Tag: Jason Ryberg

Categories
Contents

Borderless, July 2025

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

‘…I write from my heart of the raging tempest…’.Click here to read.

Translations

Jibanananda Das’s poem, Given the Boon of Eternity, has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Karim Dashti’s short poems have been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Five poems by Sangram Jena have been translated from Odia by Snehprava Das. Click here to read.

Surya Dhananjay’s story, Mastan Anna, has been translated from Telugu by Rahimanuddin Shaik. Click here to read.

The Last Letter, a poem by Ihlwha Choi  has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Probhatey (In the Morning) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Snehaprava Das, David R Mellor, Snigdha Agrawal, George Freek, Laila Brahmbhatt, Tracy Lee Duffy, John Swain, Amarthya Chandar, Craig Kirchner, Shamim Akhtar, Jason Ryberg, Momina Raza, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Shahriyer Hossain Shetu, Rhys Hughes

Musings/ Slices from Life

What is Great Anyway?

Farouk Gulsara explores the idea of ‘greatness’ as reflected in history. Click here to read.

From Cape Canaveral to Carnarvon

Merdith Stephens writes of her museum experiences with photographs from Alan Nobel. Click here to read.

A Journey through Pages

Odbayar Dorj writes of library culture in Japan and during her childhood, in Mongolia. Click here to read.

By the Banks of the Beautiful Gomti

Prithvijeet Sinha strolls through the park by the riverfront and muses. Click here to read.

Dhruba Esh & Amiyashankar

Ratnottama Sengupta muses on her encounter with the writings of eminent artist and writer, Dhruba Esh, and translates one his many stories, Amiyashankar Go Back Home from Bengali. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Gastronomy & Inspiration? Sherbets and More…, Devraj Singh Kalsi looks at vintage flavours. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Summer Vacation in Japan: Beetle Keeping and Idea Banks, Suzanne Kamata narrates her experience of school holidays in Japan. Click here to read.

Essays


It doesn’t Rain in Phnom Penh

Mohul Bhowmick writes of his trip to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Click here to read.

Haunted by Resemblances: Hunted by Chance

Aparajita De introspects with focus on serendipity. Click here to read.

Stories

Blue Futures, Drowned Pasts

Md Mujib Ullah writes a short cli-fi based on real life events. Click here to read.

Unspoken

Spandan Upadhyay gives a story around relationships. Click here to read.

Misjudged

Vidya Hariharan gives a glimpse of life. Click here to read.

Nico Returns to Burgaz

Paul Mirabile writes about growing up and reclaiming from heritage. Click here to read.

Feature

A review of Anuradha Kumar’s Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India and an interview with the author. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Eleventh Commandment And Other Very Short Fictions. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Snehprava Das’s Keep It Secret. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Dilip K Das’s Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Rajat Chjaudhuri’s Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet. Click here to read.

Gower Bhat has reviewed Neha Bansal’s Six of Cups. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Jagadish Shukla’s A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory. Click here to read.

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Editorial

‘…I write from my heart of the raging tempest…’

New buildings almost growing out of old in Rome 
I can see the heartbreak, 
    Hear the wailing, the awakening, 
          I write from my heart
          Of the raging tempest. 

— Translation of Probhatey or ‘In the Morning’ by Rabindranath Tagore (1906)

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.

The dialogue started by Professor Fakrul Alam on libraries earlier with his essay and by Kalsi (with a pinch of humour) has been continued by Odbayar Dorj. She talks of the fading culture of libraries in Mongolia, her home country, and the vibrant culture that has blossomed in Japan. Suzanne Kamata writes of the rituals of summer holidays in Japan… including looking after a pet dung beetles.

Farouk Gulsara muses on ‘greatness’ as a concept with irony. Aparajita De muses on the word serendipity, applying it to her own situation while Ratnottama Sengupta muses on her encounter with the writings of eminent cover artist and writer who is not only a recipient of the Bangla Academy literary award but also immensely popular with children, Dhruba Esh, and translates one his many stories from Bengali.

In translations, Professor Alam has brought to us a beautiful poem by Jibanananda Das. Karim Drashti’s Balochi short poems have been rendered in English by Fazal Baloch and Snehaprava Das has found for us Odia poems of Sangram Jena in translation. Ihlwha Choi has rendered his own Korean poem to English while Tagore’s poem, ‘Probhatey (In the Morning)’ winds up the poetry in this section. We have more in prose — Surya Dhananjay’s story, Mastan Anna, translated from Telugu by Rahimanuddin Shaik.

In fiction, we have stories from around the world. Paul Mirabile sets his story in Burgaz. Spandan Upadhyay gives a mysterious narrative set in a world outside our waking consciousness and Vidya Hariharan gives us a glimpse of life in modern day India. From Bangladesh, Md Mujib Ullah writes a short cli-fi based on real life events.

Taking up the theme of cli-fi, Rajat Chaudhuri’s Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet seems 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.

Poetry awakens myriad of hues in Borderless with verses from across the world. We have poems from Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Ryan Quinn Flangan, Snehprava Das, George Freek, Laila Brahmbhatt, Tracy Lee Duffy, Amarthya Chandar, Jason Ryberg, Momina Raza, Shahriyer Hossain Shetu and more. Snigdha Agrawal gives a fun-filled poem about a duck and Rhys Hughes has given us a collection of verses like puzzles where we need to guess the animals! We also have an excerpt from Hughes’ The Eleventh Commandment And Other Very Short Fictions and Das’s short stories, Keep It Secret.

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.

Enjoy the reads!

Wishing you peace and happiness,

Mitali Chakravarty,

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents for the July 2025 Issue

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

Categories
Poetry

Poems by Jason Ryberg

From Public Domain 
CURRENTLY AMBLING AIMLESSLY  


The
    sun
and the
       sky today
            look like a flashlight
trying to shine through a thick wool
    blanket, and a lone falcon or hawk (I can never
       remember the difference) is hunkered down
out of the wind on a sagging telephone
     line that hangs parallel to the two-lane highway I’m
        currently ambling aimlessly
along from one no-
        where special
                    to the
                next
             and  
                the 
                   next
            and the 
   next, it seems,
              ad infinitum…

RIGHT ABOUT THE TIME 

Old 
chair
rocking
with the wind
on the front porch, screen
door slamming every now and then,
flurry of leaves skittering up and down the street, from
yard to yard and drive to drive, then back again,
     plastic grocery bags darting about
like drunken birds playing catch me if you can, cats and
dogs conspicuously absent
from the scene and that’s
right about
the time
that
the
dark
sky
decides
to transform
and show us its teeth

Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-two books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and countless love letters (never sent). He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books.

.

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

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Contents

Borderless, August 2024

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

A Sprinkling of Happiness?… Click here to read.

Conversation

A review of and discussion with Rhys Hughes about his ‘Weird Western’, The Sunset Suite. Click here to read.

Translations

Two Songs of Parting by Nazrul have been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

The Snakecharmer, Shapuray by Nazrul, has been translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read.

Leaving for Barren, Distant Lands by Allah Bashk Buzdar has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Loneliness has been translated from Korean by the poet, Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Olosh Shomoy Dhara Beye (Time Flows at an Indolent Pace) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Arshi Mortuza, Jason Ryberg, Saranyan BV, Koiko Tsuuda, Jane Hammons, Noopur Vedajna Das, Adeline Lyons, George Freek, Naisha Chawla, John Grey, Lakshmi Chithra, Craig Kirchner, Nia Joseph, Stuart MacFarlane, Sanjay C Kuttan, Nilsa Mariano, G Javaid Rasool, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Rhys Hughes

Musings/ Slices from Life

Breaking Bread

Snigdha Agrawal has a bovine encounter in a restaurant. Click here to read.

That Box of Colour Pencils

G Venkatesh writes of a happy encounter with two young children. Click here to read.

The Chameleon’s Dance

Chinmayi Goyal muses on the duality of her cultural heritage. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Godman Ventures Pvt. Ltd., Devraj Singh Kalsi looks into a new business venture with a satirical glance. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In In Praise of Parasols, Suzanne Kamata takes a light look at this perennial favourite of women in Japan. Click here to read.

Essays

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.

Bottled Memories, Inherited Stories

Ranu Bhattacharyya takes us back to Dhaka of the 1930s… and a world where the two Bengals interacted as one with her migration story. Click here to read.

Landslide In Wayanad Is Only The Beginning

Binu Mathew discusses the recent climate disaster in Kerala and contextualises it. Click here to read.

Stories

The Orange Blimp

Joseph Pfister shares a vignette set in the Midwest. Click here to read.

A Queen is Crowned

Farhanaz Rabbani traces the awakening of self worth. Click here to read.

Roberto Mendoza’s Memoirs of Admiral Don Christopher Columbus

Paul Mirabile explores myths around Christopher Columbus in a fictitive setting. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Shabnam, translated from Bengali by Nazes Afroz. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Maaria Sayed’s From Pashas to Pokemon. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Upamanyu Chatterjee’s Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life. Click here to read.

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Shuchi Kapila’s Learning to Remember: Postmemory and the Partition of India. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Namita Gokhale’s Never Never Land. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Malvika Rajkotia’s Unpartitioned Time: A Daughter’s Story. Click here to read.

.

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Editorial

A Sprinkling of Happiness?

A Pop of Happiness by Jeanie Douglas. From Public Domain

Happiness is a many splendored word. For some it is the first ray of sunshine; for another, it could be a clean bill of health; and yet for another, it would be being with one’s loved ones… there is no clear-cut answer to what makes everyone happy. In Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (JK Rowling, 2005), a sunshine yellow elixir induces euphoria with the side effects of excessive singing and nose tweaking. This is of course fantasy but translate it to the real world and you will find that happiness does induce a lightness of being, a luminosity within us that makes it easier to tackle harder situations. Playing around with Rowling’s belief systems, even without the potion, an anticipation of happiness or just plain optimism does generate a sense of hope for better times.  Harry tackles his fears and dangers with goodwill, friends and innate optimism. When times are dark with raging wars or climate events that wreck our existence, can one look for a torch to light a sense of hope with the flame of inborn resilience borne of an inner calm, peace or happiness — call it what you will…?

It is hard to gauge the extreme circumstances with which many of us are faced in our current realities, especially when the events spin out of control. In this issue, along with the darker hues that ravage our lives, we have sprinklings of laughter to try to lighten our spirits. In the same vein, externalising our emotions to the point of absurdity that brings a smile to our lips is Rhys Hughes’ The Sunset Suite, a book that survives on tall tales generated by mugs of coffee. In one of the narratives, there is a man who is thrown into a bubbling hot spring, but he survives singing happily because his attacker has also thrown in packs of tea leaves. This man loves tea so much that he does not scald, drown or die but keeps swimming merrily singing a song. While Hughes’ stories are dark, like our times, there is an innate cheer that rings through the whole book… Dare we call it happiness or resilience? Hughes reveals much as he converses about this book, squonks and stranger facts that stretch beyond realism to a fantastical world that has full bearing on our very existence.

Poetry brings in a sprinkling of good cheer not only with a photo poem by Hughes, but also with more in a lighter vein from Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Michael R Burch, Arshi Mortuza, Jason Ryberg and others. Sanjay C Kuttan has given a poem dipped in nostalgic happiness with colourful games that evolved in Malaysia. Koiko Tsuuda, an Estonian, rethinks happiness. George Freek, Stuart MacFarlane and Saranyan BV address mortality. Nilsa Mariano and G Javaid Rasool have given us powerful migrant poetry while John Grey, Craig Kirchner, Jane Hammons, Nia Joseph, Noopur Vedajna Das and Adeline Lyons refer to climate or changes wrought by climate disasters in their verses.

A powerful essay by Binu Mathew on the climate disaster at Wayanad, a place that earlier had been written of as an idyllic getaway, tells us how the land in that region has become more prone to landslides. The one on July 30th this year washed away a whole village! Farouk Gulsara has given a narrative about his cycling adventure through the state of Kashmir with his Malaysian friends and finding support in the hearts of locals, people who would be the first to be hit by any disaster even if they have had no hand in creating the catastrophes that could wreck their lives, the flora and the fauna around them. In the wake of such destructions or in anticipation of such calamities, many migrate to other areas — like Ranu Bhattacharya’s ancestors did a bit before the 1947 Partition violence set in. A younger migrant, Chinmayi Goyal, muses under peaceful circumstances as she explores her own need to adapt to her surroundings. G Venkatesh from Sweden writes of his happy encounter with local children in the playground. And Snigdha Agrawal has written of partaking lunch with a bovine companion – it can be intimidating having a cow munching at the next table, I guess! Devraj Singh Kalsi has given a tongue-in-cheek musing on how he might find footing as a godman. Suzanne Kamata has given a lovely summery piece on parasols, which never went out of fashion in Japan!

Radha Chakravarty, known for her fabulous translations, has written about the writer she translated recently, Nazrul. Her essay includes a poem by Tagore for Nazrul. Professor Fakrul Alam has translated two of Nazrul’s songs of parting and Sohana Manzoor has rendered his stunning story Shapuray (Snake Charmer) into English. Fazal Baloch has brought to us poetry in English from the Sulaimani dialect of Balochi by Allah Bashk Buzdar, and a Korean poem has been self-translated by the poet, Ihlwha Choi. The translations wind up with a poem by Tagore, Olosh Shomoy Dhara Beye (Time Flows at an Indolent Pace), showcasing how the common man’s daily life is more rooted in permanence than evanescent regimes and empires.

Fiction brings us into the realm of the common man and uncommon situations, or funny ones. A tongue-in-cheek story set in the Midwest by Joseph Pfister makes us laugh. Farhanaz Rabbani has given us a beautiful narrative about a girl’s awakening. Paul Mirabile delves into the past using the epistolary technique highlighting darker vignettes from Christopher Columbus’s life. We have book excerpts from Maaria Sayed’s From Pashas to Pokemon and Nazes Afroz’s translation of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Shabnam with both the extracts and Rabbani’s narratives reflecting the spunk of women, albeit in different timescapes…

Our book reviews feature Meenakshi Malhotra’s perspectives on Shuchi Kapila’s Learning to Remember: Postmemory and the Partition of India and Bhaskar Parichha’s thought provoking piece on Malvika Rajkotia’s autobiographical Unpartitioned Time: A Daughter’s Story. While both these look into narratives around the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent, Rakhi Dalal’s review captures the whimsical and yet thoughtful nuances of Namita Gokhale’s Never Never Land. Somdatta Mandal has written about Upamanyu Chatterjee’s latest novel, Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life, which is in a way a story about a migrant too.

When migrations are out of choice, with multiple options to explore, they take on happier hues. But when it is out of a compulsion created by manmade disasters — both wars and climate change are that — will the affected people remain unscarred, or like Potter, bear the scar only on their forehead and, with Adlerian calm, find happiness and carpe diem?

Do pause by our current issue which has more content than mentioned here as some of it falls outside the ambit of our discussion. This issue would not have been possible without an all-out effort by each of you… even readers. I would like to thank each and every contributor and our loyal readers. The wonderful team at Borderless deserve much appreciation and gratitude, especially Manzoor for her wonderful artwork. I invite you all to savour this August issue with a drizzle of not monsoon or April showers but laughter.

May we all find our paths towards building a resilient world with a bright future.

Good luck and best wishes!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the content’s page for the August 2024 Issue.

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

Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Jason Ryberg

Cafe Terrace by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) From Public Domain 
MAKING THE ROUNDS 


You
     can
see the
       pink street lights
coming on at that
      exact point where late afternoon
makes the exchange with early evening and you can
       still smell the White Magnolias in the night wind
as it sweeps the sky clean of any last
      clouds, and the streets are all deserted now except for
cats and crows and the odd patrol
       car out making their
rounds. And some-
       where 
not 
     too 
   far
     from here,
              someone is 
                        playing the cello.



ON-HOLD

Eight hours on-hold with
     Public Assistance would make
the Dalai Lama
     madder than a rattlesnake
          caught in a hot clothes dryer.


NEVER GET OUT OF THE GODDAMN BOAT! 
(Sleight Return)

It’s a wet, grey morning in mid-December, here in South 
Central Missouri (the less fashionable foot-hills of the 
Ozarks as it’s known by some), not exactly pouring, but 
a fairly constant and consistent plip, plip, plipping, and not 
exactly warm, but an unseasonably tropical 50-some-odd 
degrees (almost balmy, you might say, for this time of year, 
anyway) and I have only just woken from a strange surrealist 
montage of dreams, broken by the sudden subterranean 
trainyard rumble of thunder (though there haven’t been any 
trains in these parts for decades); dreams of deer roaming 
and snuffling, freely, through the sleeping streets of Kansas 
City, Missouri, dreams of star charts on my inner eye- lids, 
milk-white phantom dreams, blue-black storm dreams where-
in, every night, I go up the snaking circuit cable of the river, 
and every night I get out of the boat and walk deep into the 
sweating jungle to confront what must be my inner nemesis, 
only to be stalked and devoured, again and again, by the 
brightly burning tiger’s fearful symmetry.

Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Kicking Up the Dust, Calling Down the Lightning (Grindstone Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters. 

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

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Contents

Borderless June 2023

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Where have All the People Gone? … Click here to read.

Translations

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

Mohammad Ali’s Signature, a short story by S Ramakrishnan, has been translated from Tamil by Dr B Chandramouli. Click here to read.

Three poems by Masud Khan have been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Shadows, a poem in Korean, has been translated by the poet himself, Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Pran or Life by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Conversations

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri converses with Vinta Nanda about the Shout, a documentary by Vinta Nanda that documents the position of women in Indian society against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and centuries of oppression and injustice. Click here to read.

In Conversation with Advait Kottary about his debut historic fiction, Siddhartha: The Boy Who Became the Buddha. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Ananya Sarkar, George Freek, Smitha Sehgal, Rachel Jayan, Michael Lee Johnson, Sayantan Sur, Ron Pickett, Saranyan BV, Jason Ryberg, Priya Narayanan, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Evangeline Zarpas, Ramesh Karthik Nayak, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Ghee-Wizz, Rhys Hughes talks of the benefits of Indian sweets while wooing Yetis. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Humbled by a Pig

Farouk Gulsara meets a wild pig while out one early morning and muses on the ‘meeting’. Click here to read.

Spring Surprise in the Sierra

Meredith Stephens takes us hiking in Sierra Nevada. Click here to read.

Lemon Pickle without Oil

Raka Banerjee indulges in nostalgia as she tries her hand at her grandmother’s recipe. Click here to read.

Apples & Apricots in Alchi

Shivani Shrivastav bikes down to Alchi Ladakh to find serenity and natural beauty. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Trees from my Childhood, Devraj Singh Kalsi muses on his symbiotic responses to trees that grew in their home. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Superhero Sunday in Osaka, Suzanne Kamata writes of her experience at the Osaka Comic Convention with her daughter. Click here to read.

Stories

The Trial of Veg Biryani

Anagha Narasimha gives us a social satire. Click here to read.

Am I enough?

Sarpreet Kaur explores social issues in an unusual format. Click here to read.

Arthur’s Subterranean Adventure

Paul Mirabile journeys towards the centre of the Earth with his protagonist. Click here to read.

Essays

No Bucket Lists, No Regrets

Keith Lyons muses on choices we make while living. Click here to read.

In Search of the Perfect Dosa

Ravi Shankar trots around the world in quest of the perfect dosa — from South India to Aruba and West Indies. Click here to read.

“Bookshops don’t fail. Bookshops run by lazy booksellers fail.”

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri takes us for a tour of the Kunzum bookstore in New Delhi. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

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

An excerpt from Advait Kottary’s Siddhartha: The Boy Who Became the Buddha. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Behind Latticed Marble: Inner Worlds of Women by Jyotirmoyee Devi Sen, translated from Bengali by Apala G. Egan. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Rhys Hughes’ The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm. Click here to read.

Basudhara Roy reviews Prerna Gill’s Meanwhile. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Zac O’Yeah’s Digesting India: A Travel Writer’s Sub-Continental Adventures With The Tummy (A Memoir À La Carte). Click here to read.

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

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

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Categories
Poetry

(Otherwise) Ridiculous

By Jason Ryberg

Courtesy: Creative Commons
The lone Bos primigenius on the hill at night,

do you suppose she ever wonders
in her laconic, bovine way
what the stars could possibly be?

Does the Tyto alba contemplate
the moon’s topography (from his
hayloft perch) or what mysteries might
lay on its darker side?

The Nephila clavata centred in his jewelled web,

does he receive strange frequencies
(or just old radio transmissions)
on its taut wires and filaments?

What about the sleepless philosopher/ poet
taking his thoughts out for a late-night
walk around the neighbourhood?

Does the universe leave cryptic,
fortune-cookie clues and candid
little Polaroids of the Bigger Picture
lying around for him to find
and piece together later?
Or is this semi-educated fool merely
adrift on a sea of his own imagining
in the leaky rowboat of his skull
and nothing but a kerosene lamp,
a stone jug of his uncle’s corn liquor
and an old typewriter on which
he may compose

such (otherwise) ridiculous
and impertinent questions?

Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors.He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Kicking Up the Dust, Calling Down the Lightning (Grindstone Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters. 

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

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Contents

Borderless, October 2021

An Ode to Autumn: Painting by Sohana Manzoor.

Editorial

Making a Grecian Urn… Click here to read.

Interviews

Unveiling Afghanistan: In Conversation with Nazes Afroz, former editor of BBC and translator of a book on Afghanistan which reflects on the present day crisis. Click here to read.

The Traveller in Time: An interview with Sybil Pretious who has lived through history in six countries and travelled to forty — she has participated in the first democratic elections in an apartheid-worn South Africa and is from a time when Rhodesia was the name for Zimbabwe. Click here to read.

Translations

Travels & Holidays: Humour from Rabindranath

Translated from the original Bengali by Somdatta Mandal, these are Tagore’s essays and letters laced with humour. Click here to read.

The Quest for Home

Nazrul’s Kon Kule Aaj Bhirlo Tori translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Mysteries of the Universe

Akbar Barakzai’s poetry in Balochi, translated by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Gandhi & Robot

A poem reflecting the state of Gandhi’s ideology written in Manipuri by Thangjam Ibopishak and translated from the Manipuri by Robin S Ngangom. Click here to read.

Sorrows Left Alone

A poem in Korean, written & translated by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

The Song of Advent by Tagore

Written by Tagore in 1908, Amaar Nayano Bhulano Ele describes early autumn when the festival of Durga Puja is celebrated. It has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read

Michael R Burch, A Jessie Michael, John Grey, Rupali Gupta Mukherjee, Mike Smith, Saranyan BV, Tony Brewer, Baisali Chatterjee Dutt, Jay Nicholls, Beni S Yanthan, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Pramod Rastogi, Jason Ryberg, Michael Lee Johnson, Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad, Rhys Hughes

Animal Limericks by Michael R Burch. Click here to read.

Nature’s Musings

In The Lords of Lights, with photographs and a story, Penny Wilkes makes an interesting new legend. Click here to read.

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Pessoa and Cavafy: What’s in a Name?, Rhys Hughes comically plays with the identity of these two poets. Click here to read.

Musings/ Slices From Life

At the Doctor’s

In this lighthearted narration, Farouk Gulsara uses humour to comment on darker themes. Click here to read.

Taking an unexpected turn

Nitya Pandey talks of a virtual friendship that bloomed across borders of countries during the pandemic. Click here to read.

Travel in the Time of Pandemics: Select Diary Entries of an Urban Nomad

Sunil Sharma gives us a slice from his travels with vibrant photographs, changing continents and homes during the pandemic. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Surviving to Tell a Pony-tale, Devraj Singh Kalsi journeys up a hill on a pony and gives a sedately hilarious account. Click here to read.

Essays

A Season of Magical Mellow Wistfulness

Meenakshi Malhotra through folk songs that are associated with Durga Puja explores the theme of homecoming. Click here to read.

What Gandhi Teaches Me

Candice Louisa Daquin applies Gandhiism to her own lived experiences. Click here to read.

How Women’s Education Flourished in Aligarh Muslim University

Sameer Arshad Khatlani dwells on the tradition of education among Muslim women from early twentieth century, naming notables like Ismat Chughtai and Rashid Jahan. Click here to read.

Once Upon a Time in Burma: Of Friendships & Farewells

John Herlihy takes us through more of Myanmar with his companion, Peter, in the third part of his travelogue through this land of mystic pagodas. Click here to read.

When Needles Became Canons…

Ratnottama Sengupta, who has edited an encyclopaedia on culture and is a renowned arts journalist, gives us the role ‘kanthas’ (hand-embroidered mats, made of old rags) played in India’s freedom struggle. Click here to read.

Stories

Lunch with Baba Rinpoche in Kathmandu

Steve Davidson takes us for a fictitious interview with a Tibetan guru in Nepal. Click here to read.

The Tree of Life

An unusual flash fiction by Parnil Yodha about a Tibetan monk. Click here to read.

Odysseus & Me: A Quest for Home

A short fiction from Bangladesh by Marzia Rahman on immigrants. Click here to read.

Dawn in Calicut

Krishna Sruthi Srivalsan writes of a past that created the present. Click here to read.

I am a Coward with Priorities

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury tells a story from a soldier’s perspective. Click here to read.

The Literary Fictionist

In Bapu, Denied, Sunil Sharma explores the fate of Gandhiism in a world where his values have been forgotten. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt of In a Land Far From Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan by Syed Mujtaba Ali, translated by Nazes Afroz. Click here to read.

An excerpt from letters written by Tagore from Kobi & Rani, translated by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Aruna Chakravarti reviews Golden Bangladesh at 50: Contemporary Stories & Poems edited by Shazia Omar. Click here to read.

Somdatta Mandal reviews Wooden Cow by T. Janakiraman, translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Kannan. Click here to read.

Gracy Samjetsabam reviews Suzanne Kamata’s The Baseball Widow. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Mohona Kanjilal’s A Taste of Time: A Food History of Calcutta. Click here to read.


Categories
Poetry

Many Things Wonderful

By Jason Ryberg

Many Things Wonderful to Tell


The mad monkish scientist of jazz
sits smiling at the grand unveiling of his

latest creation, while a railroad bridge
riveted together of mostly weathered

driftwood and old rusty pieces of scrap
iron shows us the nearest way to many 

possible futures where, amongst many
other things wonderful to tell in this 

hot and swampy Sargasso sea of broken-
down cars, campers, bicycles and boats,

a lone pristine Cadillac sits, ready for
lift-off, to take us to what all the locals

swear is the best damn greasy spoon 
diner in the galaxy.

Jason Ryberg is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2021). 

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