerpts from Ruskin Bond’s Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond. Click here to read.

Excerpt from Anmol Diddan’s Burnout Highway. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Ruskin Bond’s Scenes from the Magic Mountain: Five Seasons in the Mussoorie Hills and Beyond. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal has reviewed Shyam Manohar’s The Cold War of Sadanand Borse, translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto. Click here to read.

Meenakshi Malhotra has reviewed Giti Chandra’s debut poetry collection, Setting Traps for Light. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Stephen Alter’s The Fragrance of Rain: A Brief History of the Monsoon. Click here to read.

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

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

Published from Singapore, ISSN: 2737-4688.

Duotrope listing: https://duotrope.com/magazine/borderless-39488