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
Banjara author Ramesh Karthik Nayakdiscusses his new book, Chakmak (flintsone), giving us a glimpse of his world. We also have a brief introduction to his work. Clickhere to read.
Translations
Demanding Longevityby Quazi Johirul Islam has been translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam. Clickhere to read.
Moonlight, a poem by Bashir Baidar, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Clickhere to read.
Maithili Poetryby Vidyanand Jha has been translated from Maithili by the poet himself. Click hereto read.
CONTRAST
Three in the morning,
and I’m wide awake,
in a room silent
everywhere but in my head.
My thoughts won’t lie down.
My imagination tosses and turns.
Beside me,
my wife is so deep in sleep,
the contrast between us
never more stark.
So it’s not just
her rom-com movies
versus my horror flicks.
Our nights
could never be more different.
So her “meet cute”
wakes up refreshed.
My “demon encounter”
still has hell to pay.
VACATION TIME
I wish you wouldn’t stroll
around this particular lake
while I am seated on the porch
of this cabin in New Hampshire
sipping my morning coffee.
Living in the city,
I don’t wake up
to such a glistening blue
stretch of water
surrounded by lush greenery
with the possibility
of a loon sighting
somewhere in the quiet ripple.
And I see attractive women
every day.
But my eyes are drawn
to the wind in your long blonde hair,
your shapely figure,
a face a modern-day Raphael
would set aside his Madonna and Child
to paint.
I’m here to get away from it all.
And, thankfully, it’s all here.
THE METHOD ACTOR
He took acting class at school
and the teacher said, “You are a tree:”
So he stood still
with head high, legs together
and arms spread wide.
When the class was dismissed,
he still didn’t move.
The teacher said, “It’s okay,
you’re no longer a tree.
You’re a boy again.”
But trees don’t understand
human language.
It’s years later
The new kids in acting class
have to work around him.
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 California Quarterly.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Bangalar Nobbyo Lekhokdiger Proti Nibedon(a request to new writers of Bengali), has been translated from Bengali and introduced by Abdullah-Al-Musayeb. Clickhere to read.
Poetry on Rain by Masud Khanhas been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Dancerby Bashir Baidar, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Ratnottama Sengupta presents the first hand account of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995) from a letter from her brother, who was posted there as part of the peace-keeping troops. Click here to read.
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) by William Shakespeare
Famous lines by Shakespeare that reflect on one of the most unique qualities in not only poets — as he states — but also in all humans, imagination, which helps us create our own constructs, build walls, draw boundaries as well as create wonderful paintings, invent planes, fly to the moon and write beautiful poetry. I wonder if animals or plants have the same ability? Then, there are some who, react to the impact of imagined constructs that hurt humanity. They write fabulous poetry or lyrics protesting war as well as dream of a world without war. Could we in times such as these imagine a world at peace, and — even more unusually — filled with consideration, kindness, love and brotherhood as suggested by Lennon’s lyrics in ‘Imagine’ – “Imagine all the people/ Livin’ life in peace…”. These are ideas that have been wafting in the world since times immemorial. And yet, they seem to be drifting in a breeze that caresses but continues to elude our grasp.
Under such circumstances, what can be more alluring than reflective Sufi poetry by an empathetic soul. Featuring an interview and poetry by such a poet, Afsar Mohammad, we bring to you his journey from a “small rural setting” in Telangana to University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches South Asian Studies. He is bilingual and has brought out many books, including one with his translated poetry. Translations this time start with Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s advice to new writers in Bengali, introduced and brought to us by Abdullah-Al-Musayeb. Tagore’s seasonal poem, ‘Megh or Cloud’, has been transcreated to harmonise with the onset of monsoons. However, this year with the El Nino and as the impact of climate change sets in, the monsoons have turned awry and are flooding the world. At a spiritual plane, the maestro’s lines in this poem do reflect on the transience of nature (and life). Professor Fakrul Alam’s translation of Masud Khan’s heartfelt poetry on rain brings to the fore the discontent of the age while conveying the migrant’s dilemma of being divided between two lands. Fazal Baloch has brought us a powerful Balochi poet from the 1960s in translation, Bashir Baidar. His poetry cries out with compassion yet overpowers with its brutality. Sangita Swechcha’s Nepali poem celebrating a girl child has been translated by Hem Bishwakarma while Ihlwha Choi has brought his own Korean poem to readers in English.
An imagined but divided world has been explored by Michael Burch with his powerful poetry. Heath Brougher has shared with us lines that discomfit, convey with vehemence and is deeply reflective of the world we live in. Masha Hassan is a voice that dwells on such an imagined divide that ripped many parts of the world — division that history dubs as the Partition. Don Webb upends Heraclitus’s wisdom: “War is the Father of All, / War is the King of All.” War, as we all know, is entirely a human-made construct and destroys humanity and one cannot but agree with Webb’s conclusion. We have more from Kirpal Singh, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Nivedita N, John Grey, Carol D’Souza, Vernon Daim, George Freek, Saranyan BV, Samantha Underhill and among the many others, of course Rhys Hughes, who has given us poetry with a unique alphabetical rhyme scheme invented by him and it’s funny too… much like his perceptions on ‘Productivity’, where laziness accounts for an increase in output!
Ratnottama Sengupta takes us back to how imagined differences can rip humanity by sharing a letter from her brother stationed in Bosnia during the war that broke Yugoslavia (1992-1995). He writes: “It is hard to be surrounded by so much tragedy and not be repulsed by war and the people who lead nations into them.” This tone flows into our book excerpts section with Red Sky Over Kabul: A Memoir of a Father and Son in Afghanistanby Baryalai Popalzai and Kevin McLean. Popalzai was affected by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 and had to flee. A different kind of battle can be found in the other excerpt from The Blue Dragonfly – healing through poetry by Veronica Eley – a spiritual battle to heal from experiences that break.
In our reviews section, KPP Nambiar reviews The Stolen Necklace: A Small Crime in a Small Town by Shevlin Sebastian and VK Thajudheen, a book that retells a true story. Sangeetha G’s novel, Drop of the Last Cloud, we are told by Rakhi Dalal, explores the matrilineal heritage of Kerala, that changed to patriarchal over time. Bhaskar Parichha reviews Burning Pyres, Mass Graves and A State That Failed Its People: India’s Covid Tragedy by Harsh Mander. Parichha emphasises the need never to forget the past: “It is a powerful book and sometimes it is even shattering. The narrative is a live remembrance of a national tragedy that too many of us wish to forget when we should, instead, etch it in our minds so that we can prevent another national tragedy like this one from recurring in the future.” While we need to learn from the past as Parichha suggests, Somdatta Mandal has given a review that makes us want to read Ujjal Dosanjh’s book, The Past is Never Dead: A Novel. She concludes that it “pays tribute to the courage and tenacity of the human spirit and its capacity for hope despite all odds.”
We have more content than mentioned here… all of it enhances the texture of our journal. Do pause by our July issue to savour all the writings. Huge thanks to all our contributors, artists, all our readers and our wonderful team. Without each one of you, this edition would not have been what it is.
Borderless 