A fresh slice of orange exploding at the brim. I slurp up every little drop, without a break, without a blink. Overwhelmingly quenched yet still parched, every thought so distinct, yet dissolved into one drink. Every cell so intoxicated, yet so sobered, exhilarated yet so numb, so incoherent, yet as never before have they been so much in sync.
I drink up the concoction by this brilliant mixologist, yet to us all unknown, overflowing the fragile walls of this life as for now to us known.
Joseph K. Wells is an American poet and healthcare executive, originally from India. Since 2016, his poems have found a home in over two dozen journals and lit mags internationally. A selection of his published works is available at https://paperonweb.wordpress.com/ .
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Title: Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962
Author: Kalyani Ramnath
Publisher: Westland/Context
The legal frameworks established during the period from 1942 to 1962 in South and Southeast Asia played a crucial role in shaping migration patterns and influencing decolonisation processes. This era witnessed significant changes as countries in these regions sought to redefine their legal systems in the wake of colonial rule, which in turn affected the movement of people across borders.
Migration patterns were influenced by various factors, including the aftermath of World War II, the struggle for independence, and the establishment of new national identities. Additionally, the decolonisation processes during this time were marked by the emergence of new legal frameworks that aimed to address the complexities of post-colonial governance and the rights of migrants. Understanding the interplay between these legal frameworks, migration trends, and decolonisation efforts provides valuable insights into the socio-political landscape of South and Southeast Asia during this transformative period.
Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962 authored by Kalyani Ramnath is a thoroughly researched work. This book is part of the series South Asia in Motion and was originally published by Stanford University. Ramnath serves as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia and has conducted extensive research on migration.
Says the blurb: “For more than a century before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading goods, supplying credit, and seeking work. This all changed with the war and as India, Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya wrested independence from the British empire.”
This captivating book is set against the backdrop of the tumultuous post-war period. It delves deeply into the legal struggles encountered by migrants who are determined to maintain their traditional ways of life and cultural practices. The narrative highlights their experiences with citizenship and the broader process of decolonisation. Even as new frameworks of citizenship emerged and the political landscapes of decolonisation created complexities that often obscured the migrations between South and Southeast Asia, these migrants consistently shared their cross-border histories during their engagements with the legal system.
These narratives, often obscured by both domestic and global political developments, contest the notion that stable national identities and loyalties emerged fully formed and free from the influences of migration histories after the fall of empires.
In her book, Kalyani Ramnath draws on archival materials from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, London, and Singapore to illustrate how former migrants faced legal challenges in their efforts to reinstate the prewar movement of credit, capital, and labour. The book is set against the backdrop of a climate marked by rising ethno-nationalism, which scapegoated migrants for taking away jobs from citizens and monopolising land.
Ramnath fundamentally illustrates in the book that the process of decolonisation was marked not just by the remnants of collapsed empires and the establishment of nation-states emerging from the debris of imperial breakdown. It also encompasses the often-ignored stories of wartime displacements, the unexpected consequences that arose from these events, and the lasting impacts they have had on societies.
This perspective highlights the complex and multifaceted process of decolonisation, demonstrating how it was shaped not only by significant political transformations but also by the personal narratives and experiences of individuals who faced the challenges of conflict and displacement.
An excellent book to read! .
.
Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Title: Thorns in My Quilt: Letters from a Daughter to her Father
Author: Mohua Chinappa
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Mohua Chinappa’s Thorns in My Quilt: Letters from a Daughter to Her Father is a quiet and visceral exploration of memory, grief, and the often-fraught space between love and silence. Drafted in the form of a collection of letters to her late father, the book is less about resolution than about reckoning – more an attempt to articulate what remained unsaid while he was alive. Chinappa, through this profoundly personal lens, not only offers a portrait of a relationship but also a reflection on absence, yearning, and the emotional inheritance that we all carry forward sometimes.
Mohua Chinappa is an author, a columnist, a renowned podcaster in India, a TEDx speaker, a former journalist and a corporate communications specialist. Her other initiative—NARI: The Homemakers Community—provides a platform for homemakers to voice their everyday challenges.
The letters in this book, seamlessly weave together fragments of childhood and adulthood, moving fluidly between time and place. One moment, Manu the daughter, beckons the warmth of her early years in Shillong — vanilla flavoured butter cookies and the hush of rain-soaked afternoons, then the shelter of a harsingar[1] tree in their government house in Delhi, while in the next, she confronts the frailty of her marriage, the weight of her Baba’s illness, or the sting of words that sometimes remained unsaid. The form of writing echoes the workings of memory. Not linear, but recursive, continually turning back to moments that remain unresolved. Each letter seems like an appliqué sewn into the fabric of remembrance, creating a quilt with seams held together by both tenderness and pain.
At the centre of the book is the paradoxical figure of her Baba, portrayed with candour as a man who is loving yet aloof, erudite yet impractical and admired yet sometimes resented. Manu longs for his approval but also grapples with the ways his criticism and aloofness diminishes her. The letters vacillate from affection to accusation and from gratitude to grievance. In the acceptance of these contradictions, there seems a resistance to recall the memory of a father in an idealised tone. Instead, Chinappa manages to present a figure whose complexity remains inseparable from her own. The portrait revealed, thus, appears all the more moving.
The narrative also reverberates with a strong theme of displacement. The family’s history of migration, the shifts between Shillong, Delhi, and Bengaluru, create a sense of being both rooted and uprooted at once. Places do not act merely as backdrops but are living repositories of memory, holding within them the sweetness of belonging and the ache of estrangement. This sense of dislocation extends inward in the narrative. Chinappa captures not only her alienation from her father but also the broader struggle of carving an identity in a world shaped by expectation and silence.
The language of the narrative is lucid, and doesn’t tip into ornamentation. Everyday details—trees, rain, food, household objects—become charged with metaphorical weight, carrying emotional resonance far beyond their surface. The letters are suffused with sensory detail, grounding the reader in the textures of lived experience while also opening space for reflection. The writing exercises restraint. Even at its most poignant, it doesn’t spill into melodrama.
The emotional honesty of the book is equally striking. Manu does not shy away from confessing anger or disappointment; nor does she smooth over her father’s failings in the name of filial devotion. She admits to her vulnerabilities—the yearning for acceptance, the bitterness of abandonment, the pain of reinvention when life’s foundations collapse. These allow the readers to relate with the story. Though the particulars may differ, but the longing for parental approval, the hurt of unspoken words, and the struggle to reconcile love with resentment are universal.
However, some constraints in the narrative cannot be overlooked. The epistolary form, while effective in evoking intimacy, also narrows the perspective. Baba appears only through Manu’s voice, his presence mediated entirely by her memories and emotions. At some places, the narrative shifts abruptly, from addressing second person (father) to third which makes the reading a bit disconcerting. At times, the absence of other perspectives leaves the figure of father more shadow than substance, defined by what he was to her rather than who he was in himself. The letters also occasionally return to the same emotional terrain, circling around familiar grievances and sorrows. While this mirrors the looping nature of grief, the repetition creates a sense of exhaustion.
These reservations, however, do not diminish the book’s overall appeal. Its power lies not in neatness but in its willingness to dwell in ambiguity. It does not offer easy closure, nor does it attempt to tidy grief into a narrative of redemption. Instead, it embraces complexity, acknowledging that love is rarely unblemished, that absence can wound as much as presence, and that the act of writing itself can become a form of survival.
Thorns in My Quilt resonates because it is both deeply particular and quietly universal. While grounded in Chinappa’s personal history, it speaks to the wider human experience of fractured relationships, cultural displacement, and the longing to be heard. In cataloguing both the thorns and the blossoms of her bond with her Baba, Chinappa creates a testament that is as much about resilience as it is about grief.
Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Sir Philip Sidney, in his AnApology for Poetry, argues that the primary purpose of poetry is to “teach” and “delight”. Kiriti’s Sengupta’s Selected Poems serves both purposes though the poems do not preach at any point but leave the readers mulling over the ideas with the play of words. The book contains more than 125 poems, selected by Dustin Pickering, a writer and the founding editor of Transcedent Zero Press. The content covers an eclectic range of subjects—from personal musings to ecology, memory to myths and more — mostly republications from his earlier collections and some from journals.
An award-winning poet, publisher, editor, translator and critic, Sengupta believes himself twice-born as he states in his poem of the same name — ‘Twice Born’, written specially for this collection. He has embraced the calling of a poet, forsaking the lucrative profession of a doctor. It’s not that he doesn’t vacillate: “The ink has dried on the paper; the pot can’t be refilled with scribbles. Do I now surrender my pen?” But poetry is his vocation; it would sound ludicrous if someone could ask a noted poet, “What if you weren’t a poet?”(“Intrinsic’)
There is a sense of flow in the poems despite his stylistic terseness. Water permeates his poetry. The poet believes: “…water is achromatic and otherwise called life.” As the poet is a deep observer of nature and its surroundings, he observes that water carries out its own duty: “Water has no call, no décor either; it floats the bone and/ the ash free.” In ‘Evening in Varanasi’, the poet assigns the water of the Ganges with exceptional qualities: “The water here is not/a fire extinguisher. /Flames rise through the water.” He connects the water to the Sun: “O Sun, I remember/I’ve bathed your feet/with the water of the Ganges”. ‘River of Tears and Mother’ airs the deep concern about the recalcitrance of those who ignore ecological issues: “Ganga has her stories to tell;/wish she had someone to listen to her.”
Ecological strains seep through Sengupta’s poems. In ‘The Pillars of Soil’, he draws a fine connection between human beings and trees through the image of the roots. The poet invokes a supreme spirit: “the world would need another maestro/who could sing for the seasoned flesh—/those who walked the earth—/whose roots ran deep into the ground”. In ‘Hibiscus’, he evocatively draws a curious connection between the colour of hibiscus flower and human blood: “…I’ll bloom/like a hibiscus:/the blush will endorse/my bloodline.” The epigraph of the poem, translated by Sengupta from a poem by the noted ‘rebellious’ Bengali poet, Sukanta Bhattacharya, re-enforces his stance.
Concern for extreme air pollution in cities yields sardonic poetry: “Nature made the nasal frame fragile. /How do they breathe the vain air?” He also highlights pollution caused by plastics: “The earth has grown plastic. Water takes eons to seep”.
Some of Sengupta’s poems convey a sense of domesticity. “Clarity”deals with gastronomy as the poet succinctly invites the reader to succor ghee with all their five senses. In this piece, the poet reminisces about the aroma of ghee that his mother used to prepare. The poet here compares his mother’s organic ghee with his organic memory: “So organic is my memory—/the granular residue lifted us to heaven. /Ah! Pious Ghee, and incorrigible.”
In poems such as ‘Experience Personified’, the poet records his experience of the commonplace things: “Tiny droplets envelop my feet/and permeate the toes. /I don’t call it a feeling, I will name it/my experience”. It reminds a me of lines by Tagore: “But I haven’t beholden/what lies two steps away from my home/on a blade of paddy grain, a dazzling drop of dew”. Sengupta also doesn’t shy away from the recent happenings in India. In ‘The Untold Saga’, the poet recalls the abominable “Nirbhaya episode” and rues that, unlike Durga, Nirbhaya could not create an epic due to her untimely death.
The poet turns metaphysical – almost like John Donne[1]— when he asserts, “I now look beyond the flesh, bone and keratin, /I’ve been told/the finer body dwells undressed.” Though most of the poems are contemplative, the book offers some light-hearted ones too: “To my complete bewilderment, if the ghost appears, I’ve decided to offer it a chair first, and then I’ll plead, ‘Take a seat and relax! Let us share our stories.’” In ‘Gravity’, the poet offers a lighter note for the turbulence caused in the aircraft due to the inclement weather. He gives solace to his terrified son: “Relax, Bumps help us/ realize the earth.” In a haiku, punning on the word ‘wisdom’, the poet realises that it’s a test of a surgeon’s wisdom to pluck out a wisdom tooth (biologically called ‘the third molar’) of a patient.
Sengupta’s Selected Poems is a fabulous collection. These poems are like chosen seeds that contain intrinsic vigour to sprout through the age-old concrete floor, giving a message of hope in the face of all odds. Sengupta’s penetrating observations, coupled with his poetic prowess, can be vividly experienced by delving into the rich treasures hidden in between the covers.
Pradip Mondal teaches at L. B. S. Govt. P. G. College Halduchaur, Nainital (India). He has been published in journals like Suburban Witchcraft (Serbia), Muse India (India), and Indi@logs (Spain).
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Families of 'saal' cover the forest with abundance just like the river's bouyant currents guide the Grand Boat ahead.
The last blossoms of warm sunlight emerge from among those trees and now circumambulate the farmlands.
***
Oh medicine-takers!
Come here! The winds are not fidgety here. Greet them unhesitantly.
***
Gather around here.
The tasteful smell of curries coming from the maternal homestead has turned this evening into a dominion of delectable flavours.
Tell sleep to resist.
On your feathery shirt hung on the clothesline, something intangible occurs. Watch how the moonlight sews its torn parts.
Those particles filled with voluminous light will now dispatch a night's worth of beauty for the days to come.
YAARA*
As the alumni sneer, we revisit the green mausoleum for the second time today.
A pup on our trail, giving curls of sound and rearing his curiosity at the edge of our hips. He has no problem with making new friends.
He isn't born of scandal or frenzy. Which is why he sits like a monk and watches us place a ring of flowers on the mausoleum's palms.
***
Somebody loved the one who came with the sun.
Someone too put flowers in the name of a beloved here.
Someone once let another little pup from this bygone land trail them because he understood the meaning of love.
Today, it's what we understand.
The little pup sits at the mausoleum's gate and shakes his tail. We call him Yaara.
Our day starts here.
*Yaara means friend in colloquial Hindi
I'VE GIVEN PEACE A CHANCE
The vast interiors of my beloved cat's eyes, yellow and green the soundwaves of her love song and the primary softness of her body beget time, stilled to a superior attachment to the little hours where she adjusts her gaze with an unaccustomed earth.
The chances of her surviving this world are greater on an everyday basis. The holdovers of rage and diffidence are like indistinct clouds that pass in the sky before her wide eyes.
I had never known such stillness in my life. I had never known the comfort and balance of a creature who lets indivisible days and the lazy minutes after two o'clock become like marmalade spread out in an open jar, liable to be tasted and profoundly savoured.
***
I've given peace a chance without accusing myself of being distanced from her. She now guides me to sleep, placing her paws on my chest and breathing with me.
Because of her, an unaccustomed earth has finally begun to share its mysteries of comfort, rest and acceptance with me.
BRANCHES
The branches were taut as an arrow or directly ploughing the air with arms shaped like pitchforks. They could never envision the violence of our world.
In a farm next to this foliage tailored by someone with superb skills, bearing a village's heartland and the phonetics of air, were a farmer and his cows. They were singing, without words, the last notes of an agrarian song.
***
No animals rustled. But three teenage lads took care at this time of the evening. They asked me my name.
One of them gave me a good smile. He was the countryside's rising sun. He said the river was just an ordinary string of water now.
The call for prayer came when he put his arms around his friends' shoulders.
Shoulder to shoulder they walked but the river didn't end. Similarly, that evening of amity and fulfillment didn't end for them. All evenings are theirs for this devotion to each other.
The branches sway. Moths dance unabashedly around them and little mosquitoes hum like theremins. Long may this countryside live with them and the three lads.
About the Book:A Verdant Heart is a collection of soul-songs that captures Nature in its full diversity of expressions and experiences, tilting its omnipotence on diurnal human lives. It is a labour of love and a poignant reflection on the poetic lens that allows mortal beings the freedom to observe and commit to creativity.
About the Author: Prithvijeet Sinha, a resident of the cultural epicenter that is Lucknow, India. His prolific published credits encompass poetry, musings on the city, cinema, anthologies, journals with national and international repertoires as well as a blog ( https://anawadhboyspanorama.wordpress.com/). His life-force resides in writing, in the art of self-expression.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Storm in purple by Arina Tcherem. From Public Domain
If we take a look at our civilisation, there are multiple kinds of storms that threaten to annihilate our way of life and our own existence as we know it. The Earth and the human world face twin threats presented by climate change and wars. While on screen, we watch Gaza and Ukraine being sharded out of life by human-made conflicts over constructs made by our own ‘civilisations’, we also see many of the cities and humankind ravaged by floods, fires, rising sea levels and global warming. Along with that come divides created by economics and technology. Many of these themes reverberate in this month’s issue.
From South Australia, Meredith Stephens writes of marine life dying due to algal growth caused by rising water temperatures in the oceans — impact of global warming. She has even seen a dead dolphin and a variety of fishes swept up on the beach, victims of the toxins that make the ocean unfriendly for current marine life. One wonders how much we will be impacted by such changes! And then there is technology and the chatbot taking over normal human interactions as described by Farouk Gulsara. Is that good for us? If we perhaps stop letting technology take over lives as Gulsara and Jun A. Alindogan have contended, it might help us interact to find indigenous solutions, which could impact the larger framework of our planet. Alindogan has also pointed out the technological divide in Philippines, where some areas get intermittent or no electricity. And that is a truth worldwide — lack of basic resources and this technological divide.
On the affluent side of such divides are moving to a new planet, discussions on immortality — Amortals[1] by Harari’s definition, life and death by euthanasia. Ratnottama Sengupta brings to us a discussion on death by choice — a privilege of the wealthy who pay to die painlessly. The discussion on whether people can afford to live or die by choice lies on the side of the divide where basic needs are not an issue, where homes have not been destroyed by bombs and where starvation is a myth, where climate change is not wrecking villages with cloudbursts. In Kashmir, we can find a world where many issues exist and violences are a way of life. In the midst of such darkness, a bit of kindness and more human interactions as described by Gower Bhat in ‘The Man from Pulwama’ goes some way in alleviating suffering. Perhaps, we can take a page of the life of such a man. In the middle of all the raging storms, Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in a bit of humour or rather irony with his strange piece on his penchant for syrups, a little island removed from conflicts which seem to rage through this edition though it does raise concerns that affect our well-being.
Parichha has also reviewed a book by another contemporary Odia woman author, Snehaprava Das. The collection of short stories is called Keep it Secret. Madhuri Kankipati has discussed O Jungio’s The Kite of Farewells: Stories from Nagaland and Somdatta Mandal has written about Chhimi Tenduf-La’s A Hiding to Nothing, a novel by a global Tibetan living in Sri Lanka with the narrative between various countries. We have an interview with a global nomad too, Neeman Sobhan, who finds words help her override borders. In her musing on Ostia Antica, a historic seaside outside Rome, Sobhan mentions how the town was abandoned because of the onset of anopheles mosquitos. Will our cities also get impacted in similar ways because of the onset of global ravages induced by climate change? This musing can be found as a book excerpt from Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome, her book on her life as a global nomad. The other book excerpt is by a well-known writer who has also lived far from where he was born, MA Aldrich. His book,From Rasa to Lhasa: The Sacred Center of the Mandala is said to be “A sweeping, magnificent biography—which combines historical research, travel-writing and discussion of religion and everyday culture—Old Lhasa is the most comprehensive account of the fabled city ever written in English.”
With that, we come to our fiction section. This time we truly have stories from around the globe with Suzanne Kamata sending a story set in the Bon festival that’s being celebrated in Japan this week for her column. From there, we move to Taiwan with C. J. Anderson-Wu’s narrative reflecting disappearances during the White Terror (1947-1987), a frightening period for people stretched across almost four decades. Gigi Gosnell writes of the horrific abuse faced by a young Filipino girl as the mother works as a domestic helper in Dubai. Paul Mirabile gives us a cross-cultural narrative about a British who opts to become a dervish. While Hema R touches on women’s issues from within India, Sahitya Akademi Award Winner, Naramsetti Umamaheshwararao, writes a story about children.
With such hope growing out of a neolithic burial chamber, maybe there is hope for life to survive despite all the bleakness we see around us. Maybe, with a touch of magic and a sprinkle of realism – our sense of hope, faith and our ability to adapt to changes, we will survive for yet another millennia.
We wind up our content for the August issue with the eternal bait for our species — hope. Huge thanks to the fantastic team at Borderless and to all our wonderful writers. Truly grateful to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork and many thanks to all our wonderful readers for their time…
Whirling Dervishes, painting by Jean Baptiste Vanmour (1671-1737). From Public Domain
In 1976, I bought a small country cottage very pleasantly located near the town of Sheffield at Dronfield in South Yorkshire from an elderly woman who informed me she that had travelled quite extensively throughout Asia in the nineteen twenties and thirties before settling down here. She never married. The learned woman left no forwarding address.
Settling in took much time and energy because of my abundant belongings. At last, one rainy afternoon having nothing to do, I climbed the shaky stairway that led to the garret. The door had been left ajar. Inside the low-ceiling, ill-lite space, there was nothing but a large chest placed in the middle. The lid lay aslant. Its hinges were broken.
Curious about its contents, I began rummaging through the numerous newspaper and magazine clippings, booklets, letters and other documents. A particular envelop caught my eye because the red wax seal had been broken. Wax-sealed letters are very out-dated these days. When I opened the envelop I understood why it was sealed. A seven-page letter had been written in fine, elegant script, by Lady Sheil, dated 1869. Lady Sheil was quite a prominent woman in her time[1] . This indeed was a remarkable find. It baffled me why the former proprietor would leave in a chest of documents a letter of such archival interest. Since there was little light in the garret, I took the letter downstairs to read it. Unfortunately there was no addressee, so I assumed it was sent to the former proprietor. I must confess that a feeling of guilt touched me when I began my reading. Luckily I overcame this sensation because the contents of the letter proved extraordinary …
Lady Sheil details a very peculiar adventure of an Englishman who named himself Ali the Dervish -or as she spelt it, Deervish — who had undertaken a voyage to ‘Balochestan, Persia’[2]. As I read through her letter, I came to realise that the Englishman had abandoned his British ways entirely, adopting those of the semi-nomad Balochi. To such an extent was his assimilation that he even married a Balochi woman, something utterly unthinkable at that time — in the year 1856. Why Lady Sheil would write a long letter about this chap to an unknown reader or readers heightened my curiosity.
I began investigations at the Sheffield library and found Lady Sheil’s Glimpses of Persian[3] though I found nothing at all about Ali the Dervish. Lady Sheil mentioned something about his diary but nothing substantial came of this. Be that as it may, the letter fascinated me by its mysterious allusions and ellipses, especially concerning this unusual identity change. Not a simple task for a European in the nineteenth century, or even in our century for that matter. This Ali even outdid Sir Richard Burton’s bursts of outlandish impersonation …
Examining the letter carefully, I felt a strange, slight tremor goading me to do justice to this eccentric Ali. Something unsaid in the sentences urged me to read between them, to scrutinize the margins and the paragraph indents as if Lady Sheil had deliberately left out parts of her narrative for her reader to fill in those blank, yellowing spaces.
I picked up my pen, imagining myself to be both Lady Sheil and Ali the dervish, and began filling in the those blanks, writing in the gaps, the lacuna, the untold events and details so to speak. Indeed, I had convinced myself that the letter had been destined for me. And this resolution was enough for me to divulge the mystery of Ali …
Ali, whose English-born name was left unknown, had had the best of aristocratic educations in the fine arts, especially languages. He was fluent in Hindustani, Persian, Pashtun and Turkish, besides having mastered four or five European languages, including Hungarian. This was quite a linguistic feat, second only to Richard Burton whom, by the way, Ali had the occasion to meet in Lahore. A meeting which lasted two or three weeks according to a friend of Burton’s memoirs. Little, however, is reported about their relationship.
Prior to Ali’s arrival in India and that fortuitous encounter with Burton, he apparently had led a rather lukewarm existence in England, and this in spite of his family wealth, or perhaps because of it. His accumulation of capital was analogous to his successive accumulations of prolonged bouts of depression. They left him utterly exhausted. How and when he left England is not written in the letter, although he probably reached India by ship, then on horseback or foot into Northwestern India, accompanied often by erring minstrels and story-tellers. From whom Ali learned the art of dancing, chanting and story-telling. It was not a question of imitating these rituals and customs. Ali had integrated them as if they had been part of some distant, latent self that required jolts of recollection to surge up from the depths of the unconscious. In fact, Burton was quite taken aback by Ali’s very ‘unEnglish’ appearance. His manner of speaking English, too, possessed a curious twist of Persian and Hindustani syntax — a ring of their tonal stress.
To Ali’s pleasant surprise, he no longer suffered from bouts of violent depressions. The former Englishman on leaving Burton, perhaps in 1849, rid himself of paper money, donating it to missionaries, then rode off into the verdant valleys of North-western India towards Afghanistan carrying only the clothes on his back, two gourds of fresh water, several loaves of acorn-bread and a pouch of Arabic gum. Ali carried no weapon.
Ali’s sound knowledge of Hindustani, Pashtun and Persian offered him unparallel glimpses of these undomesticated lands. Lands of shifting desert sands whose rising heat conjured in the distance illusions of ravishing oases and sparkling cascades off tree-laden crags. Ali had been warned about these deceitful mirages (by Burton?) whose marvellous vision had been the death of many a brave adventurer.
He kept to the clayey track, accepting food and board from the hospitable villagers or sleeping under the silver stars on his woven kilim-saddle cloth. He rode days or nights penetrating landscapes of indescribable beauty, of terrifying singularity, of unbearable heat in the day and equally freezing nights. At one point in his wanderings, Ali, slumbering on his horse due to the rising heat and lack of food, looked up to discover a gigantic Buddha hewn into a tuft-like cliff. A small stream ran in front of the lithic niche along which flourished many date trees. There the Buddha stood, calm, reposed, sedentary, encased in his stone casket, home to a myriad birds who had made their nests on his rounded shoulders and shaven head. Ali jumped off his horse, filled his gourds with clean water, scouted about for fresh dates. With one last look at the towering Enlightened One he set off towards Persia, filled with equivocal sensations. He felt that his nomad days would soon be numbered …
A month or two passed. Now villagers tilling their fields or collecting wood no longer greeted or spoke Pashtun to him, but in Dehwari or Persian. He welcomed this language shift. Ali felt more at ease in Persian, albeit it be the Dehwari dialect, which he had learnt from one or two erring Zarathustrian talebearers in India. By then his uncombed beard touched his chest and his hair his shoulders. In one village he traded his khaki-coloured shorts for a shalwar[4] and his boots for goat-skin sandals. In another his Safari sun hat for a turban and his heavy flax shirt for a long, cotton tunic. Whenever he met tillers or merchants they would greet him with the customary ‘hoş amati’[5]. By their pronunciation and vocabulary Ali knew he was travelling southwards into Balochestan. Temperatures rose and rose — 37° C … 42° C. His horse trotted slower and slower. Her rider drooped soporifically over her mane. Ali no longer calculated his wanderings in farsakhs[6] but by the risings and settings of the sun …
Notwithstanding these discomfitures, the persevering Ali carried on. To his delight the track widened, hospitable shepherds driving before them their herds of sheep or goats offered the solitary traveller the warmth of their camp-fires, goat’s milk, cheese and acorn-bread. Caravans of transhumance nomads pressing towards the high plateaus nodded to him. The stony-faced herdsmen chanted in their own language which translated means —
A breath of mountain breeze, A breath of wind from the Sea, In the middle, We trudge The pilgrims of the fountain…
Then they called after their huge, savage dogs. Ali seized upon that admirable chant and intoned it to himself or aloud …
One sparkling, azure day, Ali, road-weary, alighted from his horse in a large settlement of tents, called Sa’idi. There both Persian and Dehwari were spoken, judging from the scores of people who came to greet him. It was a charming settlement, surrounded by fields of red poppies, iris, bluer than the blue of the sky, crown imperials whose orange tints glowed like lit candles, and tulips. Horses, sheep and goats dotted the terraced rows of poppies on the hills and skirts of the low-laying piebald mountains, motionless. Ali, both dazzled and comforted by the undulating kaleidoscope colours decided to halt for the night in this welcoming settlement to rest his fatigued physical and mental state and his horse.
When he asked for the elder of the settlement, he was directed to a very large white tent. In fact, since his arrival the snowy-bearded elder had been eyeing the stranger askance. He threw open the flap of his tent and greeted him in Persian as custom would have it, inviting his visitor inside for tea. Sipping their respective glasses of sugared tea, the snowy-bearded elder’s deep-set black eyes peered into those hazel-brown of Ali’s. Though he was pleased to meet this curious traveller, he was confused about his identity. Finally he put the question point blank to his sipping visitor: “Are you Persian?”
Ali nodded neither yes nor no. His ambiguous nod set off the string of events that followed. events that transformed the already transforming Ali into a rather ambiguous Other …
The snowy-bearded elder had read that ambiguous nod as a sign of belonging. Ali’s sun-mat complexion, his extraordinary command of both Persian and Dehwari, his knowledge of social and religious habits and practices, mostly acquired during his years on the road, opened the elder’s heart and those of the Balochi people of Sa’idi, people who now had stepped into the tent, forming a large circle round Ali and the snowy-bearded elder. Out of this wide circle came the elder’s three sons and daughter to lead him to his own red tent at the outskirts of the settlement. His horse was led to pasture with the others.
On the thick carpets of his medium-sized tent, Ali sat and meditated upon that ambiguous nod. Had he really become the one of them? Deep within his heart, the former Englishman rejoiced … rejoiced at his ‘crossing over’. He had become what he really was …
Several years passed. Ali no longer felt guilty about leaving his past behind. His immersion seemed complete. He sang and danced round the ritual fire at night. He told stories night after night after a hard day’s work in the poppy fields, apple and peach orchards and the vineyards, the tribesmen chanted their chants of ancestral lore, joined him in his whirling dance, one palm to the Heavens and the other to the Earth, eyes staring into a void of quiescence …
It was in Sa’idi that he began to be called Ali the Dervish, whirling as he did before and behind the leaping flames. Ali taught his dance to the snowy-bearded elder’s three sons. In turn, the elder offered his daughter to him in marriage — a privilege since this signified entrance into the chieftain’s family.
Once the three-day marriage ceremonies were over, his lovely bride — for she was truly lovely — sat next to him in the nuptial red tent. His wife, whose name has never been recorded, demanded nothing of him. She accepted all his nightly hesitations … ‘failings’ … Her fruity laugh and obsidian back eyes spoke a language that communicated higher values … loftier treasures than uncertainty, physical gratification or hereditary obligations.
Ali slowly discovered that his young bride possessed the quality of a seer, perhaps even belonged to a long lineage of Central Asian mystics. Intense were her meditations and visions of the Other World, of events passed and those to come … His past … Their future … Ali, both bewildered and beguiled by this power of prophesy, would timidly question his bride about her unusual gifts. She would answer enigmatically: “One must remove the Husk before bringing in the Bride,” an adage he never fully understood, nor would she ever elucidate.
On other moonlit nights, alone within the sanctuary of their intimacy, Ali’s wife would envision scenes of his long aristocratic lineage, each member afflicted by physical or mental atrophies, plagued by wasting ennui. The Dervish listened in awe as she revealed events quite unknown to him. Yet, he remained speechless, peering into the almond-shaped eyes of this woman depicting scenes that could very well cost him his life. She said nothing. He yearned to avow everything to her but some fey voice prevented him each time. She read his mind and laughed her fruity laugh, delving ever deeper into his life … theirs !
Ali accompanied her with his eyes then turned them to the dying embers of the stove fire, the glowing logs sizzled lightly in the silence. Was he deluding himself? He knew that his wife had discovered his native idenity. But were all those past scenes his true identity? He indeed stemmed from that hoary lineage, the last scion. Was he the last to play a role on this world stage of masquerade and mummery? No ! He was Ali the Dervish … Here amongst these hearty tribesmen he played no role. He had overcome the hardships of childhood as a fatherless boy. That unknown gentleman had left for Africa never to return! Never a letter nor a message brought by acquaintances. Before dying of grief, his poor mother repeated to him everynight: “Look to the stars.” And the sullen boy looked, and believed that they would lead him to another life … another identity !
Once Ali began to cry softly listening to the sizzling embers and the light, rhythmical breathing of his strange wife.
Many years had passed and yet, they had no children. His hair and beard had greyed. Yet, no reprimand, no rebuke, no judgement ever came from the community, especially from her aging father. Was the power of her revelations known to him ? Would he be the last branch of that gnarled and rotten aristocratic tree ?
Ali rode often into the fields and mountains to gather wood to build tent-frames or glean fruit from the many apple and peach trees. During these solitary moments his past crept up on him, making him feel guilty. There seemed only one solution : speak openly, candidly to his wife about his British birth, his genuine desire to become the Other. She would surely understand since she had already read his former life by sounding his heart. That night he would go straight to his wife.
But, just then out of the blue sky his wife came galloping towards him, whipping up her stead. She jumped off, an odd expression wrinkling her forehead. Ali ran up to her, took her shoulders gently, admiring the sapphire blue that framed them so perfectly like a painting. There she stood, basking in the soft glow of the mellowing, evening sun. Before he could utter his rehearsed confession she put a hand to his lips.
“Father has just passed away,” she whispered softly, without emotion. “He has been freed from the trammels of worldly existence.” She smiled. “Now you too are free to divest yourself of a personage that has been conferred to you by the stars and the strength of your will.”
“But who am I really, my dear?” her husband wondered. She caressed his bearded, burning cheeks. She answered: “If you want the horse to neigh, you must slacken the reins.” Turning round, she rode back to the settlement to wash the body of her deceased father and prepare the three-day funeral rites with her brothers. Ali puzzled by that enigmatic counsel trudged to his horse.
He rode back far behind her, meditating his ‘freedom’. What other choice had he?
This sentence was the last in Lady Sheil’s long, detailed letter. On further investigation into this strange fellow at the London library, I discovered that Ali the Dervish had divorced and remarried his bride to one of her brother’s mates, then left Sa’idi. He was last seen in Tabriz, Persia. No document reports his whereabouts after his reaching that northwestern town in the lands of the Azeri people.
I have often wondered whether Lady Sheil ever knew who Ali the Dervish really was. I have my doubts. Only his Balochi wife knew, and of course, that mysterious person could have never been questioned. It’s also odd that Ali himself — whatever self that be– had never woven his thoughts and experiences into a book, never enlightened a Western public on integration and assimilation into a foreign culture.
As time went by I even considered that this letter might have been a hoax to hoodwink a naive fellow like myself into clothing Ali in legendary fashion. On second thought, though, who’s to arbitrate between fact and fiction ? Not I, in any case. For isn’t it a refreshing act of freedom to slip from one to the other without a pinch of guilt ?
[6] A Persian measurement equivalent to 5.35 kilometres
.
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Bidyut Prabha Devi (1926 – 1977) is celebrated as one of the most prominent female poets in Odia literature. Hailing from Natara village in the Kendrapara district, she was the second daughter of the esteemed writer, Nimai Charan Das, and Rekha Devi.
Raised in a traditional family in Bamphisahi, Cuttack, she received most of her education independently, attending Ravenshaw Girls’ School until the ninth grade. Inspired by her father and notable Odia poets like Nanda Kishore Bal and Kunja Bihari Das, she began her journey into poetry in 1940.
Her first collection, released in 1944 when she was merely 18 years old, featured patriotic poems that celebrated the cultural and natural heritage of Odisha. It highlighted her early ability to create vivid imagery and convey emotional depth, drawing from her rural background and the literary traditions of Odia.
Her 1950 collection, Utkal Saraswata[1], was recognised as a significant contribution to education, being included as a poetry textbook at Utkal University. In addition to poetry, she also wrote for children, for which she was awarded by the Government of India in 1955, acknowledging her impactful contributions to children’s literature.
Bidyut Prabha’s poetry explores the challenges faced by women, societal limitations, and the theme of empowerment, weaving together both personal and universal experiences. It embodies her feminist viewpoint, tackling matters such as gender inequality within a conservative framework, all while preserving a lyrical and approachable style.
She authored numerous plays, although specific titles are not extensively recorded. Her theatrical pieces frequently conveyed social messages, resonating with her socialist and feminist principles. Her writings were recognized for their clarity and moral depth, rendering literature accessible to younger audiences. Some of these later works are less documented but showcase her reflective and philosophical nature.
Influenced by socialist principles, her poetry examined social disparities and advocated for the marginalised. Her self-taught approach was characterised by clear and evocative language, rendering her work both relatable and profound.
Bidyut Prabha’s writings were revolutionary for their era, especially in their focus on women’s issues within Odia literature. Her son, Sachidananda Mohanty, a distinguished educationist and litterateur, has translated her works, thereby preserving her legacy.
Writes Sachidananda Mohanty[2]: “In recent decades, feminist historiography in eastern India has paid welcome attention to issues of education, creativity, and sisterhood across linguistic barriers. It has recognised women’s pivotal role in shaping the public space at the intersection between feminist history and literary creativity. Scholars like Judith Walsh, Tanika Sarkar, Malavika Karlekar, and others have brought to our attention forgotten life-narratives of literary women of the region who have created a tradition of their own. Bidyut Prabha Devi, recognised as a major female voice in pre-modern Odia poetry, belongs to a poetic tradition represented by an illustrious sisterhood, comprising Reba Ray, Kuntala Kumari Sabat, Haripriya Devi, Debahuti Devi, Nirmala Devi, Tulasi Das, and Brahmotri Mohanty, among others.
“While Bidyut Prabha may be known in Odisha, her feminist poems, based on her deep understanding of domesticity and patriarchy, have not been sufficiently read outside the state. Even in Odisha, her ‘romantic poems’ are widely anthologised at the cost of the more powerful compositions that address the woman’s position and identity in terms of the entrenched power structures in society.”
According to Mohanty, Bidyut Prabha’s feminist poetry stands out distinctly from the prevalent ‘Advice-for-Women’ genre in the region. She bases her work on her own life experiences and resonates with the growing feminist consciousness in Odisha, which is championed by literary feminists and social reformers like Sarala Devi[3], who played a pivotal role as a mentor to Bidyut Prabha. This journey was marked by its transnational influences. Sarala Devi had a strong connection with poet Annada Shankar Ray, a key figure in the Odia Romantic movement.
Her impact on Odia literature is significant, particularly as one of the earliest notable female poets in a predominantly male literary environment. Her contributions are rooted in her capacity to merge lyrical elegance with social critique, enhancing the inclusivity, reflection, and cultural relevance of Odia literature. Her work continues to serve as a foundational element for feminist and regional narratives in Odisha.
She was married to Panchanan Mohanty. Following health challenges in 1966, her literary output took on a spiritual dimension, shaped by her connection to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. Unfortunately, she took her own life.
Bidyut Prabha Devi’s poetry, deeply rooted in feminist and socialist ideals, continues to motivate and inspire, with her centenary of birth being commemorated in 2025 as a representation of women’s empowerment in Odisha.
[3] Sarala Devi (1904-1986) – Odisha’s first Satyagrahi, first female legislator and first feminist writer.
.
Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
All around us, we hear of disasters. Often, we try to write of these as Tagore seems to do in the above lines. However, these lines follow after he says he draws solace and inspiration from a ‘serene lotus’, pristine and shining with vibrancy. He gazes at it while looking for that still point which helps him create an impact with words. That is perhaps what we can hope to do too — wait for a morning where clarity will show us the path to express not just what we see, but to find a way to heal and help. Finding parallels in great writings of yore to our own attempts at recreating the present makes us realise that perhaps history is cyclical. In Rome, new structures rear up against thousand-year walls, reflecting how the past congeals into the present.
Congealing the past into our present in this July’s issue are stories of American migrants — like Tom Alter’s family who made India their home — by Anuradha Kumar in her new non-fiction Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India. We feature this book with a review and an interview with the author where she tells us how and why she chose to write on these people. We have more people writing of their own wanderings. Mohul Bhowmick wanders into Cambodia and makes friends over a local sport while Prithvijeet Sinha strolls by the banks of the River Gomti in Lucknow. Meredith Stephens not only takes us to the Prime Meridien in Greenwich but also to Carnarvon which houses a science and technology centre in Australia. Devraj Singh Kalsi wanders with humour to discover gastronomical inspiration and hopes for sweeter recompense.
Taking up the theme of cli-fi, Rajat Chaudhuri’s Wonder Tales for a Warming Planetseems to bring hope by suggesting adapting to changing climes. Rakhi Dalal tells us in her review: “It dares to approach the climate crisis through the lens of empathy and imagination rather than panic or guilt. In doing so, Rajat Chaudhuri gives us what many adult climate narratives fail to deliver—a reason to believe that another world is not only possible but already being imagined by the young. All we need to do is listen.” Bhaskar Parichha has discussed the autobiography of a meteorologist and Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University, Jagadish Shukla. In A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory, he claims Shukla has “revolutionised monsoon forecasting.” Somdatta Mandal has written about Dilip K Das’s Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India. And Gower Bhat reviews Neha Bansal’s best-selling poetry collection, Six of Cups.
With that, we wind up the contents of this month’s issue. Do pause by our content’s page to check it out in more details.
This month’s edition would not have been possible without all our contributors, our fabulous team and especially Sohana Manzoor’s artwork. Huge thanks to all of them and to our wonderful readers who make it worthwhile for us to write and publish. Do write in to us if you have any feedback. Five years ago, we chose to become a monthly from a daily… We have come a long way from then and grown to host writers from more than forty countries and readers from almost all over the world. For this, we owe you all – for being with us and encouraging us to find fresh pastures.
Borderless 