It's over a hundred. Trees droop close to melting. Air-conditioners whirr and whine. The electrical grid sputters close to blackout.
Air is slow to get around and some climate skeptic in a row house on Broadway wipes his brow, unpeels his shirt, thinks maybe this really is the hottest it's ever been.
In my house, with every window open, I imagine a crystal blue stream cascading down from mountains. Even in my mind, it turns to steam in an instant.
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE MOUNTAIN
It was gold up there and my head could see clear to the next state and to the people I knew in childhood.
Forget the wind and the soughing boughs and the cold rocks and the clotted dry grass -- there were sounds like bells ringing and steps that penetrated clouds.
It was like a table set for me. And lit by one candle, one sun.
I approached gods fit to worship and they thanked me for my kind words but then directed me to deities even greater.
When I reached the peak, the sky was a wide blue altar. I climbed so high just so I could drop to my knees.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterlyand Lost Pilots. His latest books are Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
The description in ‘Hot Dry Summers’ is not of hell but what is perceived as happening on certain parts of Earth due to global warming or climate change. Forest fires. Nearer the equator, the storms have become harsher with lightning strikes that seem to connect the Earth to the sky. Trees get uprooted as the soil is softened from excessive rain. Sometimes, they fall on passers-by killing or injuring them. There is no rain in some places, forest fires or flooding in others… The highest temperatures touched 55 degrees Celsius this year. Instead of worrying about losing our homes lodged on land masses to the oceans that continue to rise, becoming dark heat absorbers due to loss of white ice cover, we persistently fight wars, egged on by differences highlighting divisive constructs. It feels strange that we are witness to these changes which seem to be apocalyptic to doomsday sayers. Are they right? Our flora, fauna and food will also be impacted by global climate change. How will we survive these? Will we outlive these as a species?
Poetry in our translations’ section travels to Balochistan, from where a Hafeez Rauf translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch, talks of burning tyres, again conflicts. It takes on a deeper hue as Ihlwha Choi translates his poignant poem from Korean, reflecting on the death of his mother. We have a translation of Tagore’s less popular poem, Mrityu[1], reflecting on the same theme. His reflections on his wife’s death too have been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam who has also shared a song of Nazrul, written and composed on the death of Tagore. Another lesser-known poet but brilliant nonetheless, Nirendranath Chakraborty, has been translated for us by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard. And what a tremendous poem it is when the person called Amalkanti wanted to be sunshine! We have a story too — ‘Speech Matters’ by Naramsetti Umamaheswararao translated by Johny Takkedasila.
Our stories as usual travel around the world — from Holland (by Paul Mirabile) to Hyderabad (by Mohul Bhowmick) and with a quick pause at Bangalore (by Anagha Narasimha). Travels in the real world are part of our non-fiction. Sai Abhinay Penna takes to a the second largest mangrove forest in the world and Ravi Shankar to Colombo. Madhuri Bhattachrya gives us a glimpse of an Indian summer and Snigdha Aggrawal explores the impact of climate change in her part of the world. Farouk Gulsara actually writes his reflections at a traffic junction. And it reads droll…
We have an in memoriam by Keith Lyons on Morgan Spurlock, the documentary maker who ate McDonald fare for a month and then made a film on it. We have two tributes to two legends across time. Wayne F Burke has given a brief piece on the iconic illustrator, Norman Rockwell. And Aruna Chakravarti, the queen of historic fiction who brought the Tagore family alive for us in her two very well researched novels, Jorasanko and Daughters of Jorasanko, has given us a fabulous tribute to Tagore on the not-so common aspects of him.
Suzanne Kamata, the novelist who does a column from Japan for us normally, has spoken to us about her new novel, Cinnamon Beach, which overrides multiple manmade constructs. It’s an interesting read from someone who lives her life across multiple cultures and transcends many boundaries.
This is a bumper issue, and it is difficult to convey the vibrant hues of words that colour this edition. Please do pause by our contents page for a more comprehensive look.
This issue would not have been possible without all our fabulous contributors and a wonderful, dedicated team. We are delighted that Rakhi Dalal — who has done many reviews and shares her poetry with us in this issue — has agreed to be a writer-in-residence with us. A huge thanks to all of you, and especially Sohana Manzoor for her artwork. I am truly grateful to our readers for popularising our efforts to put together an online space with free and vibrant reads.
I would like to end with a few lines that gives me hope despite climate change, wars and doomsday predictions.
There’s more to life, he says to me, than what you choose to see.
It’s dark out as the cat takes up residence on the sill of a wide open window. The sparrows in the trees outside don’t notice him or, more likely, just don’t care having established that he’s a house cat, too domesticated, too set in his ways, too lazy to chase prey. But then the cat yawns and the sun rises. So he’s still powerful in that respect. POINT REYES
Early May, the waystation mudflats are inundated with sandpipers, godwits and a squabble of long-billed dowitchers, all Arctic bound.
Grebe flocks wheel relentlessly over the ponds before settling, as one, to feast.
Inland, small herds of deer and tule elk feed.
Cliffs provide a rookery for heron and their pine-tops are full of screeching young.
Here, life is a quirk of its own clear fate. Its joy is not to dabble but sustain.
A GARDEN IN SNOW
Brushing away snow, she uncovers the stone dog. And its hare companion, solid, steadfast, despite the bitterness of winter.
Only the garden succumbs to the heartless weather: sunflowers slaughtered, dahlias defeated, tulips trampled, rose-bushes ripped raw. If there’s any fight left in them, it eludes her gloved fingers.
Early March, and it’s like looking in on children. Some are still robust. Most are memories.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. His latest books are Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
In Cherry Blossom Forecast, Suzanne Kamata brings the Japanese ritual of cherry blossom viewing to our pages with her camera and words. Clickhere to read.
Where the mind is without fear … Where the world has not been broken up into fragments … Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way … Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action…
As we complete the fourth year of our virtual existence in the clouds and across borders, the world has undergone many changes around us, and it’s not only climate change (which is a huge challenge) but much more. We started around the time of the pandemic — in March 2020 — as human interactions moved from face-to-face non-virtual interactions to virtual communication. When the pandemic ended, we had thought humanity would enter a new age where new etiquettes redefining our social norms would make human existence as pandemic proof as possible. But before we could define new norms in the global context, takeovers and conflicts seem to have reft countries, regions and communities apart. Perhaps, this is a time when Borderless Journalcan give a voice to all those who want to continue living as part of a single species in this world — where we can rise above our differences to find commonalities that make us human and part of the larger stream of humanity, that has been visualised by visionaries like Tagore or John Lennon — widely different cultural milieus but looking for the same things — humankind living together in harmony and moving towards a world without violence, without hate, without rancour and steeped in goodwill and love.
Talking of positive values does not make sense in a world that seems to be veering towards darkness… Many say that humankind is intrinsically given to feelings of anger, hate, division, lust, shame and violence. But then we are just as much inclined towards happiness, fun, love, being respectful and peaceful. Otherwise, would we be writing about these? These are inherited values that have also come down to us from our forefathers and some have been evolving towards embalming or healing with resilience, with kindness and with an open mind.
If you wake up before sunrise, you will notice the sky is really an unredeemable dark. Then, it turns a soft grey till the vibrant colours of the sun paint the horizon and beyond, dousing with not just lively shades but also with a variety of sounds announcing the start of a new day. The darkest hours give way to light. Light is as much a truth as darkness. Both exist. They come in phases in the natural world, and we cannot choose but live with the choices that have been pre-made for us. But there are things we can choose — we can choose to love or hate. We can choose resilience or weakness. We can choose our friends. We can choose our thoughts, our ideas. In Borderless, we have a forum which invites you to choose to be part of a world that has the courage to dream, to imagine. We hope to ignite the torch to carry on this conversation which is probably as old as humanity. We look forward to finding new voices that are willing to move in quest of an impractical world, a utopia, a vision — from which perhaps will emerge systems that will give way to a better future for our progeny.
In the last four years, we are happy to say we have hosted writers from more than forty different nationalities and our readers stretch across almost the whole map of the world. We had our first anthology published less than one and a half years ago, focussing more on writing from established pens. Discussions are afoot to bring out more anthologies in hardcopy with more variety of writers.
In our fourth anniversary issue, we not only host translations by Professor Fakrul Alam of Nazrul, by Somdatta Mandal of Tagore’s father, Debendranath Tagore, but also our first Mandarin translation of a twelfth century Southern Song Dynasty poet, Ye Shao-weng, by Rex Tan, a journalist and writer from Malaysia. From other parts of Asia, Dr Haneef Sharif’s Balochi writing has been rendered into English by Fazal Baloch and Ihlwha Choi has transcreated his own poetry from Korean to English. Tagore’s Phalgun or Spring, describing the current season in Bengal, adds to the variety in our translated oeuvre.
Devraj Singh Kalsi has explored darker shades of humour in his conversation with God while Suzanne Kamata has ushered in the Japanese spring ritual of gazing at cherry blossoms in her column with photographs and narrative. Keith Lyons takes us to the beautiful Fiordlands of New Zealand, Ravi Shankar to Malaysia and Mohul Bhowmick trapezes from place to place in Sri Lanka. Farouk Gulsara has discussed the elusiveness of utopia — an interesting perspective given that we look upto ideals like these in Borderless. I would urge more of you to join this conversation and tell us what you think. We did have Wendy Jones Nakashini start a discussion along these lines in an earlier issue.
I would want to thank our dedicated team from the bottom of my heart. Without them, we could not have brought out two issues within three weeks for we were late with our February issue. A huge thanks to them for their writing and to Sohana Manzoor for her art too. Thanks to our wonderful reviewers who have been with us for a number of years, to all our mentors and contributors without who this journal could not exist. Huge thanks to all our fabulous loyal readers. Devoid of their patronage these words would dangle meaninglessly and unread. Thank you all.
Wish you a wonderful spring as Borderless Journal starts out on the fifth year of its virtual existence! We hope you will be part of our journey throughout…
Enjoy the reads in this special anniversary issue with more content than highlighted here, and each piece is a wonderful addition to our oeuvre!
It was two hours before I returned home to load up the rest of my stuff into the back of the van.
It was three days before I showed up for a home-cooked dinner.
It was a week before I struggled through that familiar front door with my laundry.
And three months before, the big lie – “My landlord promised my apartment to his son and new daughter-in-law” when the truth was, I couldn’t hack it on my own.
It was two years before, I really did leave home.
It was the first but not the last time, I said “Finally.”
BATTLE LINES
Your house abuts your neighbors’. And they brawl incessantly, in words and sometimes in deed. Hands over ears don’t help. Their hardness, their selfishness, their cruelty towards each other, penetrates everything in their way.
The husband beats his wife. She thrashes the boy. The boy screams at his sister. The sister smashes things against her bedroom wall.
You live alone in loneliness. Their closeness chafes into rage. They can't merely sob like you. They all have to take life out on somebody.
The violence quietens down eventually. Explosions retreat into shame. You even hear some sighs of regret, a hug here and there.
You don’t pity them. You’re too busy pitying yourself. You can’t remember the last time you had someone to make up to.
LISTEN UP
We, always the lesser of the two in a relationship, need a more explicit way to establish our equality
than a limp stance or an emaciated smile. We, who live in a constant state of ambush,
or underfoot, or mostly outside looking in, must find, within ourselves, louder voices,
stronger cuss words, eyes that bulge with anger rather than the kind that retreat deep in their sockets.
I recommend doing this in front of a full-length mirror. You’d be surprised how much you can terrify yourself.
AN OLD MAN’S LAST HIKE
How far I’ve come, the road beyond won’t tell me. Up ahead, it’s more of a trail but, thankfully, it winds its way through forests, to rivers and the wide, clear lake they drain into.
It doesn’t even matter if I make it to the waters, anyplace now, from the field of wildflowers to the sturdy trunks of ancient trees, is a place of comfort for old bodies.
My blood can spur on the new shoots, my flesh, grow moss and mushrooms, my bones, replenish the limestone hills, my darkness, free the light.
MY PARENTS’ GRAVES
He’s buried in a small country graveyard, his rough slab also interred but in long grass not earth.
Her ashes lie beneath a smooth slab of granite. in a field that surrounds a city crematorium.
His coffin, her remains. are a hundred miles apart.
She was fifty years a widow in life and is still a widow in death.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. His latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. He has writing upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
A conversation with the author,Afsar Mohammed, and a brief introduction to his latest book, Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad. Click hereto read.
A conversation with Meenakshi Malhotra over The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri and a brief introduction to the book. Click hereto read.
In His Unstable Shape, Rhys Hughes explores the narratives around a favourite nursery rhyme character with a pinch of pedantic(?) humour. Click here to read.
Mother & Child by Jamini Roy (1887-1972)Mother and Child by Picasso (1881-1973)
‘Victory to Man, the newborn, the ever-living.’ They kneel down, the king and the beggar, the saint and the sinner, the wise and the fool, and cry: ‘Victory to Man, the newborn, the ever-living.’
This is the month— the last of a conflict-ridden year— when we celebrate the birth of a messiah who spoke of divine love, kindness, forgiveness and values that make for a better world. The child, Jesus, has even been celebrated by Tagore in one of his rarer poems in English. While we all gather amidst our loved ones to celebrate the joy generated by the divine birth, perhaps, we will pause to shed a tear over the children who lost their lives in wars this year. Reportedly, it’s a larger number than ever before. And the wars don’t end. Nor the killing. Children who survive in war-torn zones lose their homes or families or both. For all the countries at war, refugees escape to look for refuge in lands that are often hostile to foreigners. And yet, this is the season of loving and giving, of helping one’s neighbours, of sharing goodwill, love and peace. On Christmas this year, will the wars cease? Will there be a respite from bombardments and annihilation?
We dedicate this bumper year-end issue to children around the world. We start with special tributes to love and peace with an excerpt from Tagore’s long poem, ‘The Child‘, written originally in English in 1930 and a rendition of the life of the philosopher and change-maker, Vivekananda, by none other than well-known historical fiction writer, Aruna Chakravarti. The poem has been excerpted from Indian Christmas: Essays, Memoirs, Hymns, an anthology edited by Jerry Pinto and Madhulika Liddle, a book that has been reviewed by Somdatta Mandal and praised for its portrayal of the myriad colours and flavours of Christmas in India. Christ suffered for the sins of humankind and then was resurrected, goes the legend. Healing is a part of our humanness. Suffering and healing from trauma has been brought to the fore by Christopher Marks’ perspective on Veronica Eley’s The Blue Dragonfly: healing through poetry. Basudhara Roy has also written about healing in her take of Kuhu Joshi’s My Body Didn’t Come Before Me.Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed a book that talks of healing a larger issue — the crises that humanity is facing now, Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World, by ex-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, Mohamed El-Erian and Reid Lidow. Parichha tells us that it suggests solutions to resolve the chaos the world is facing — perhaps a book that the world leadership would do well to read. After all, the authors are of their ilk! Our book excerpts from Dr Ratna Magotra’s Whispers of the Heart – Not Just A Surgeon: An Autobiographyand Manjima Misra’s The Ocean is Her Titleare tinged with healing and growth too, though in a different sense.
The theme of the need for acceptance, love and synchronicity flows into our conversations with Afsar Mohammad, who has recently authored Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad. He shows us that Hyderabadi tehzeeb or culture ascends the narrow bounds set by caged concepts of faith and nationalism, reaffirming his premise with voices of common people through extensive interviews. In search of a better world, Meenakshi Malhotra talks to us about how feminism in its recent manifestation includes masculinities and gender studies while discussing The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by her, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri. Here too, one sees a trend to blend academia with non-academic writers to bring focus on the commonalities of suffering and healing while transcending national boundaries to cover more of South Asia.
That like Hyderabadi tehzeeb, Bengali culture in the times of Tagore and Nazrul dwelled in commonality of lore is brought to the fore when in response to the Nobel laureate’s futuristic ‘1400 Saal’ (‘The year 1993’), his younger friend responds with a poem that bears not only the same title but acknowledges the older man as an “emperor” among versifiers. Professor Fakrul Alam has not only translated Nazrul’s response, named ‘1400Saal’ aswell, but also brought to us the voice of another modern poet, Quazi Johirul Islam. We have a self-translation of a poem by Ihlwha Choi from Korean and a short story by S Ramakrishnan in Tamil translated by T Santhanam.
Our short stories travel with migrant lore by Farouk Gulsara to Malaysia, from UK to Thailand with Paul Mirabile while chasing an errant son into the mysterious reaches of wilderness, with Neeman Sobhan to Rome, UK and Bangladesh, reflecting on the Birangonas (rape victims) of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war, an issue that has been taken up in Malhotra’s book too. Sobhan’s story is set against the backdrop of a war which was fought against linguistic hegemony and from which we see victims heal. Sohana Manzoor this time has not only given us fabulous artwork but also a fantasy hovering between light and dark, life and death — an imaginative fiction that makes a compelling read and questions the concept of paradise, a construct that perhaps needs to be found on Earth, rather than after death.
The unusual paradigms of life and choices made by all of us is brought into play in an interesting non-fiction by Nitya Amlean, a young Sri Lankan who lives in UK. We travel to Kyoto with Suzanne Kamata, to Beijing with Keith Lyons, to Wayanad with Mohul Bhowmick and to Langkawi with Ravi Shankar. Wendy Jones Nakanishi argues in favour of borders with benevolent leadership. Tongue-in-cheek humour is exuded by Devraj Singh Kalsi as he writes of his attempts at using visiting cards as it is by Rhys Hughes in his exploration of the truth about the origins of the creature called Humpty Dumpty of nursery rhyme fame.
Poetry again has humour from Hughes. A migrant himself, Jee Leong Koh, brings in migrant stories from Singaporeans in US. We have poems of myriad colours from Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Patricia Walsh, John Grey, Kumar Bhatt, Ron Pickett, Prithvijeet Sinha, Sutputra Radheye, George Freek and many more. Papia Sengupta ends her poem with lines that look for laughter among children and a ‘life without borders’ drawn by human constructs in contrast to Jones Nakanishi’s need for walls with sound leadership. The conversation and dialogues continue as we look for a way forward, perhaps with Gordon Brown’s visionary book or with Tagore’s world view of lighting the inner flame in each human. We can hope that a way will be found. Is it that tough to influence the world using words? We can wish — may there be no need for any more Greta Thunbergs to rise in protest for a world fragmented and destroyed by greed and lack of vision. We hope for peace and love that will create a better world for our children.
As usual, we have more content than mentioned here. All our pieces can be accessed on the contents’ page. Do pause by and take a look. This bumper issue would not have been possible without the contribution of all the writers and our fabulous team from Borderless. Huge thanks to them all and to our wonderful readers who continue to encourage us with their comments and input.
Here’s wishing you all wonderful new adventures in the New Year that will be born as this month ends!
Groundhog. Groundhog Day is celebrated on February 2nd. If the groundhogs leave the den where they hibernated, the weather is supposed to move towards spring. This observance has its roots in ancient Celtic culture.
GROUNDHOG DAY
It’s Groundhog Day.
The groundhog is somewhere
burrowed deep in the ground.
Either the groundhog
doesn’t know what day it is
or he doesn’t care.
But, then again,
Christ doesn’t show up
on Christmas either.
Just your father
and his new wife
with some toys.
It’s the one time of the year,
you see his shadow.
TWILIGHT
day flies off
like cardinals
and gold-finches
night
settles
on the branches
like crows
mice
scamper nervously
across the forest floor
all the birds
are owls
WORKING MY WAY THROUGH THE DICTIONARY,
I AM NOW AT Q
Some words
have tens,
if not hundreds,
of synonyms.
Others,
hardly any at all.
That is why I’ve never
written a poem about a quark.
That word,
for want of an alternative,
would appear on every second line.
Even this poem
has to repeat the word quark
just to get its point across.
So let this be my quark poem
and leave it at that.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. His latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. He has upcoming poetry in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and CaliforniaQuarterly.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
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