FROM 2.A.M. TO YOU
The night reads to me from its book of shadows.
Curtains rustle the song of the wind. From poplar
to grass shoots, the outside dabbles in the art of
the whistled weep, the passion of the scent.
What have I to be afraid of? Awake at 2.00 a.m.
and staring into blackness? That's when I'm at the
my most awake. So what if the moon pegs me for
a lunatic! I go crazy with scrutiny and reflection.
It's an indistinct country here and whatever retains
the most shape, rules. So the dresser is king.
The door is its queen. My arms, my hands, are the
curious princes. My wife sleeps on as the populace do.
LOOKING BACK
My memories are webs,
long after the spider has departed.
What I knew then,
I have a way of knowing now.
It’s woven loosely
so I get tangled now and then.
But the facts are there.
They float on the wind of my thinking.
HEREWITH, THE NIGHT
Routine entails shine, glitter, glimmer,
as stars glow with ancient flame
and the moon rises through cloud remnant,
a slow waltz with the earth’s turn
on a dark fire-specked dance floor.
CRYSTALS
When you examined the crystal
in the antique shop,
it turned your face in my direction.
That jewelry dish
selected various angles,
repositioned them,
joined these threads together,
aimed them delightfully at me.
I must have swallowed crystal
at some time in my life
because, at that same moment,
its manifold reflections
reassembled soul, heart, even mind,
in an odd vortex
that overwhelmed the lenses in my eyes.
Yes, when you and I first met,
it was at the behest of allotropes.
You remember things differently,
more happenstance,
less optical engineering.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. His latest books are Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself, available on Amazon.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Abhirup Dhar, a horror writer whose books are being extensively adopted by Bollywood, talks about his journey and paranormal experiences. Click here to read.
Translations
Munshi Premchand’s Balak or the Child has been translated from Hindi by Anurag Sharma. Click hereto read.
Atta Shad’s Today’s Child has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Masud Khan’s History has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Ihlwha Choi translates his own poem,Lunch Time, from Korean. Click here to read.
Tagore’s Somudro or Ocean has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.
“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”
― Omar Khayyám (1048-1131); translation from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald (Rubaiyat, 1859)
I wonder why Khayyam wrote these lines — was it to redefine paradise or just to woo his beloved? I like to imagine it was a bit of both. The need not to look for a paradise after death but to create one on Earth might well make an impact on humankind. Maybe, they would stop warring over an invisible force that they call God or by some other given name, some ‘ism’. Other than tens of thousands dying in natural disasters like the recent earthquake at the border of Turkiye and Syria, many have been killed by wars that continue to perpetrate divides created by human constructs. This month houses the second anniversary of the military junta rule in Myanmar and the first anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian war that continues to decimate people, towns, natural reserves, humanity, economics relentlessly, polluting the environment with weapons of mass destruction, be it bombs or missiles. The more weapons we use, the more we destroy the environment of our own home planet.
Sometimes, the world cries for a change. It asks to be upended.
We rethink, reinvent to move forward as a species or a single race. We relook at concepts like life and death and the way we run our lives. Redefining paradise or finding paradise on Earth, redefining ‘isms’ we have been living with for the past few hundred years — ‘isms’ that are being used to hurt others of our own species, to create exclusivity and divisions where none should exist — might well be a requisite for the continuance of our race.
Voices of change-pleaders rang out in the last century with visionaries like Tagore, Gandhi, Nazrul, Satyajit Ray urging for a more accepting and less war-bound world. This month, Ratnottama Sengupta has written on Ray’s legendary 1969 film, Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne: “The message he sent out loud and with laughter: ‘When people have palatable food to fill their belly and music to fill their soul, the world will bid goodbye to wars.’” Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri has given an essay on one of the greatest pacifists, Gandhi, and his attitudes to films as well as his depiction in movies. What was amazing is Gandhi condemned films and never saw their worth as a mass media influencer! The other interesting thing is his repeated depiction as an ethereal spirit in recent movies which ask for changes in modern day perceptions and reforms. In fact, both these essays deal with ghosts who come back from the past to urge for changes towards a better future.
Delving deeper into the supernatural is our interviewee, Abhirup Dhar, an upcoming writer whose ghost stories are being adapted by Bollywood. While he does investigative stories linked to supernatural lore, our other interviewee, Andrew Quilty, a renowned journalist who has won encomiums for his coverage on Afghanistan where he spent eight years, shows in his book, August in Kabul:America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban, what clinging to past lores can do to a people, especially women. Where does one strike the balance? We also have an excerpt from his book to give a flavour of his exclusive journalistic coverage on the plight of Afghans as an eyewitness who flew back to the country not only to report but to be with his friends — Afghans and foreigners — as others fled out of Kabul on August 14 th 2021. While culturally, Afghans should have been closer to Khayyam, does their repressive outlook really embrace the past, especially with the Taliban dating back to about only three decades?
This intermingling of life and death and the past is brought to life in our fiction section by Sreelekha Chatterjee and Anjana Krishnan. Aditi Yadav creates a link between the past and our need to travel in her musing, which is reminiscent of Anthony Sattin’s description of asabiyya, a concept of brotherhood that thrived in medieval times. In consonance with wanderlust expressed in Yadav’s essay, we have a number of stories that explore travel highlighting various issues. Meredith Stephens travels to explore the need to have nature undisturbed by external interferences in pockets like Kangaroo Island in a semi-humorous undertone. While Ravi Shankar travels to the land’s end of India to voice candid concerns on conditions within Kerala, a place that both Keith Lyons and Rhys Hughes had written on with love and a sense of fun. It is interesting to see the contrasting perspectives on Southern India.
Professor Fakrul Alam has also translated poetry where a contemporary Bengali writer, Masud Khan, cogitates on history while Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the ocean tries to capture the vastness and the eternal restlessness that can be interpreted as whispers carried through eons of history. Fazal Baloch has also shared a poem by one of the most revered modern Balochi voices, that of Atta Shad. Our pièce de resistance is a translation of Premchand’s Balak or the Child by Anurag Sharma.
This vibrant edition would not have been possible without all the wonderful translators, writers, photographers and artists who trust us with their work. My heartfelt thanks to all of you, especially, Srijani Dutta for her beautiful painting, ‘Hope in Winter’, and Sohana for her amazing artwork. My heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless Journal, to our loyal readers some of whom have evolved into fabulous contributors. Thank you.
Do write in telling us what you think of the journal. We look forward to feedback from all of you as we head for the completion of our third year this March.
THE FOREST COMES BACK AFTER THE FIRE
I'm not the maple yet.
More of that tall pine from Norway.
or a fruit tree you wouldn't recognise
from your brief lessons in biology.
Already, in my branches,
fifty crows caw,
a thousand squirrels’ nest.
I face west where one dark lake
is my left hand;
and then east,
where a rocky escarpment
fills in for the fingers on my right.
My torso is, as yet,
a dark burnt patch
interrupted by a few green seedlings.
But soon enough
I'll boast a chest
A BOY THROWS ROCKS INTO THE LAKE
He'll never run out of rocks
and that lake is going nowhere.
And the splash is seductive, I expect.
It's not a loud noise but it's of his own making.
But, eventually, cold gray rock
won't be enough to satisfy his sense of touch.
And the lake will be such a lazy target.
Maybe he'll toss a leaf on the waters,
watch it float.
Or fish at its edge.
Or paddle a canoe into its center.
Or when he's old enough, he'll bring a girl here,
wrap his fingers around hers,
stare out at the glittering water together.
He'll hug her slim waist,
kiss her trembling lips.
The rocks won't move.
The surface won't ripple.
But the earth is a different story.
DARK OF THE DAY
When I learn to see,
the day will not be dark.
Maybe blue and green.
Like the blue and green of childhood.
When I had a voice.
And now I cannot speak any colour.
I can only write it down.
And when I learn to see,
the page will not be blank.
I will know what I have written.
Like when I had a mind
and I could understand it as well.
I can only feel the words
and there is no blue or green in them.
They are colourless.
When I learn to see,
there’ll be payback
of a florid kind.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. His latest books are Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself, available on Amazon.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
HAWK AND SPARROW
The hawk plunges.
I’m on the side
of the majestic, powerful hawk.
The sparrow reacts
with sudden panicked flight.
I’m on the side
of the tiny, defenseless sparrow.
The tussle in a nearby treetop
could mean the hawk snares the sparrow
or the sparrow eludes the hawk.
Whatever happens,
I win, I lose.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. His latest books are Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself, available on Amazon.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
In Conversation withRinki Roy(daughter of legendary director Bimal Roy) about The Oldest Love Story, an anthology on motherhood, edited and curated byjournalist and authors, Rinki Roy and Maithili Rao. Click here to read.
Achingliu Kamei in conversation with Veio Pou, author of Waiting for the Dust to Settle, a novel based on the ongoing conflicts in North-east India. Clickhereto read.
Translations
The Funeral, a satirical skit by Tagore, translated by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.
Pie in the Sky is a poem written and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.
Taal Gaachh or The Palmyra Tree, a lilting light poem by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.
Pandies’ Corner
This narrative is written by a youngster from the Nithari village who transcended childhood trauma and deprivation. Dhaani has been written in Hindi and translated to English by Kiran Mishra. Click here to read.
Keith Lyons discovers the import and export of desires in Varanasi, one of the oldest cities in the world, beside one of the most revered rivers. Click here to read.
Notes from Japan
In Marathon Blues, Suzanne Kamata talks of pandemic outcomes in Japan in a lighter tone. Click here to read.
Musings of a Copywriter
In Journey of an Ant, Devraj Singh Kalsi explores life from an insect’s perspective. Click here to read.
Mission Earth
In Tuning in to Nature, Kenny Peavy tells us how to interact with nature. Click here to read.
MOSQUITOES
They've flown
in squadrons
since before
airplanes.
And they've
been attracted
to human skin,
long in advance
of the first human romance.
Likewise,
they've sucked blood
for centuries,
with enough
dedication to the task
to put every vampire
in Romania to shame.
Does that mean
I respect them too much
to swat them?
No, just that
that the only good insect
is a dead antediluvian.
DAFFODILS
Massed daffodils in robust grass,
day after day – you know you’re safe.
For they bloom harmless,
but deep with longing for the sun and rain.
Always rise up at morning’s call,
white-petaled, yellow-bud kisses.
Yesterday, the same.
Twenty years ago, no different.
Soft wind croons, low voltage beauty,
seeing them now like seeing them in retrospect.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. His latest books are “Leaves On Pages”, “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself”, available on Amazon.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Sriniketan: Tagore’s “Life Work”: In Conversation with Professor Uma Das Gupta, Tagore scholar, author of A History of Sriniketan, where can be glimpsed what Tagore considered his ‘life’s work’ as an NGO smoothening divides between villagers and the educated. Click here to read.
Akbar: The Man who was King: In conversation with eminent journalist and author, Shazi Zaman, author of Akbar, A Novel of History. Click here to read.
Translations
One Day in the Fog, written by Jibananda Das and translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Mahnu, a poem by Atta Shad, translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click hereto read.
Eyes of the Python, a short story by S.Ramakrishnan, translated from Tamil by Dr.B.Chandramouli. Click here to read.
Raatri Eshe Jethay Meshe by Tagore has been translated from Bengali as Where the Night comes to Mingleby Mitali Chakravarty. Click hereto read.
Pandies’ Corner
These stories are written by youngsters from the Nithari village who transcended childhood trauma and deprivation. The column starts with a story, Stranger than Fiction from Sharad Kumar in Hindustani, translated to English by Grace M Sukanya. Click here to read.
Ratnottama Sengupta sings her own paean in which a chorus of voices across the world join her to pay a tribute to a legend called LataMangeshkar. Click here to read.
P Ravi Shankar takes us through a breakfast feast around the world. Click here to read.
Musings of a Copywriter
In Life without a Pet, Devraj Singh Kalsi gives a humorous take on why he does not keep a pet. Clickhere to read.
Notes from Japan
In Bridging Cultures through Music, author Suzanne Kamata introduces us to Masaki Nakagawa, a YouTuber who loves Lativia and has made it big, playing for the President of Lativia at the Japanese coronation. Click here to read.
A tribute by Keith Lyons to the first New Zealand Booker Prize winner, Keri Hulme, recalling his non-literary encounters with the sequestered author. Click here to read.
Ratnottama Sengupta writes of a time a palace called Bardhaman House became the centre of a unique tryst against cultural hegemony. The Language Movement of 1952 that started in Dhaka led to the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised February 21 as the Mother Language Day. Click here to read.
The Observant Immigrant
In To Be or Not to Be, Candice Louisa Daquin takes a close look at death and suicide. Click here to read.
NIGHTFALL IN THE ROCKIES
Bedded down in darkness,
mountains, forests,
turn their back on me.
The scenery
has had enough
of my love.
REGARDING THE TICKET TAKER
He's paid minimum wage
to tear tickets in two,
drop one half in a bucket,
hand the other half back
to the customer.
A superhero movie
awaits you.
This guy's your last known
point of contact
with the real.
BRIGHT MIDNIGHT
June in Alaska
midnight sun
it's been a year
since today
last saw tomorrow
FIRST HIGH SCHOOL ROMANCE
your hand in mine
is a far cry
from the school lab
where together
we watched
sulphuric acid
eat away a beetle
THE HUMMINGBIRDS AT THE FEEDER
80 wing-beats a second
just to hover in place --
I’m at the window
watching –
I can’t even remember
the last time
I flapped my arms.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. His latest books, Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
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.
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.
Written by Tagore in 1908,Amaar Nayano Bhulano Eledescribes early autumn when the festival of Durga Puja is celebrated. It has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.
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.
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.
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.
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