Tag: Hindi

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Editorial

Stories, Spooks, AIs and More…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a wonderful October!

Happy reading.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE CONTENTS FOR THE OCTOBER 2026 ISSUE

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Review

Once Elephants Lived Here by Geetanjali Shree

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Once Elephants Lived Here: Stories

Author: Geetanjali Shree

Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

Publisher: Penguin Random House India

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Review

Memoirs of Romila Thapar

Book Review by Meenakshi Malhotra

Title: Just Being: A Memoir

Author: Romila Thapar

Publisher: Seagull Books

The title of Romila Thapar’s memoirs is deceptive and deceptively simple. It is not ‘just being’ but that being Romila Thapar is also a story of becoming, of mapping out borders and boundaries of what a woman from a liberal, progressive and well to do family could achieve in newly independent India. Her achievements are many and varied and her persona redoubtable. There is tremendous breadth of scholarship and Thapar’s is undoubtedly a remarkable journey which details the trajectory of her growing up  years-family, background, physical and social location.   

As a historian, Thapar is acutely aware and interested in the way memory works and it is this abiding interest which is perhaps reflected in her use of the following lines: “Times present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future/And time future contained in time past”, lines from “Four Quartets” by TS Eliot.

This encapsulation of time reminds us of a common  feature of autobiography — memoirs and autobiographies measure the gap between two temporal loci — the time of a past event and the time of its narration. In this case, the beginning of the story goes back nine decades. Prof Thapar regales us with stories of growing up in pre-Independence India. Born in Lucknow, she grew up in the North Western Frontier Provinces, moving from place to place as her father was a doctor in the Army.

In a way, the seeds of autonomy and independent thinking were sown very early in her life in myriad ways. She was influenced by her maternal grandmother and her mother. The latter  was a graduate  in the India of the 1920s, creditable for a woman  since it was at a time when women’s education received mixed responses. She was competent in reading and writing three languages — Hindi, Urdu and English. Thapar narrates that “my maternal grandmother had insisted on two conditions before the marriage: that my mother never be asked to observe purdah– take the veil — when there were men around: and that she never be asked to cook meals for the family. These conditions were met.”

One finds it surprising even from the vantage point of the present time where entrenched patriarchal attitudes completely normalise the double burden carried by women and mythify cooking not only as part of women’s household duties and responsibilities, but as an act of maternal care and a labour of love. Many such instances stand out which provide a glimpse of a progressive, educated and liberal family, among whom are to be found many intellectuals who played their role in public life.

Underlying this memoir is a certain imagination of India. Thapar stands in the vanguard of  those invoking, protecting and saving the idea of an India which is secular, multilingual, diverse and heterogenous. Thapar’s narrative warns us time and again of the dangers of a single narrative , a single story. Thus, she calls out the crises of democracy both during the Emergency[1] and in the present time. Is the failure of democracy attributable to the pervasive atmosphere of fear where citizens were/are cowed into silence? Or is it the failure of the education system within capitalism which has oriented individuals to fulfilling privatised desires rather than their duties as citizens? Or is it a comment on our civilisational failure that we have been reduced to acting as echo chambers for ruling elites?   

In Just Being, historian par excellence Romila Thapar reflects on a rich, variegated, path-breaking life ― along with the people, relationships, ideas and journeys that made her who she is. In this compelling memoir, she invites us into her illustrious world ― a rich, testimony from a scholar who has profoundly shaped and moulded our understanding of India’s past and present. From her childhood growing up in British India, through her years of education in London, her extensive travels to archaeological sites across Asia and beyond, and her trailblazing role in shaping the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Thapar reflects on a life lived in the service of education and research. Written over the past few years, Just Being is ample proof of Thapar’s ability to view herself within the larger flow of history, and to give a splendid account of it with a scholar’s depth, a storyteller’s sensitivity and an artist’s luminosity. It reveals not only an extraordinary, boundary-defying life but courage, integrity and a profound conviction that understanding our past in the light of undeniable evidence is essential to understanding the present and shaping a more thoughtful future.

She completed her doctorate in 1958 and was offered a temporary job at School of Oriental and African Studies to teach a course in ancient history in London. Thapar’s father had set aside funds – it could be used for either marriage or education. She chose the latter and proceeded to educate herself in myriad ways. From attending the lectures of Eric Hobsbawm on European political thought, reading Ismat Chughtai, Simone de Beauvoir, enrolling herself in evening courses on Chinese art (she did Chinese landscape painting) and archaeology, learning italic calligraphy, playing table tennis with monks, holding the stepladder for friends in libraries while the other reached for books in upper shelves, her discovery of Africa, to making posters and going for marches at Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, hers is a rich and variegated life.

One is enthralled by her narratives of the people she met, the places she visited, illumined by the rays of her razor-sharp wit and comprehensive intelligence. What also dazzles is her knowledge of jazz, her cosmopolitanism and her capacity to engage with politics and culture, art and music. She narrates about  her experiences in both white and coloured jazz bars, among musicians across the racial divide, in the immediate aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination in January 1968. She writes about her meeting with the writer Nelson Algren, who had previously shared an intense relationship with Simone Beauvoir and featured in her  work, both fictional and non-fictional.  Undoubtedly and confidently cosmopolitan, she is able to make a place for herself and earn respect in widely varying contexts, including many international fora and platforms.

Professor Thapar’s feistiness is evident throughout this absorbing memoir. So is her impeccable scholarship. In the chapters on “History Rocks” and “Textbooks in the Fray,” she calls out the ideologically motivated peddlers of popular histories prevalent on Whatsapp groups and contrasts them with professional historians and historiographers. She is a stickler for honing the historian’s craft through the discipline of method and process and sharply critiques the ideologically motivated peddling of history at the cost of professionalism. Two points are made very clearly by her: first that history is and should be based on scientific evidence and there should be no mixing up or conflation of mythology and history. “Mythology is the other kind of literature that is often quoted in public discussion and confused with history.’’ Another distinction is made with equal precision: following a Weberian or Marxist methodology is not necessarily a sign of ideological persuasion as much as a methodological preference for a certain rational process of  historical analysis.

Thapar is one of the world’s foremost authorities on ancient Indian history, celebrated for transforming how ancient Indian history is studied. Rather than treating history as a sequence of kings and battles, her structural, sociological, and text-critical approach shifts focus on social formations, economic shifts, and the evolution of cultural identities. Her definitive research has fundamentally challenged both nineteenth-century colonial stereotypes and reductive nationalist narratives.

Her contribution to Indian history is immeasurable.She meticulously dismantled the Eurocentric colonial claim that ancient Indians lacked a “sense of history”. In works like The Past Before Us, she showed how early Indian society embedded its historical memory through distinct traditions — such as the Itihasa-Purana literature, Buddhist/Jain monastic chronicles, and royal biographies (charitas).

Her chapter “Textbooks in the Fray” traces the ideological warfare being waged over school textbooks, some of which she had written along with other well-known historians. Her interrogation and contestation of monolithic and singular identities pave the way for a  layered reading of history.

Thapar argues that modern conceptions of a singular, monolithic “Hindu” or “Muslim” community are modern constructs. Her study of the historical narratives surrounding the Somnath Temple in Dwarka illustrated how a single historical event was interpreted in profoundly different, multifaceted ways by varying social groups over centuries. Similarly, her study of Sakuntala’s contrasting depictions in the famous Indian epic  Mahabharata (around 4th century BC) and  Kalidas’s play “Abhijnanashakuntalam” (4th-5th century AD) point out different conceptualisations and representation of women from a chronological perspective. 

Prof Romila Thapar’s skills as a memoirist are perhaps comparable to her skill as a historian. Her endeavours have both decolonised history as well as given the discipline the status of a social science. The book gives an insight into her life, her beliefs and reflects on our times with an unbiased perspective of an adroit historian. It is a prized and rare read.

[1] 1975-77: Period of curtailment of civil liberties in India due to internal unrest.

Meenakshi Malhotra is Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition  to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory.  Her most recent publication is The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.

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Excerpt

The Sunday Book Bazaar at Daryaganj

Title: The Sunday Book Bazaar: Daryaganj and the Making of a Reading Public in Delhi 

Author: Kanupriya Dhingra

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

PROLOGUE

“Faiz Nahar Jaari Hai”

It is six in the morning in Old Delhi. A footpath that bends into an L has already begun its weekly transformation. A bazaar assembles near Delhi Gate, out of almost nothing. Cardboard and iron boxes arrive—carried, wheeled, hauled from nearby godowns in auto-rickshaws—and are set down along the footpath with the precision of long habit. Tambu and tarred canvas sheets follow, spread across the designated six-by-four-foot patches of ground that each seller has claimed, in practice if not always in law, over years and sometimes decades of Sunday repetition. Books emerge: stacked, sorted, and arranged by some private logic visible only to those who have done this a thousand times before. By the time the first chai of the morning arrives at the stall, carried in a small paper cup from the nearby chai-wallah, the bazaar has already begun to announce itself. By nine, it is a different place entirely.

This is Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar: a bazaar of books, and only books. And this—this weekly conjuring, this seemingly serendipitous Sunday ritual—is what this book is about.

Every Sunday morning, the same stretch of pavement sheds its weekday skin. By mid-morning, the pavement fills entirely. Pedestrians who had no intention of stopping find themselves stopped by a spine, a title, a cover half-remembered from childhood. A student crouches over a pile of guidebooks, cross-checking prices on her phone. Two men argue cheerfully over a pulp fiction title. A child drags her father toward a stack of comics. The sellers watch patiently. They know that browsing is not wasting time. It is, in fact, the whole point.

What makes this bazaar remarkable is not only what it sells but what it refuses to be. It has no fixed address in the way a bookshop does, no permanent threshold, no air-conditioning, no MRP sticker that goes unchallenged. Every week, it must be built from scratch, for the crowd that somehow always finds its way back. There is nothing accidental about this. Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar has survived municipal raids, court orders, evictions, relocations, and sixty years of official indifference. It has outlasted the shops behind it, the cinema halls that frame it, and every prediction of its disappearance. It keeps returning, as things in Delhi tend to do, in a slightly different form but with the same insistence.

In the mid-fourteenth century, sixteen years before he became the Sultan of Delhi, Firoz Shah Tughlaq undertook a grand endeavour: the construction of the Faiz Nahar, a seventy-five-mile canal created with the noble intention of bringing welfare to the people. Over time, the canal evolved under the watchful eye of Shah Jahan, stretching further and transforming the landscape around it. Its banks were adorned with lush neem and peepul trees; its waters flowed through the heart of Chandni Chowk, with one branch entering the majestic Red Fort as part of the Nahar-e-Bahisht. The other arm, known as Nahar Saadat Khan, meandered through the bustling streets of Daryaganj before merging with Jamuna, the river Yamuna. Along this vibrant waterway, a lively array of shops flourished, from jewellers and fruit sellers to sweet makers and fabric merchants, creating a corridor of commerce and conversation.

With time, however, the canal fell into disrepair. Hope was rekindled in 1820, when Sir David Ochterlony initiated its restoration. Poet Shah Nasir immortalised the event in verse, celebrating Ochterlony—affectionately referred to as ‘Looni Akhtar’—and the canal’s revival. For the people of Delhi, the return of the Faiz Nahar was more than an engineering triumph; it restored an old rhythm, reaffirming the city’s enduring bond with its waterways.

In the enchanting tales of Sangin Beg’s Sair-ul-Manazil, we encounter vivid scenes of Shahjahanabad and its many moods. His walks lead him to the joyous sight of the Faiz Nahar, inspiring the delightful refrain, ‘Faiz nahar jaari hai’. Faiz canal persists.

Centuries later, in modern Delhi, the spirit of the Faiz Nahar continues—not through water, but through the steady, determined passage of books that animates the streets of Daryaganj every Sunday.

Delhi endures by outgrowing versions of itself. What disappears returns in altered form, what is uprooted finds another ground, and what seems final rarely is. Here, destruction is never quite the end, and reconstruction never a clean beginning. In this ongoing conversation between erasure and perseverance, Old Delhi’s Sunday Book Bazaar has carved out its own fragile space. Its history is folded into the city’s larger habit of rebuilding what has been displaced. Daryaganj Sunday Book Market is not an exception to Delhi’s rhythms but a continuation of them—a marketplace that survives by starting over every Sunday.

My own journey into this parallel world began out of necessity and slowly transformed into something else entirely. I arrived as a researcher and became an accidental shauqeen buyer, lingering over pavement piles, returning week after week, slowly forming bonds with sellers who had long mastered the art of reading their readers. Through these chaotic streets and animated exchanges, I discovered the heart of Delhi’s readership. In their company, I began to understand how this city continues to breathe through its stories, how the joy of encountering books persists, even in the most uncertain times.

Faiz Nahar is gone. But every Sunday in Daryaganj, something of it still persists.

Extracted from The Sunday Book Bazaar: Daryaganj and the Making of a Reading Public in Delhi by Kanupriya Dhingra. Published by Speaking Tiger Books.

About the Book

Every Sunday, in the heart of Old Delhi, a footpath became a bookshop.

For decades, the Daryaganj Sunday Book Bazaar drew students, collectors, families, tourists and lifelong shauqeen to its pavement piles: textbooks, comics, rare editions, pirated bestsellers, forgotten magazines, discarded libraries, and books that seemed to find their readers by accident. Built by migrant booksellers, sustained by bargain-hunters and bibliophiles, and shaped by the rhythms of the street, the bazaar became one of Delhi’s most beloved cultural institutions.

In The Sunday Book Bazaar, Kanupriya Dhingra traces the life of this remarkable market—from its roots in the book cultures of Shahjahanabad and Daryaganj to its rise as a second-hand book paradise, and from its legal battles and evictions to its relocation in Mahila Haat.

Combining urban history, fieldwork, memoir and literary affection, she follows the books, booksellers and readers who made the bazaar a parallel world of print: informal, unpredictable, deeply democratic, and impossible to replace.

At once urban history, ethnography, memoir, and a love letter to second-hand books, The Sunday Book Bazaar asks what makes a market more than a place of commerce. Who gets to read? Who gets to sell? Who gets to occupy public space? And what does a city lose when it tidies away the unruly, democratic spaces where its readers first learn to browse, bargain, linger and belong?

About the Author

Dr Kanupriya Dhingra researches book history, print cultures, oral history, and urban studies, with a special focus on Delhi’s parallel book markets. Her doctoral work at SOAS, University of London, supported by the Felix Scholarship and the SOAS Fieldwork Grant, examined Daryaganj’s book culture through extensive interviews with booksellers and readers. She has written for Comparative Critical Studies, The Caravan, Seminar, Scroll, and Himal SouthAsian, and has spoken at institutions including Oxford, the British Library, Jadavpur University, Jamia Millia Islamia, and the University of Delhi. She also writes and translates poetry and fiction from Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu.

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Contents

Borderless, May 2026

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow……..Click here to read.

Feature

In conversation with Teresa Rehman with focus on her non-fiction, Bulletproof: A Journalist’s Notebook on Reporting Conflict and a brief introduction to her book. Click here to read.

Translations

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

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

The Stillness in Ocean-deep Eyes, a Balochi story by Younus Hussain has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Shomoye Choleyi Jaaye (The Time Passes) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, A Jessie Michael, Brenton Booth, Momina Raza, Pete Peterson, Mitra Samal, Ron Pickett, Anjana Vipin Edakkunny, John Swain, Prithvijeet Sinha, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Md Mujib Ullah, Keith Lyons, Snigdha Agrawal, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Rhysop’s Fables: Noses, Genies, Icebergs & More…, Rhys Hughes shares more short, absurd tales. Click here to read.

Musings/ Slices from Life

Finding Human Warmth in Japan’s Scarecrow Village

Odbayar Dorj travels to a village with 27 human residents and many scarecrows. Click here to read.

Schlepping Suitcases in Saigon

Meredith Stephens continues to write on her holiday inVietnam with photographs by Alan Noble. Click here to write.

Living Through Change

Farouk Gulsara reflects on changes within his lifetime. Click here to read.

Into the Wilderness…

Arathi Devandran explores attitudes to the dead as opposed to the living using her personal experiences. Click here to read.

Where Stories Find You…

Gowher Bhat takes us to the Sunday Book Bazaar in Old Delhi. Click here to read.

Random or Staged

Jun A. Alindogan writes of concerns about media manipulation. Click here to read.

The Verandah, The Voice Note, and You, Abba

Mubida Rohman writes a touching tribute using the epistolary technique. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In A Suitable Business, Devraj Singh Kalsi muses on why he needs to start a liquor business with a hint of sarcasm. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In My Husband and AI, Suzanne Kamata writes of how the use of AI is impacting their lives. Click here to read.

Essays

Sam Dalrymple and the Shattered Lands

Farouk Gulsara explores Sam Dalrymple’s new book. Click here to read.

Ozymandias Syndrome and the Illusion of Permanence

Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan explores Shelley’s poem against the backdrop of history and current affairs. Click here to read.

The Man in 16C

C Christine Fair writes how her past caught up with her present predicament in a candid memoir. Click here to read.

Stories

Flour, Yeast Water

Mario Fenech gives us a poignant vignette from the life of a migrant family. Click here to read.

Ephemeral Tears

Abhik Ganguly shares a futuristic story in a different galaxy. Click here to read.

Courage

Sayan Sarkar shares a strange tale set in Kolkata. Click here to read.

The Boy Who Learned to be Brave

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao shares a story about a young boy overcoming his fears. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Nirmala Thomas’s Snowed Under, translated from Malayalam by Radhika P Menon. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Nikhil Kulkarni’s My Summer of Cricket: Three Tests, One Fan and Decades of Stories. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Sushila Takbhaure’s My Shackled Life, translated from Hindi by Deeba Zafir and Preeti Dewan. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Maithreyi Karnoor’s novel, Gooday Nagar. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Kaukub Talat Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza’s Wajid Ali Shah: A Cultural and Literary Legacy, translated from Urdu by Talat Fatima. 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

Categories
Editorial

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow…

Art by Sohana Manzoor

In a world torn by conflict, why would one mention hope or compassion? In an age of dystopian scenarios, why would we dream of utopias?

Perhaps it’s wishful musings, but at some level what people need to survive is probably something to look forward to — a speck of light — a wishful idea called hope. Hope builds resilience. Utopias are built on hope, on love and compassion. Dystopias are built on desperation and despair. They take fear or horror to the extreme and play on people’s vulnerabilities. They might induce a cathartic effect and one might say— we are better off as we are in the present or we must act so that this never happens. Is that something we can really say in a world where wars are disrupting peace and lives of all humanity, where violence against civilians is becoming an accepted norm, where shortages could also be a reality for most of us? Utopias, on the other hand, build on the element of an ideal, a dream towards which we can move on the bleakest day of our existence. They could be used to stir hope and envision a reality devoid of violence. And perhaps, some of it would congeal into a real-world scenario with smaller doses of the bad and ugly.  In a conflict-ridden world, which almost feels like a reenactment of George Orwell’s 1984 (only about four and a half decades after his predicted date) what would touch your heart, give you a sense of relief— hope for a better future or dwelling on doomsday predictions? What would you want for your progeny?

Just before the pandemic changed our lives, a book was published where while questing for their own utopia, a group of young people became part of a dystopian reality. They were known as the ULFA rebels[1] and their story was told in Bulletproof: A Journalist’s Notebook on Reporting Conflict by Teresa Rehman. The current relevance of this book cannot be undermined because not only does it humanise the insurgents perspective, but it also shows how a centrist set up can neglect the needs of particular fringe communities. In addition, Rehman’s heartrending stories of poachers and people who live unaccepted in the margins only strengthen the need for an unboxed world where tolerance and compassion would transcend these artificially created fences that divide and lead to violence. This issue features Rehman’s book and an online discussion with her which stretches beyond the confines of pages.

Suggesting the same need to make sense in a world torn by violence and conflict is Snigdha Agrawal’s poem, ‘Inflation of Memory’.

Yesterday…
Life seemed well-orchestrated…
 
Today…
In an astonishing volte-face,
Markets are down.
People are finding it hard
to make both ends meet…


Tomorrow…
Perhaps we’ll download hope in an update…
And we’ll stand in queues again,
this time for optimism…

In our poetry section, we have variety with writings from across the world with Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, A Jessie Michael, Brenton Booth, Momina Raza, Pete Peterson, Mitra Samal, Ron Pickett, Anjana Vipin Edakkunny, John Swain, Prithvijeet Sinha and Md Mujib Ullah. Ryan Quinn Flanagan brings art into play in his poem.  Keith Lyons has surprised us – not with non-fiction — but with a flavourful poem on autumn in New Zealand, which is about now. And Rhys Hughes has amazing poems which through humour make us reimagine effusions on flowers and ghosts in socks!

We have more poetry in our translations, some sombre and some funny. A Bengali poem written as a tribute by Nazrul on the death of his older friend, Rabindranath Tagore, has been rendered into English by Professor Fakrul Alam. To add a lighter touch, we have translated a fun-filled poem by Tagore. Isa Kamari continues to translate his own Malay poems to bring in flavours of the culture. This time his poems seem to urge a need to transcend age-old stratifications. We also have a Balochi human-interest story by Younus Hussain brought to us in English by Fazal Baloch.

Hughes’ column too has fiction. His humorous and absurdist fables continue to urge re-evaluation of the world as well as genres. We also have a poignant narrative built around a Vietnamese migrant family by Mario Fenech. Sayan Sarkar shares a tale upending norms set in Kolkata while Naramsetti Umamaheswararao narrates a story about a young boy overcoming his fears. Abhik Ganguly gives us a strange fiction set in the future in a different galaxy, where Earth is seen as the original planet of human evolution.

C Christine Fair, who is an established translator, has surprised us — like Lyons — this time with a personal memoir which dwells on the deeply annihilating impact of norms that define gender roles. Upending the idea of an immutable ruler who can overpower us, is an essay by Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan with its roots in the ruins Rameses II — known as Ozymandias too — and Shelley’s poem of the same name.

We have had an overflow of writing about the unusual and redefining norms in our non-fiction section. Odbayar Dorj weaves an unusual narrative and shares photographs from a village of scarecrows in Japan that has a population of 27 humans and 370 scarecrows. She tells us: “In a place where people and scarecrows live side by side, I began to understand something simple but profound: sometimes, when human presence fades, we find our own ways to fill the silence with memories, imagination, and love.” Humanity never ceases to hope. Filling in silences are narratives by Arathi Devandran and Mubida Rohman on how they deal with the quietness left by departed loved ones.

We have more from Meredith Stephens with photographs by Alan Noble on their trip to Vietnam — as they travel to places that are less touristy while Gowher Bhat explores the Sunday Book Bazaar at Old Delhi. Farouk Gulsara travels back to Penang where he spent his childhood and reflects on changes. Are they always for the best?

Suzanne Kamata takes up changes with a soupçon of humour as she writes of how the AI finally conceded to her husband, “Your wife is not wrong…” while Jun A. Alindogan writes of how social media can create mayhem if misused to spread fake news. Devraj Singh Kalsi resorts to sardonic humour of a darker hue as he explores ways to make a living.

Gulsara has also explored Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia which starts with the extent of the British Empire with its western-most point at Aden and stretching in the east to Burma. There was a period from 1839 to 1867, when it stretched from Aden to Singapore[2], which was a part of Malaya, leaving out Siam or Thailand which never succumbed to colonial rule. The book starts at a later date — 1928 — and talks of the piecing of the British Empire, with questionable stances taken by historically heroic figures, thus urging a critical relook at our own past — just over the last hundred years.

We run excerpts from Nirmala Thomas’s Snowed Under, translated from Malayalam by Radhika P Menon, a poignant story about battling cancer, and Nikhil Kulkarni’s My Summer of Cricket: Three Tests, One Fan and Decades of Stories.

Our reviews include Rakhi Dalal’s take on Maithreyi Karnoor’s rather unusual stories from Gooday Nagar. Bhaskar Parichha has wandered back to non-fiction with the late Kaukub Talat Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza’s Wajid Ali Shah: A Cultural and Literary Legacy, translated from Urdu by Talat Fatima, a history that makes us reassess views on the last of the Awadhi nawabs. Somdatta Mandal has also shares a discussion on Sushila Takbhaure’s My Shackled Life, translated from Hindi by Deeba Zafir and Preeti Dewan, a narrative that showcases the resilience of the author.

This issue could not have been put together without all our wonderful contributors. Heartfelt thanks for sharing your gems with us. Huge thanks to the Borderless team too who continue to support bringing in variety, colour and reinforcing our values. Much thanks to Sohana Manzoor for the fabulous cover art and to all those who share vibrant visuals with their writing. Many thanks to our readers too who make our efforts worthwhile. Do write in with your comments.

Look forward to greeting you all again next month!

Mitali Chakravarty,

borderlessjournal.com

[1] United Liberation Front of Asom

[2] Aden was brought under the British Raj in 1839 as part of Bombay Presidency. Singapore was part of the Bengal Presidency from 1830-1867.

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Categories
Memoir

The Man in 16C

By C. Christine Fair

More than twenty-five years have passed since we first met, and I still do not understand what drew me to Gurmit so tenaciously. Gurmit was wont to insist, “Chris. We were together in a past life, and something went tragically wrong. We are forced to get it right in our subsequent lives.” I used to rubbish his explanation for our inexplicable bond but I have no better explanation.

Our story in this life began at O’Hare airport in March 1994. For me, it was lust at first sight. There is no other way to describe my visceral reaction to the man I saw standing ahead of me at our San Francisco gate. I immediately fixated upon his dark black, soft, uncut beard tucked up under his chin. His pink, supple lips. A generous topknot was gathered up into his sloppily wrapped pale blue turban. He was several inches taller than me with his turban. I overheard him speaking in a luscious—but not posh—British accent. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen. And when confronted by his beauty, I felt my stomach seize up. The smell of the coffee wafting from the Starbucks nearby made me nauseous.  I was suddenly conscious about my unwashed waist-length hair, my unfashionably long shabby dress with knockoff Birkenstocks, the nails I bit down to the nub with chewed up cuticles and my face, which was speckled with red pimples unmasked by makeup.

I listened closely as he approached the staff at the gate.  I overheard her assign him seats 16C and D. Evidently, he wasn’t alone. I wondered if perhaps he had a wife. After he left the counter, I next approached the gate agent and requested 16B. She smiled knowingly and said in a distinctly flat Chicago accent, “Honey, that seat is taken but I’ll get you as close as I can.” She winked at me as she gave me 14A.

I followed him back to where he was seated in the lounge. He was with a portly, stygian, clean-shaven man. They were speaking in Punjabi, which was a language I was studying in my doctoral program in South Asian Languages and Civilisations at the University of Chicago. I discerned from their conversation that the man was his uncle. Gauging from his accent, I surmised he was born in India. I tried to make eye contact with the man in the turban, but he didn’t notice me notice me. Why would he? I was unremarkable and he was engrossed in the conversation with his overbearing uncle.

When it was time to board the plane, I was close behind him. I wanted to find a way to strike up some small talk, but the uncle was a formidable adversary. Daunted, I continued eavesdropping on their conversation. They were going to visit relatives in San Jose. I noticed that there was no wedding band on either of his meticulously clean hands. I felt queasy—in a good way. I was twenty-three and inexperienced, but I knew I wanted him.

Once the flight reached cruising altitude, I pulled out a notebook, tore out a piece of paper, and wrote to him in Punjabi, “If you’re not married, you can call me when you reach San Francisco. I’ll be at this number… Don’t be freaked out if a man answers. It’s my friend Gene. I’m staying with him.”

When the flight attendants were up and about, I folded the missive and turned on the call light. An officious flight attendant arrived. “Ma’am, can you hand this to the man in the light blue turban in 16C?” She smiled wryly as she took the note from my hand. Then I watched in agony as she made her way to 16C. Suddenly, I was struck by the horrifying thought that this British-born Sikh may not read Punjabi. But…his older uncle, with the Indian accent, likely did.

As soon as the seat-belt light went off, I practically ran down the aisle to reach the man struggling to read my note. “Hi. I’m Chris. I sent that note,” I said out of breath, pointing to the offending letter with my left and extending my right hand in a shake.

The man was befuddled but not displeased. “I’m Gurmit. Nice to meet you,” as he extended his own hand. Ignoring the curious uncle, I explained the content of my note as my face flushed deep red, and my hands trembled. My heart was leaping out of my chest. I pulled back my waist-long hair and blurted out quietly “I am in San Francisco for the week. I’d like to meet you if you are game. My number is in the note.”

I bolted in terror before he could respond. I had never been so impulsive before, and I was mortified by the thought of rejection after making such an ass of myself. But he was evidently intrigued if the curious grin on his face was any valid clue. Back in my seat, I was seized by thoughts of this Gurmit and what I should’ve said instead of running back to my seat.

The plane landed. He made eye contact with me and smiled as we disembarked. My friend Gene was waiting for me at the baggage claim. We continued to his apartment in the Haight. During the drive, I blubbered, “Gene, I did the craziest thing on the plane. I sent this note to some British Sikh dude who was totally hot. I told him to call me here if he wants to hook up.” I blurted it out in one breath hurriedly to preclude Gene from interrupting with his usual “You did what?” Gene’s stiff posture slackened, from which I concluded he was impressed and appalled at the same time. “How do you know you didn’t give my number to some psycho?”  Gene thought the

whole thing was a cockup and was dubious that the dude in the turban would call. Nonetheless, he offered suggestions on tourist sites.

Once at Gene’s home, I anxiously awaited a phone call that may or may not come.  Gene and I made small talk while I kept looking down at my watch. Gene would occasionally say with his familiar ‘I told you so’ voice, “He isn’t going to call you. What you did was insane.” Three hours later, the phone rang. Gene answered. “It’s for you, Chris. It’s that British guy you mentioned,” Gene belted out in complete surprise as he handed me the handset. My hands shook as I took the receiver, “Chris, it’s Gurmit. From the plane.” His voice stirred an unfamiliar feeling in my body. It was desire. “Do you want to see the sites with me tomorrow?” I excitedly exclaimed, “Absolutely! What about meeting at the Fisherman’s Warf, Pier 39, at 10 am?” He eagerly agreed.

After a restless night of fitful sleep, we met at the appointed place and hour. We spent the day seeing the tourist sites in San Francisco. Both of us preferred to see the city on foot. Sometimes we’d tuck into a cute restaurant for a bite to eat or to have a cup of coffee for me, tea for him. This gave us ample opportunities to speak with each other, cramming as much information gathering into the day as possible. Gurmit and I turned out to be the same age.  When I asked Gurmit why he came to Chicago, he explained “I am a doctor in London. I came to Chicago to learn how to treat gunshot wounds and other traumatic injuries.”

“But why did you have to come to Chicago to study this, Gurmit?”

“Because we don’t have enough gunshot injuries in London to study,” Gurmit said sheepishly. 

“Are you doing your residency to be a trauma surgeon?”

“No. I am just doing an externship in trauma work; my main medical profession is obstetrics and gynecology.”

I recoiled briefly. I had always disapproved of men being gynecologists, and I refused to avail of them. I preferred Gurmit as a trauma surgeon.

“What do you do, Chris, and how do you know so much about South Asia and Punjabi?” I explained that I’m doing my PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilisations, focusing on Sikh diasporas and the Punjabi language. Gurmit lit up. “I’m actually doing a PhD as well in reproductive medicine,” he enthused. We shared our stress of doing doctorates.

Apart from our academic interests, however divergent, perhaps the most important commonality was that both of us had recently lost our mothers to cancer. We bonded over our still-raw grief and our varied, complex relations with our living siblings. He had two sisters. I had two half-brothers. We also discussed our problematic fathers.

“Chris, I have to warn you. I come from a traditional Sikh family. My family cannot come to know of us meeting. My uncle is cool. But my father will sternly object.”

This was a chilling harbinger of things that would come hurtling our way in time. But we agreed to see where this went before agonising over his regressive father.

“Gurmit, I also have to tell you something. I don’t really know my father. He’s a deadbeat dad.”

If Gurmit was shocked by the nature of my paternity, his face didn’t reveal it.

With his family obligations in San Jose and my obligations to my friend Gene, we didn’t spend but one or two more days together that week. On the ferry from Alcatraz back to shore, our bodies grew close under the setting sun. Gurmit cupped my face and kissed me for the first time. I felt the softness of his moustache on my upper lip. My stomach fluttered as his tongue met mine and his hand moved to my lower back. We lingered in that kiss for minutes. It was not a hungry kiss. It was a tender kiss. It was a kiss that said I want you, but let’s take our time.

After we parted ways in San Francisco, we wrote letters weekly and we spoke on the phone when we could, which was very expensive in the early 1990s. We planned to meet in London a few months later, in June. I was on my way to India for the summer, where I would study Hindi and hopefully Punjabi in the idyllic—if very wet during the Monsoon—northern Indian hill station of Mussoorie. Throughout the duration of the flight, over numerous gins and tonic, I pondered what we would do and how we would do it when we met. Prior to leaving, I joked, with more seriousness than levity, with my saucy girlfriend Carmen, “The only parts of London I want to see are the walls and ceiling of Gurmit’s bedroom.” I imagined a romantic meeting at the airport.

The plane landed and disgorged its passengers. I passed through baggage claim, where I picked up my singular item: a large rucksack crammed haphazardly with Indian clothes for the summer, some notebooks, and Hindi and Punjabi grammars. I looked for Gurmit everywhere. He was nowhere to be seen. An hour passed. Then two. I felt the sour taste of panic rising in the back of my throat. Tears welled up and streamed hot down my cheeks. I was heartbroken and terrified. “What the hell have I done?” I wondered aloud.

To tame the panic, I flipped through the expanse of my 650-odd-page Lonely Planet India. Repeatedly. I tried to take naps, cuddled up to my ruck sack on the waiting area floor. After three hours, I wrote him off. He must have gotten cold feet, I presumed. Crestfallen, I began making my way to the ticket agent to change my flight. Then, at the last possible moment, I heard Gurmit call out “Chris! I’m over here! Where are you going, silly?” He had just arrived. He was sweaty, out of breath, and completely oblivious to the terror and disappointment I was experiencing despite my obviously tear-streaked face.  

Unable to sublimate my anger, I barked at him, “Where the flaming hell have you been? I was literally on my way to book myself on the next flight to Delhi! I was scared to death, goddamnit, Gurmit. Goddamnit!” Gurmit was sheepish. With downcast eyes, he tried to explain his inexplicable lateness.

“I’m really sorry, luv. I set off from dad’s place in Gravesend late and missed several commuter trains to London.” 

I pointed out the obvious, “If this were important, you would’ve left early, and you would have caught those trains.” I was still crying.

He offered one apology after the next, which I begrudgingly accepted. But it took several hours for me to shake off the anger and disappointment at him not being there when I arrived. There was no romantic reception.

While I was still stewing, we were making our way through a series of Tube and bus connections. “Here’s an A to Zed of London, which you’ll need while you’re here,” he said, foisting a massive tome into my hands.  I was utterly befuddled as he tried to explain this collection of endless maps and, with repeated reference to it, sought to explain to me where we were going and how.  “I know. It’s overwhelming, innit? But you’ll figure it out. You’re smart,” he said, beaming a wide, toothsome grin.

At long last, we arrived at the aging brownstone walkup in Golders Green he called home. This too failed to meet my expectations. I presumed that because he was a doctor, he had the means to have his own flat. It turns out that young doctors are not well-heeled in the United Kingdom.

 “So,” he paused with some embarrassment, “I’m renting a room from an elderly lady.” He could see the disappointment on my face. When we climbed the stairs and entered the flat, the octogenarian greeted us with tea. She was deeply chary of me from the first moment she laid eyes on me. She announced, while taking a sip of her tea, with precision in the Queen’s English, “The young lady shall not be allowed to spend the evenings in the flat.”

Without putting up a fuss, Gurmit explained to me, “You will stay with my younger sister, Saabjit. She’s only an hour away by bus. I’ll show you where she is in the A to Zed.” I shuddered at the thought of making my way here with that ominous and overwhelming volume.

Saying goodbye to the officious landlady reeking of rosewater and talc, we entered his room and closed the door.  The chemistry that overtook me at O’Hare airport engulfed me once we were alone. We kissed for what seemed like ages. Then, at long last and while looking into my eyes, he slipped my dress gingerly over my head. He undid my ponytail and scattered my hair about my naked shoulders and began to kiss my clavicle. Horribly ashamed, I said “Gurmit, I’m on my period.” To which he cheekily responded, “I’m a gynecologist. Do you think I care?”  His smile put me at ease.  He removed his turban and set it upon his desk, and untied his topknot. His long, black, thick hair tumbled below his waist, releasing a scent of coconut with which he plied his hair.

I was utterly mesmerised by the beauty of this man. I opened myself to him, forgetting my anger from several hours before. He kissed me tenderly on my lips as he entered me with his voluminous hair falling around my face. Our bodies intertwined. Our smells comingled. We made love until we were exhausted. Gurmit was the most sharing and attentive lover. He went to every length to pleasure me. After we made love, Gurmit braided our hair together in the low evening light. Then he smiled at me and said “Now I’ve got ya.” But in truth I wasn’t going anywhere…except to his sister’s house to spend the night.

During that week in London, we fell into a routine. During the day, he and I would stay together until late at night. Unable to control ourselves around each other, we made love in an offbeat section of Regent’s Park, in the unlit alcove of an apartment building in Golders Green, in a cemetery near his house, in the bathroom at a bar in Swiss Cottage. Then Gurmit would deposit me at his sister’s flat, where I would sleep until nine or so, have breakfast, then make my way over to Gurmit’s flat, where our shenanigans would begin anew.

At the end of the whirlwind week, I realised that I still didn’t know this man. I had not met any of his friends.  Our bond was largely physical. I enjoyed being in his presence, but our physical attraction to each other made it impossible to get to know him at a deeper level. All I knew by the end of the week was that I wanted more of Gurmit. I wanted more opportunities to go beyond our sexual attraction and intrepid encounters. Then, at the end of that week, I hopped on a plane and went to India for the summer.

Despite being busy with my studies in Mussoorie, I was unable to stop thinking of Gurmit. Then, after a few weeks, my period was late.  I needed to speak with Gurmit. But in those days, making international calls from India was not straightforward or affordable. One had to find an agent who would book the extremely expensive call. I called Gurmit at his flat several times, but his landlady reported, “Sorry, dear. He’s still at work.”  After five or six increasingly stress-filled efforts, I finally reached him and blurted out, “Gurmit, my period is very late.” Without missing a beat, Gurmit said, “Chris, that is terrific news. I want to marry you. I hope you know that.” 

I was taken aback.

I was not ready to be a mom or a wife.  Up to that point, our relationship was physical rather than emotional. Being alone and pregnant in India was not something that I could countenance. I had no idea how to even begin finding an abortion facility.  After three panic-filled weeks, my period finally came. Perhaps my period was just irregular, as it sometimes was in those young years of womanhood, or perhaps I miscarried. When I began to bleed, I again called Gurmit. After several attempts, once more, I reached him. “Gurmit, we’re in luck! My period came!” I was ecstatic. I was practically crying from relief.  But Gurmit was devastated. “Oh Chris. I was really looking forward to being the father of your baby.” I felt discomfited by this claim, given the nature of our relationship.

During most Monsoon days in Mussoorie, it rained nonstop. I had to have my clothes dry-cleaned because it was impossible to dry them outside. Leeches were a common nuisance on the hour-long trek up the hill to class and down again. After class, I would return to the room I had rented in a guesthouse. The rain falling on my tin roof created a romantic atmosphere that made me miss Gurmit poignantly.

I wrote to him daily after lunch and made my way through the rain and leaches to the post-office in the next bazaar. He was an equally vigorous letter writer. We exchanged details of our days and our expectations for our next meeting on my return trip in early October. I told him about the monkeys who slipped through the bars of my room to eat my peanut butter, and he told me about interesting patients he had treated and their infertility challenges. He updated me on Saabjit’s various hijinks. Through those letters, I began to get to get a sense of who Gurmit was as a person, how he spent his days, what he dreamed about and what he wanted from this life.

October finally came. I made my way from the cool climbs of Mussoorie to the inferno that was Delhi for my flight home to Chicago via London. This time, when I landed in London, I did not expect Gurmit to be on time. I saddled up to a coffee shop with a book and waited for him. An hour or so later, Gurmit arrived with his perfunctory apologies. I didn’t even bother asking him why he was late. Our time in London was brief. Before returning to London, I informed Gurmit that I wanted to celebrate my birthday in Edinburgh. Dutifully, Gurmit booked our tickets on a comfortable bus, and we passed the eight-hour journey canoodling and generally discomfiting the other passengers with our altogether too public displays of affection.

At the hotel in Edinburgh, we settled in quickly, and our hands immediately began exploring and undressing each other’s bodies. I wish I could remember the details of the hotel room. But all I remember is how ravenous we were for each other. “Chris, luv, do you mind fetching the condoms from my coat pocket?”  However, when I went to his coat pocket, I found just two condoms. “Gurmit, condoms come in clusters of three. Where the hell is the third condom?” I demanded accusatorily.  Gurmit’s face was ashen.

“Chris, what are you talking about? What are you suggesting?”

“Gurmit, I think you know exactly what I’m suggesting. Who was—or maybe is—she? One of your goddamned nurses?”

Gurmit insisted that there was nothing awry.  But I didn’t believe him. I didn’t sleep with him that night. A seed of doubt had been planted, and I was beginning to feel like a fool for thinking this amazing man was all that he seemed.

A few days later, I was on a plane back to Chicago.

Back in Chicago, those seeds of doubt sprouted and took root. We were still together, but other problems quickly emerged. Gurmit, as he explained on the first day, was from a traditional Sikh family. Although his father, who lived with his older widowed sister, had been living in Gravesend for more than three decades, he still followed the lifestyle of India in the 1960s. His father expected Gurmit and his two sisters to have arranged marriages. Gurmit was the oldest. Any socially unacceptable behavior on his part would compromise the arranged marriage prospects for his two younger sisters.

However, neither wanted the arranged marriages being foisted upon them.  I had spent enough time with the youngest sister, Saabjit, in London to know that she would do most things to avoid an arranged marriage, and if those things comprised a ‘to do’ list, she was making her way through that list efficiently. Paramjit, the older of the two sisters, had escaped to Australia to avoid being gheraoed by her father’s plans for an arranged marriage in 1991. And to triumphantly hammer the final nail in that coffin, she hooked up with a white guy and had two children out of wedlock with him. Their father disowned her and her children.

Given Saabjit’s myriad misadventures, Gurmit asked that I let Saabjit live with me in Chicago. He thought my nerdy ways would have a salubrious effect upon her. I welcomed Saabjit to our couch, where she joined me and the Chinese husband-wife duo, who were my roommates. But Saabjit was incorrigible. She was shoplifting, picking up drug dealers at the laundromat, and disporting with miscreants that she found loafing about near McDonald’s on 53rd Street.

“Saabjit, aim higher than drug dealers, for fuck’s sake! You’re just putting yourself and me at great risk.”

 “Chris, just because you’re fucking my brother, doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do.”

After the dustup I called Gurmit. “Gurmit, you need to come out here. She’s going to get herself into big trouble. Hell, she’s going to get me in trouble.”

By the end of the week, Gurmit was in Chicago.  “Saabjit. Chris is right. Find a professional man. Stop chasing the hooligans.”

Saabjit was clear in her response to him too, “Gurmit. Fuck off.”  As if by plan, she got pregnant. She returned to London to have the baby. She was twenty-one.

When her father learned that she had given birth to a half-Black daughter through the Punjabi rumour network, he was predictably enraged. He gave her an ultimatum: put the child up for adoption and accept an arranged marriage to whomever he found for her at once, or else. She went underground.

As Gurmit and I were becoming more serious and as I spent more time in London, the responsibility reposed in Gurmit began eroding our relationship because the prospects for our future were increasingly dim.   If we were walking down the street together in London and Gurmit saw another Punjabi in the distance, he would let go of my hand and speed up or even cross the street to get away from me. He was terrified of the Punjabi rumour mill and its devastating efficiency. 

“Gurmit, it really hurts my feelings when you do that.”

“Sorry, luv. If my dad finds out, I’m in big trouble.”

We increasingly fought about Gurmit’s endgame or lack thereof. He kept insisting that we could get married once his sisters were “settled” even though they were never going to be settled in the preferred sense intended by the Sikhs of Gravesend.

There had been a window of opportunity for our relationship to progress meaningfully in spite of these constraints. Before the third year of my doctoral program, I could have switched to a comparable program in London, provided I could get admitted. However, Gurmit was still scared to death of getting caught. And when I perceived the window to be closed because I was now committed to Chicago, I told Gurmit I couldn’t live like this anymore. He had to be willing to break from his father’s expectations if he wanted to be with me. I needed to know that there was a future rather than an endless string of presents. And Gurmit simply could not do that. I broke up with him.

I concentrated upon my doctoral work and tried to put him out of my mind. That worked for a few years. In 1998, I moved to Los Angeles to work for the RAND Corporation. Alone in a new, overwhelming, and sprawling city, I thought about him often. I read and re-read his letters, and I fell in love with him all over again. Unable to resist the urge,  I called him at his father’s home in Gravesend.

“Gurmit, it’s Chris. I’m calling from Los Angeles.”

Gurmit was excited to hear my voice. “Why are you calling?”

“Well, remember when you braided our hair together?  I’ve been thinking about that a lot.”

“Me too, Chris. Me too.”

“Is there any chance you can come to LA? I’d like to try again?”

Within ten days, Gurmit was in Los Angeles. Our physical attraction was as strong as ever. But our lovemaking was tainted with sadness. After all, what had changed? I was afraid to ask Gurmit if he could tell his dad about us because deep down, I knew the answer.

Once, when I curled up against his body in bed, I cautiously asked: “Gurmit, how can we be together if you won’t tell your dad or at least marry me anyway?” He continued to harp on the necessary but insufficient condition of his sisters’ arranged marriages. I was livid.

“Gurmit, your sisters are mothers now.”

Gurmit’s position hadn’t evolved at all. Left with no choice, I explained, “Gurmit, I want you. I want us. But if you still can’t take on your dad, nothing is possible. I need you to leave on the next flight.”

Begrudgingly but without complaint, Gurmit was gone the next day. Years passed. We made a few furtive efforts to get back together. Each time was bedeviled by the same problem.

In April of 2004, I moved to Washington, D.C. for a job with the United States Institute of Peace. A month later, I met Jeff, the man I would marry.  Later in December, we learned that I was pregnant, and so in March 2005, I married Jeff. We lost our baby the week before we married. Jeff was with me from the beginning to the bitter end of that tragic pregnancy. Then we lost again a few months later. For the second miscarriage, Jeff was distant and disengaged. This was a poisonous weed that took root early in our marriage.

While the losses created a distance in our new marriage, his parents pried those distances further.  My mother-in-law, Mary, would say “Chris. You’re white trash. You come from the wrong side of the tracks, and you will always be from the wrong side of the tracks.”

When his parents were cruel like this, my husband did nothing. He was unable to confront his parents.  I sunk into a deep depression. If I am unworthy of being protected by my own husband, what am I worthy of? We kept drifting apart, and Jeff refused to go to counseling.

“Jeff, I need you to go to counselling with me to save our marriage. It’s crumbling about us.”

“Chris, I can’t. What if the counsellor tells me I’m doing something wrong.”

“Jeff honey, we are both doing something wrong.”

But he was adamant in his refusal. The space between us became a chasm. And in that chasm, thoughts of Gurmit began to grow.

In 2014, nearly nine years into my challenging marriage, I went to London to give a book talk. After the talk, I was alone in my hotel. Memories of Gurmit and me were littered across London. I decided to call the home of Gurmit’s father and ask for Gurmit. Gurmit had always spent the weekends in Gravesend, and I assessed that he was likely there. I no longer had a functional number for him in London.  Gurmit’s father answered in a thick Punjabi accent. I told him in Punjabi, “My name is Christine. I’m the woman who wrote all of those letters to Gurmit from India many years ago. I’d like to speak with Gurmit.”

Gurmit’s father responded briskly in Punjabi, “I know who you are. Gurmit’s not home.”

“Can you give him my number?” His dad agreed to do so. Then I went home to Virginia to wait.

Within two days, I saw the +44 number come up on my phone. It was Gurmit. I was on a train to New York for another book talk. We spoke for the duration of the train ride. I asked him if he was married. “Chris, I’m divorced, and I have a daughter. You?”

“Yes. But I’m miserable in my marriage.”

We began messaging and connecting on Skype. It was as if time had collapsed on itself. We were as we always were. But this time, Gurmit resolved that he would tell his father and marry me, irrespective of his father’s opinions on the matter. I told my husband that I was leaving him and that I was getting back together with Gurmit. Jeff was devastated, but he still refused to go to marriage counselling.  Gurmit and I met thereafter in New York in December.  Once we were together, our bodies found each other as they always had but Gurmit was lost. His marriage had changed his life. In New York he told me the whole story, or so he said.

“Chris, I have to tell you a lot of things. I am not the man you fell in love with. My marriage destroyed me.”

Gurmit began to explain the sordid truth of his recent past and present. He agreed to have an arranged marriage. His father found him a barely literate woman from his family’s village outside of Jullundur. I was appalled by Gurmit’s willingness to marry a woman who was so beneath him intellectually, and felt a strange pity for this woman. He had not even met her. Their engagement took place between the woman and his photo. His father picked a much younger woman he believed would be an amiable housewife, willing to take care of Gurmit, him and his sister while giving birth to children she would raise.  It turns out that she wasn’t the simpleton they presumed her to be. While awaiting to come to England, she was studying U.K. immigration law, and she imagined a very different life for herself in the U.K. that didn’t necessarily include being married. At least this was Gurmit’s account.

Once in Gravesend, she began calling the police to report abuse at the hands of the residents of the home. She began staging suicide events, evidently telling the medical personnel that her family was abusing her. She filed a criminal complaint. Gurmit’s elderly aunt was taken into custody. Gurmit and his father also spent time in jail. Ultimately, those charges were dismissed. Along the way, she became pregnant but aborted the fetus without telling Gurmit until after the fact. But despite all of this drama and legal jeopardy, he took her back when she came crawling back to the marriage.

But she was undeterred: she wanted to remain in the U.K., but she didn’t want to be married if she didn’t have to.  She continued the old patterns of trying to establish a collage of evidence of abuse. Even while trying to ruin her married life, she clung to it as a contingency plan. She became pregnant in hopes of keeping Gurmit until she no longer needed him. She filed a police complaint again. The household members were taken into custody again. This time, the judge found him guilty. He went to jail. He had to perform community service. He could no longer practice medicine.

“Gurmit, so how do you earn a living?”

“I work in a shop close to our home in Gravesend.”

I was floored. But this explains why I was unable to find anything on my extensive Google searches for him over the years. He was no longer an active, publishing scientist.

I asked him about his daughter. The story grew darker. “I don’t have a relationship with my daughter. I refused to visit her under visitation.” I was sickened.

“Gurmit, that’s what my father did to me. How the hell could you abandon your daughter?” I was simmering in rage. Gurmit offered the palliative that at least paid child support. It wasn’t enough. He had no defense for his actions.

Rightly or wrongly, at no point did I doubt his innocence. But his failures as a father were all too similar to my own father. I felt for his daughter. I imagined the crises of identity she will have to maneuver over the course of her life as a fatherless daughter. But I could feel in my bones that this great reveal wasn’t the entire truth. He was holding something back.

Back in Virginia, we continued to talk nearly every day. But I told him, “You’re still hiding something from me. I need to know what you’re hiding.”  After a lot of persuasion, Gurmit conceded. “Chris, you’re right. I’m still married.” I felt a wave of nausea wash over me.

“What the fuck do you mean, you’re still married? You told me you were divorced.” 

“I am divorced. But I had second arranged marriage.”

I could not believe the idiocy of this man. After the fiasco of his first arranged marriage, he had another marriage.  As before, his father scouted his village for a simpleton. Once again, the engagement happened between the woman and a photo of Gurmit. Again, Gurmit had never met her prior to the wedding night, which he consummated.  Something snapped inside of me. I was repulsed by him. I couldn’t stand the thought or sight of him. I told him that I couldn’t see him anymore.

And with that final grotesque revelation, a thirty-year saga ended abruptly as I confronted the damage I did to my marriage and what it would take to fix it.

.

C Christine Fair is a Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University. She completed her PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilisation at the University of Chicago. Her creative pieces have appeared in Fictive Dream, Hypertext, Lunch Ticket, Bangalore Review, Glassworks, and Existere Journal of Arts, among others, in addition to her scholarly work and literary translations from Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely that of the author and not of Borderless Journal.

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Categories
Essay

A Cyclist’s Diary: Jaipur to Udaipur

Narrative and photographs by Farouk Gulsara

Group photo of all the cyclists
Rajasthani Art

If one wants to understand the ‘chaos theory’, one has to place oneself at the centre of ‘around about’ — the way the traffic weaves around, observing the traffic go by as everyone swerves to get to their destinations. The one from 9 o’clock reaches 3 o’clock; 6 o’clock reaches 12 o’clock. It does not matter whether the vehicle is following or counter to the traffic flow; it gets through.

Adding to the pandemonium is the incessant honking from all right, left and centre.

Despite knowing all these, after our stint from Kashmir to Leh, India still managed to lure us back. This time around, we signed up for a tour across Rajasthan, from Jaipur to Udaipur.

Day 0: Delhi to Jaipur

After landing in Delhi from Kuala Lumpur late at night, we left for Jaipur the next morning. We had our first lesson in chaos theory that morning. The confusion about transport arrangements, running to get a taxi in a hurry, rushing to an unmarked site designated as Jaipur bus station, waiting for a bus we thought had left, and finally getting on the correct bus were all proof that the churning of the Universe is indeed impossible to comprehend.

Despite all the traffic jams, the packed vehicles and our increasing anxiety not to miss the bus, all the taxi driver could tell us was “aram sey!” (equivalent to saying, take a chill pill).

Jaipur, the Pink City, had its rare February showers the day before. As if to usher in our visit, the large part of the city around the lake, Jal Mahal, was in full gear, preparing for an air show. We managed to catch a glimpse of what the Indian Air Force had in store.

Jaipur showcases a history that built alliances with the Mughals and managed to preserve its buildings and heritage. Their allegiance with the invaders could have been viewed as betrayal by their contemporaries, the Sikhs and Marathas, who were fighting tooth and nail against the Mughals. Ajmer Fort is a massive fort with brilliant engineering. 

To top that, there is a stepwell, Phanna Meena Ka Kund, with its intricate geometrical design that has stood the test of time. Jaipur is known as the Pink City, not without good reason. The roads leading to town are paved, lined with multiple red buildings and architectural marvels. The intricacies of Hawa Mahal make it look like a 3-D movie cutout propped against a building. It was too beautiful to be true.

Phanna Meena Ka Kund
Hawa Mahal

Adjacent to the Hawa Mahal is Jantar Mantar, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that houses the world’s largest stone sundial clocks. One cannot help but wonder: with so much scientific knowledge in their ancient past, how did they just fall like swatted flies when the Western imperial powers walked over them in the 18th century through to the 20th?

Day 1: Jaipur to Sambhar

We started early at 6 am to avoid the morning traffic. Surprisingly, Rajasthanis must be early risers, as even at that early hour, the streets were already bustling with activity.

The itinerary for each day was straightforward. We would cycle daily around 70-90km, with a water break every 20-30km, and reach our predetermined accommodations around noon. There were 12 cyclists; the youngest was 33, but most were over 60.

The route on the first day was mainly flat, traversing small towns and villages, and sometimes haggling with motorcycles, lorries, and buses for space to pass. The trouble is that the vehicle sometimes appears unannounced (with loud honks, of course) and goes against the traffic!

The terrain was mostly flat. It was funny cycling in desert-like conditions, with scorching sun and a cool 20 C wind. The early morning temperatures would start around 15C and reach 23C at noon.

After reaching the hotels prepared by the organisers, evenings would be spent in tête-à-têtes, awaiting dinner, or being shown around town.

Flamingos at Lake Sambar

Day 2: Sambhar to Pushkar

Starting before the break of dawn, at 6, we began cycling into the dark under the guidance of the bicycle headlight and the road lines. When dawn broke, we finally realised that our view was acres of fields as far as the eye could see. About an hour into our journey, we reached a village, one of the many villages yet to come. The villagers would look at us funnily, not knowing what to make of us, a bunch of fellows cycling at an unearthly hour. All we had to do was hail, “Jaya Sri Ram“! Their look would change, a smile would emerge, and they would raise their hands in unison, in solidarity, knowing quite well that we were harmless and one of them.

Along the journey, we saw many animals that we, Malaysians, would not see in mainstream. We saw peacocks perched on trees and houses. Lining the roads were innumerable cows, donkeys, goats and even pigs.

As the day got hotter, the temperature built up to about 25 °C. Riding in desert-like conditions with no shade from trees or clouds. The interesting thing is that we did not see a single person carrying an umbrella. They were pretty much comfortable, just under the sun, with the ladies in their veils and the men in their turbans.

Lake at Brahma Temple

The main attraction of Pushkar is the rare Brahma temple. Legend has it that Lord Brahma was cursed that He should not be worshipped. The irony of this place is the presence of a large lake amid arid terrain with desert vegetation. It remains an enigma waiting to be answered, just like the mystery of creation and why the Creator Himself does not have a temple of worship.

Day 3: Pushkar to Beawar

Again, the trip started early at 6 in the morning, in complete darkness, along what turned out to be acres and acres of fields. The generic appearance of a village would have concrete roads, a row of shops with large advertisement boards in big Hindi fonts, and a strikingly gaudy combination of hues: yellow, green, and red. This same psychedelic colour combination is mirrored in Rajasthani clothes. The ladies’ sarees and dupattas are so contrasting that they cannot be missed. The same goes for the men’s unique bright coloured turbans.

Cows would seem to roam freely, with their droppings spread liberally on and by the roads. The row of buildings would mostly end with a temple or a school.

Around Beawar

The terrain today was mostly flat, with the sun shining at its fullest by 9.30 at 23C. After about 6 hours, we reached Beawar.

For a small town, Beawar has so many mid-range hotels, probably to cater to the numerous businesspeople who come here. Beawar, due to its central location, serves as an important hub for the cement, textile, and wool industries. There is no special iconic monument.

Day 4. Beawar to Kamlighat

Rise and shine, and we hit the roads again. Today’s menu is a gruelling one, cutting through the Aravalli hills.

“What is all this for?” asked a curious onlooker when told that we were cycling from Jaipur to Udaipur. I thought that was a profound question that questions the core of our existence. What is the purpose of anything in life?

This ride turned out quite hilly, mostly along the national highway. Missing today were the tractors with loudspeakers blasting Bhangra beats. For the past few days, we had seen tractors plying the countryside carrying workers and produce, setting the beat for the whole vicinity to get into the dancing mood. Err, but the lyrics were neither inspiring nor devotional. They were suggestive and laced with profanity.

Growing up in Malaysia, we were taught that travelling on a highway was sacrosanct, with traffic rules to be followed and vehicles in tip-top condition. Not in Rajasthan, they are not. One could actually see a whole five-tonne lorry travelling on the wrong side of the highway and honking violently at oncoming traffic as if the lorry’s right to drive on the wrong side was being infringed!

The terrain was monotonous, with rolling hills and a steep 6.5% incline, and the sun was hot from 9.30 am. Being a highway, there was nothing much to see here. About 6 hours later, we reached Kamlighat, some 88km away.

Kamlighat

Kamlighat is a small town with nothing spectacular to show. A row of shops, many stalls selling fruits and vegetables, and our accommodation was the biggest building around. A stroll pretty much covers the whole town.

Kumbhalgarh Fort

Day 5. Kamlighat to Kumbhalgarh

This proved to be the toughest ride yet. Riding through the Aravalli hills was no walk in the park. It was a slow burn with multiple gradual inclines. The 70km journey ended at the Kumbhalgarh Fort. The fort is labelled the Great Wall of India, the second-longest wall in the world after the Great Wall of China.

There was a light-and-sound show that essentially narrated the glory (and sometimes turbulent) days of Maha Rana Kumbha. He was a descendant of Emperor Asoka and later Rana Rathap, who fought valiantly against the invaders.

Day 6. Kumbalbagh to Udaipur

This proved to be a fun ride. Starting late at 7 am, it turned out to be a short ride, after much heckling and joking. A large proportion of the journey was along national highways; the later detour through the smaller villages proved interesting. A few observations I made as a curious Malaysian passing through the everyday people in the midst of their day-to-day lives are these.

Villages in Rajasthan are no different from those in Malaysia. If in Malaysia, azan and religious sermons are broadcast over the speakers, here in almost every village, it is the sound of ‘Om Jaya Jagadisha Hare[1]‘ and sermons on their speakers. The bottomline is that the majority dictates what is kosher for the masses.

We, the cyclists, were kind of local celebrities among the people, especially among the younger kids, who would wave at us. Some would even come so far as to bump fists with us. Interestingly, even some young ladies who walked along the roads would wave to us. If one were to observe, the ladies would not do the same when accompanied by a male companion. Instead of waving, they would pull down their shawls to cover their gaze.

Addendum

The cyclists shared many pleasant moments on and off the saddle. During one of those tête-à-têtes, the talk about each other’s countries’ politics came up. There was a lot of Modi-bashing among the Indian cyclists — that he had outlived his usefulness and that his every move appeared like propaganda. So I asked them one question, “If there were a snap national election today, who would you vote for?” Without a pause, they all replied in unison, “Modi!” That’s the trouble everywhere. Nobody has a perfect government. Everyone has to decide between the devil they know and the one they do not.

Last day in Udaipur, running around

The cyclists utilised this day to unwind after six days of cycling. The few touristy spots were the target.

City Palace, Udaipur

First, we visited the picturesque City Palace and scenic Lake Paricha. There was a boat ride around the lake, quite reminiscent of that in Budapest, only that Udaipur had much more to offer. The City Palaces had many sections and a museum attached to them. Pichola Lake is situated in the centre. A boat takes tourists around and makes a stop at a luxurious hotel to give them a taste of opulence. The property opens onto another section of town called Hathipole, which features rows of shops showcasing Rajasthani art, crafts, produce, and souvenirs. Hathipole is another proof of order within chaos. The auto-trishaws and motorcycles weave through the tiny lanes while shoppers still manage to jump from shop to shop, getting their best bargains.

To absorb the Rajasthani experience, one has indulge in their culinary traditions. Two dishes specific to this region are batti, a tennis-ball-sized hard bread made from unleavened wheat flour. It is eaten with dal or yoghurt. Next is lal maas, a fiery mutton dish, packed with chilli and Rajasthani spices.

The day ended with lazing around town and walking the streets of Udaipur. Fateh Sagar Lake offered an excellent view of the various hues of the setting sun on the horizon. It houses a solar observatory station.

Extra day

While we were still in recovery mode, most Indian cyclists returned home. We had one more day to kill, so we went out to explore more of Udaipur, the Lake City.

Still centred around the lakes, we took a cable car trip up to Neemach Maa Mandhir, perched 900 metres up on a hill overlooking Fateh Sagar Lake. It is said to be a powerful protective guardian of a particular dacoit clan.

Fateh Sagar Lake, Udaipur. 

Next stop was at the Maruthar Folk Dance to sample a traditional Rajasthani Cultural show. Besides witnessing some folk dances, we watched puppet shows and an experienced dancer performing a balancing act with multi-tiered pots on her head whilst grooving to metal petals, bowls, and shredded glass.

To end our visit on that hot day was the mausoleum erected for Rajasthan’s most revered hero, Maharana Pratap and his heroes who defended the region from foreign invaders. The enclosure also includes a museum that relives the glory days when the kingdom of Rajasthan was a force to be reckoned with.

Take-home message

An international expedition like this is quite life-affirming. It is priceless to realise that our mental illness is shared by many around the world. With this healthy obsession, we can explore places worldwide at a quite close and personal level. One is not merely taken to touristy spots, but can see the country as it is, warts and all.

While walking around the Kumbalbagh fort, we encountered a group of 60- and 70-year-old American cyclists, not quite by accident but by what was screaming on their T-shirts. After the usual cursory greetings, we discovered that they were more eccentric than we. These people in the geriatric age group were on a month-long cycling tour around Rajasthan, Kashmir, and Ladakh!

[1] “Om, Victory to the Lord of the Universe (Vishnu), the Remover of Miseries”. A devotional prayer in Hindi.

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

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

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Categories
celebrations

Six Years of Borderless Journal…

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Six years ago, a few of us got together to bring out the first issue of Borderless Journal. We started as a daily blog and then congealed into a monthly journal offering content that transcends artificial borders to meet with the commonality of felt emotions, celebrating humanity and the Universe. Today as we complete six years of our existence in the clouds, we would like to celebrate with all writers and readers who made our existence a reality. We invite you to savour writings collected over the years that reflect and revel in transcending borders, touching hearts and some even make us laugh while exploring norms. 

In this special issue. we can only offer a small sample of writings but you can access many more like these ones at our site…Without further ado, let us harmonise with words. We invite you to lose yourselves in a borderless world in these trying times.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Jared Carter, Snehaprava Das,  Manahil Tahir, Ryan Quinn Flanagan,  Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Saptarshi Bhattacharya, John Swain, Ron Pickett, Saba Zahoor, Momina Raza, Annette Gagliardi, Jenny Middleton, Afsar Mohammad, Rhys Hughes, George Freek, Mitra Samal, Lizzie Packer, Shamik Banerjee, Maithreyi Karnoor,  Hela Tekali, Rakhi Dalal, Prithvijeet Sinha, Asad Latif, Stuart MacFarlane

Isa Kamari translates his poems from Malay in The Lost Mantras. Click here to read.

Two of her own Persian poems have been written and translated by Akram Yazdani. Click here to read.

A Poet in Exile by Dmitry Blizniuk has been translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov. Click here to read.

Refugee in my Own Country/ I am Ukraine… Poetry by Lesya Bakun of Ukraine. Click here to read. 

Sukanta Bhattacharya’s poem, Therefore, has been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

Amalkanti by Nirendranath Chakraborty has been translated from Bengali by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard. Click here to read

Ye Shao-weng’s poetry ( 1100-1150) has been translated from Mandarin by Rex Tan. Click here to read.

Rebel or ‘Bidrohi’, Nazrul’s signature poem, ‘Bidrohi‘, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Manish Ghatak’s Aagun taader Praan (Fire is their Life) has been translated from Bengali by Indrayudh Sinha. Click here to read.

Tagore’s poem, Tomar Shonkho Dhulay Porey (your conch lies in the dust), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty as ‘The Conch Calls’. Click here to read.

Waiting for Godot by Akbar Barakzai; Akbar Barakzai’s poem has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Ihlwha Choi spent some time in Santiniketan and here are poems he wrote in reaction to his observations near the ‘home of R.Tagore’, as he names Santiniketan and the Kobiguru. Click here to read Nandini.

Fiction

Flash Fiction: Peregrine: Brindley Hallam Dennis tells us the story of a cat and a human. Click here to read.

Rituals in the Garden: Marcelo Medone discusses motherhood, aging and loss in this poignant flash fiction from Argentina. Click here to read.

Navigational Error: Luke P.G. Draper explores the impact of pollution with a short compelling narrative. Click here to read.

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

The Magic Staff , a poignant short story about a Rohingya child by Shaheen Akhtar, translated from Bengali by Arifa Ghani Rahman. Click here to read.

A Cat Story : Sohana Manzoor leaves one wondering if the story is about felines or… Click here to read. 

Pus Ki Raat or A Frigid Winter Night by Munshi Premchand has been translated from Hindi by C Christine Fair. Click here to read. 

American Wife: Suzanne Kamata gives a short story set set in the Obon festival in Japan. Click hereto read.

Hena, a short story by Nazrul, has been translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read. 

A Queen is Crowned: Farhanaz Rabbani traces the awakening of self worth. Click here to read.

A Penguin’s Story: Sreelekha Chatterjee writes a story from a penguin’s perspective. Click here to read.

Disappearance by Bitan Chakraborty has been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

The Sixth Man: C. J. Anderson-Wu tells a story around disappearances during Taiwan’s White terror. Click here to read.

Looking for Evans: Rashida Murphy writes a light-hearted story about a faux pas. Click here to read.

Used Steinways: Jonathan B. Ferrini shares a story about pianos and people set in Los Angeles. Click here to read.

The Beaten Rooster, a short story by Hamiruddin Middya, has been translated from Bengali by V Ramaswamy. Click here to read.

The Onion: JK Miller brings to us the story of a child in Khan Yunis. Click here to read.

Santa in the Autorickshaw: Snigdha Agrawal takes us to meet a syncretic spirit with a heartwarming but light touch. Click here to read.

The Untold Story: Neeman Sobhan gives us the story of a refugee from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Click here to read. 

The Wise Words of the Sun: Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a fable involving elements of nature. Click here to read.

The Headstone, a poignant story by Sharaf Shad has been translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Sandy Cannot Write: Devraj Singh Kalsi takes us into the world of adverstising and glamour. Click here to read.

Musalmanir Galpa (A Muslim Woman’s Story) Tagore’s short story has been translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

Non-Fiction

 Haiku for Rwandan Girls: Suzanne Kamata writes of her trip to Africa where she teaches and learns from youngsters. Click here to read.

Menaced by a Marine Heatwave: Meredith Stephens writes of how global warming is impacting marine life in South Australia. Click here to read.

 ‘All Creatures Great and Small’: Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of animal interactions. Click here to read.

One Life, One Love, 300 Children: Keith Lyons writes of a woman who looked after 300 children. Click here to read.

When West Meets East & Greatness Blooms: Debraj Mookerjee reflects on how syncretism impacts greats like Tagore,Tolstoy, Emerson, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi and many more. Click here to read.

The Day Michael Jackson Died: A tribute  by Julian Matthews to the great talented star who died amidst ignominy and controversy. Click here to read.

Amrita Sher-Gil: An Avant-Garde Blender of the East & West: Bhaskar Parichha shows how Amrita Sher-Gil’s art absorbed the best of the East and the West. Click here to read.

Dramatising an Evolving Consciousness: Theatre with Nithari’s Children: Sanjay Kumar gives us a glimpse of how theatre has been used to transcend trauma and create bridges. Click here to read.

Potable Water Crisis & the Sunderbans: Camellia Biswas, a visitor to Sunderbans during the cyclone Alia, turns environmentalist and writes about the potable water issue faced by locals. Click here to read.

T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land: Finding Hope in Darkness: Dan Maloche muses on the century-old poem and its current relevance. Click here to read. 

 My Love for RK Narayan, Rhys Hughes discusses the novels by ths legendary writer from India. Click here to read.

Travels of Debendranath Tagore : These are travel narratives by Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

The Comet’s Trail: Remembering Kazi Nazrul Islam: Radha Chakravarty pays tribute to the rebel poet of Bengal. Click here to read.

From Srinagar to Ladakh: A Cyclist’s Diary: Farouk Gulsara travels from Malaysia for a cycling adventure in Kashmir. Click here to read.

 Baraf Pora (Snowfall): This narrative gives a glimpse of Tagore’s first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated by Somdatta Mandal . Click here to read.

In The Hidden Kingdom of Bhutan: Mohul Bhowmick explores Bhutan with words and his camera. Click here to read.

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

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

The Bauls of Bengal: Aruna Chakravarti writes of wandering minstrels called bauls and the impact they had on Tagore. Click here to read.

The Literary Club of 18th Century London: Professor Fakrul Alam writes on literary club traditions of Dhaka, Kolkata and an old one from London. Click here to read.

From Madagascar to Japan: An Adventure or a Dream: Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia writes of her journey from Africa to Japan with a personal touch. Click here to read.

250 Years of Jane Austen: A Tribute: Meenakshi Malhotra pays a tribute to the writer. Click here to read.

The Chickpea That Logged More Mileage Than You: Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan gives an interesting account of the chickpeas journey through time and space, woven with a bit of irony. Click here to read.

The Day the Earth Quaked : Amy Sawitta Lefevre gives an eyewitness account of the March 28th earthquake from Bangkok. Click here to read.

Where Should We Go After the Last Frontiers: Ahamad Rayees writes from a village in Kashmir which homed refugees and still faced bombing. Click here to read.

The Last of the Barbers: How the Saloon Became the Salon (and Where the Gossip Went): Charudutta Panigrahi writes an essay steeped in nostalgia and yet weaving in the present. Click here to read.

That Time of Year: Rick Bailey muses about the passage of years. Click here to read.

The Untold Stories of a Wooden Suitcase: Larry S. Su recounts his past in China and weaves a narrative of resilience. Click here to read.

Adventures of a Backpacking Granny: Sybil Pretious recalls her travels across the world post sixty, including Kiliminjaro. Click here to read.

Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Pravasini Mahakuda’s Odia Poems

Five poems by Pravasini Mahakuda have been translated to English from Odia by Snehaprava Das

Pravasini Mahakuda
YOUR POETRY 

You do not get liberated by arguments. 
Liberation isn’t on your mind,
Neither is it in your fortitude or your courage,
Nor in the tricky manoeuvring of your steps.
Liberation is in the challenges
Your soul ceaselessly confronts.
Salvation is in each line of the poem you write.
Do you know or do you not?
That even after you quit this beautiful earth,
Your poetry will live.
Readers of poetry will continue to be. 
Your poetry will live forever because
You hold a timeless lover inside you,
And because of your love,
Which is liberation itself.
Your poetry will thrive as a green permanence,
Even on a blazing summer noon.
You and your poetry are one,  
And have never existed apart.
 You yourself are poetry --  
Only poetry, and nothing else.
Because like you, Poetry, too, is a woman>
And you, like poetry itself
Are the eternal Truth.   

 THE REST OF THEM 

Let the rest of them 
Write about revolutions 
And resistances,
About rights and responsibilities.
I write about life.
I write about love,
And things that happen around me.
I write about the changing seasons,
About the prices of goods,     
Of the soreness hidden in the heart.
I write about the hopes and fears that
The heart incessantly wavers between,
Of an unseen wound that never stops to hurt.
I write about the eye that cannot see
The tears trickle down the other one,
Or the drenched pillow and the sari-end.
I write about a hand 
That does not care to share 
The ache in the other one.
I write about the song the dead river 
That flowed once between us had sung.
Let others write about 
What they won and lost.
I will write about the pain emanating from 
An aspired for void.
Let others write about spite and disdain, 
I will sing of life and love.
 
SHRAVANA* 

For which Shravana must the woman
Write a poem now?
What kind of a poem of Shravana  
Must she write to sprinkle life
Into the desert dying inside her
To cheer herself up?
Do you think it is easy to write poetry?
You do not know perhaps,
Only a drop of rain comes down
Against millions of palmfuls of tears.
In that lone drop of rain,
 Rings a primeval tune
That perhaps lay buried under
A century old rock.
You had never been in that song 
In any phase of life,
Not as friend, a husband or a neighbour
Neither as a reader, nor a critic.
The agony is because 
You were never a part of that song.
The Shravana is because 
You were never a part of that song.
And the rain is because of that,
And the poem too!  
It’s half-hour past eight. 
On this evening of a Shravana Sunday
The Shravana pours generously.
Do you believe a woman somewhere   
Still sits waiting for you on this evening,
Watching her own silent tears
Mingle in the Shravana rains outside?

*Month of July-August in the Indian calendar, normally monsoons in India.

GODDESS 

She is not a goddess --
The one you invoked while 
Immersing, 
Or immersed while
Invoking.
She is a woman.  
Perhaps you have not cared to see
The tears in the eyes of that goddess.
During those performances,
You have time and again played games
With her body and her tears.
Every night,
On the freshly made beds 
And in freshly written verses too.
You always know that the 
Finale of the game
Will be under your control 
And by your choice.
Because you have ensured the result
Would be in your favour,
You have taken the game for granted. 
    
        
SAREE 

The pain and pangs I have lived through 
Are as many 
As the threads woven 
In my saree. 
The end of the saree fails to hold
the profusion of 
All honour and dishonour,
All joys and sorrows,
Interest and indifference, 
The ache of losing things 
I had won,
The ecstasy of loving 
And the agony of no response.
As I set out on a journey,
The sorrow-flowers bloom in a row
Along the border of the saree,
Spring into life. 
As innocent symbols of that agony, 
A scene floats past my mind in a flash
Where I find the whole of my being
Standing by the loom.
I marvel at the intimate emotion
Of a beautiful loving mind
Employed at the act of weaving
Such a saree of choice.
The threads in this saree 
I am clad in are as many as 
The sorrows and sufferings, 
Joys and elations that roll
Inside me like the gentle undulations of 
The middle notes of a song.

Pravasini Mahakuda is a distinguished Odia poet and translator with 18 original books and 8 books in translation from Hindi to Odia. She has received the Odisha Sahitya Akademi award, Jhankar Award and Junior and  Senior Fellowships from the Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India. Her international engagements include participation in poetry festivals in Germany presenting her work in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Leipzig and Frankfurt. She regularly contributes poems in national magazines and attends seminars and poetry festivals across India. 

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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