Jun A. Alindogan gives an account of how an overgrowth of water hyacinth affects aquatic life and upsets the local food chain while giving us a flavourful account of local food. Clickhereto read.
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne…
The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) by Chaucer, Prologue
This is the month Asia hosts sprays of new years across multiple regions. Many of these celebrate the fecundity of Earth, spring and the departure of bleak winter months. Each new year is filled with hope for the coming year. The vibrant colours of varied cultures celebrate spring in different ways, but it is a welcome for the new-born year, a jubilation, a reaffirmation of the continuity of the circle of life. Will the wars, especially the shortages caused by them and felt deeply by many of us, affect these celebrations? Had they impacted the festivals that were celebrated earlier? These are questions to which we all seek answers. We can only try to gauge the suffering caused by war on those whose homes, hopes, families and assets have been affected other than trying to cope with the senselessness of such inane attacks. But, in keeping with TS Eliot’s observations on Prufrock, most of us continue our lives unperturbed and as usual.
Some of us think and try to dissent for peace and a world without borders with words – prose or poetry. To reinforce ideas of commonalities that bind overriding divides, we are excited to announce a poetry anthology mapping varied continents with content from Borderless Journal, Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems. We are hugely grateful to Hawakal Publishers for this opportunity and to Bitan Chakraborty for the fabulous cover design. We invite you all to browse on the anthology which is available in hardcopy across continents.
Our issue this month is a bumper issue with the translation of Tagore’s Roktokorobi (Red Oleanders) by Professor Fakrul Alam. It’s the full-length play this time as earlier we had carried only an excerpt. The play is deeply relevant to our times as is Somdatta Mandal’s English rendition of his story, ‘Daliya’, set in Arakan. We also have also translated Tagore’s response to the idea of mortal fame and deification in poetry. Kallol Lahiri’s poignant Bengali story about the resilience of an ageing actress has been brought to us in English by V Ramaswamy. Isa Kamari brings us translations of his Malay poems exploring spirituality through nature.
But what really grips are the fables that Hughes will be sharing with us over four months. He calls them Rhysop Fables, after the ancient ones from Aesop’s with the ancient author himself being mentioned in one of the short absurdist narratives this time. In fiction, our regular fable writer, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao explores a modern-day dilemma, that of social media intruding into the development of children. Jonathon B Ferrini glances at resilience and mental disability while, Sangeetha G looks into societal attitudes that still plague her part of the world. Oindrila Ghosal gives a story set in Kashmir.
From Kashmir, Gower Bhat shares a heartfelt musing on being a first time father. Mohul Bhowmick writes of Eid in Hydearbad (Hari Raya in Southeast Asia) — echoing themes from Kamari’s poems — and Anupriya Pandey ponders over the quiet acceptance of mundane life that emphasises social inequities. Jun A. Alindogan brings home issues from Phillipines. While we have stories about Vietnam from Meredith Stephens, Suzanne Kamata muses about Phnom Penh, mesmerised by Cambodian dancers.
Farouk Gulsara writes of his cycling trip from Jaipur to Udaipur bringing to life dichotomies of values and showing that age can be just a number. Chetan Poduri reinforces gaps created by technology as does Charudutta Panigrah, a theme that reverberates from poetry to fiction to non-fiction and much of it with a light touch. Devraj Singh Kalsi sprinkles humour with his strange tale about hiring a bodyguard.
Keith Lyons has brought in Keith Westwaters, a soldier-turned-poet who seems to find his muse mainly in New Zealand. We have also featured an author who overrides borders of continents, Marzia Pasini. Her book, Leonie’s Leap, has a protagonist of mixed origin and her characters are drawn out of Russia, India, Bulgaria and many other places.
This rounds up our April issue. Do visit our content’s page and explore the journal further.
Huge thanks to the wonderful team, especially Sohana Manzoor for her art. They help bring together the colours of the world to our pages. Huge thanks to contributors who make each issue evolve a personality of its own. And heartfelt thanks to readers who make it worth our while to write.
Keith Westwater. Photo Courtesy: Lainey Myers-Davies
There is something quietly paradoxical about Keith Westwater, a writer shaped as much by military discipline as by imagination. His journey begins in the structured world of the army and unfolds decades later into a distinctive poetic voice grounded in place, memory, and observation. He’s in dialogue about a life shaped by experience and reflection.
Joining the army at the age of 15 years must have been a key point in your life. How do you think that experience shaped you both as a person and later as a writer?
I will partly answer that with a poem. First though, some context: In 1964, I joined the NZ Army’s boy entrants’ scheme with 140 classmates. We marched-in to Waiouru military camp and as I had just turned 15, I was the third youngest in our cohort. This meant, because we couldn’t graduate until we turned 18, I had to spend three full years as a Regular Force Cadet. All of us were moulded by the military in ways we would never forget. We still get together in class reunions and ‘swing the light shades’ with stories from those days. In 2004, for our 40th anniversary get-together, I published a booklet which recorded a lot of our more memorable recollections. One piece was a poem which I crafted from answers by my classmates to the question ‘What were the best and worst parts of being a Regular Force Cadet?’ It captures how we were all shaped as people by that experience:
The best and the worst of it
Learning how to march and swear Church parades and mess fatigues
Isolation and feelings of loneliness The long-term friendships made
Having to shave every day Standards by which I have lived the rest of my life
Rigid enforcement of petty rules The effect discipline has had on our lives
My best friend cutting his wrists The unsurpassed esprit-de-corps
Wearing BDs without underpants Foundations for coping with life’s challenges
A lack of female company Being part of a family of brothers
Time spent in the bush The lack of time for one’s self
Doing change parades on CB Getting into trouble and not getting caught
Barrellings from senior class pricks Trust and faith in your mates
Fish and chips on Sunday afternoons – It wasn’t such a bad place
Note: BDs were a serge blouse and trouser uniform worn in winter months (short for ‘Battle Dress’).
CB is ‘confined to barracks’ which was a form of military punishment involving lots of physical and menial tasks, given for everything from dress or drill faults, and a 'dirty' rifle to disobeying an order or if your hair was too long.
The army also helped tremendously in shaping me as a writer. It is probably not generally known, but the NZ Army (and probably all armies spawned by the British military) place great store on education for their officers and soldiers. In fact, there is an army corps, the Royal New Zealand Army Education Corps, into which I was to graduate from Cadets, that is tasked with some of this work. When I was a Regular Force Cadet, I was able to continue my secondary school journey and so was introduced in my School Certificate and University Entrance English classes to poets of current interest in the New Zealand curriculum. These included the New Zealanders Baxter, Glover, and Fairburn and also the British (anti) war poets. Re-reading Naming of Parts (Henry Reed) still brings a wry smile.
After graduating from RF Cadets and as a young officer, I was taught how to write logically and in an arcane military style, which abounds (as you might imagine) with rules and regulations, but it was a great foundation for learning how to craft compositions that develop arguments.
Discipline and structure are central to military life. Do you see any parallels between military training and the discipline required for writing poetry?
Other than getting up early and ordering the day, making sure you gather as much information as possible before making decisions, and planning things out before starting, not really (though, when I come to think of it, sometimes good poems happen without planning). Also, there are parallels between the amount of polishing we had to do in the Army and the constant polishing that some poems seem to need.
What was it about Writing the Landscape” course at Victoria University of Wellington, or that moment in your life, that sparked something lasting for you?
I wrote briefly about this recently in my latest book, Sing to me of home Selected Poems (The Cuba Press) due for release in October, 2026:
I came late to the writing of poetry [I was in my mid-fifties]. Like many others, my interest in poems began in school. In 1969, in my last year of undergraduate studies at Canterbury University, I was fortunate to have Mervyn Thompson as a poetry lecturer. I got a bad case of the tingles when, from the stage of the old town site’s Great Hall, he orated old ballads like The Twa Corbies and Sir Patrick Spens, to hundreds of English I students. I still have the foolscap-sized book of Narrative Poems (which includes these ballads) that the English department gave us as a resource.
I attempted in those days to write poems in the angsty, poor imitation of T.S. Eliot style that young would-be poets did. (Some of these works – their genesis now unrecognisable through countless and more informed revisions – have ended up in this volume!) It wasn’t until decades later, when I was in my mid-fifties, that I picked up my pen again. I have my wife to blame for this. At the time, she was about to engage on some major post-graduate study, and I think she wanted me out from under her feet. As you do in this country, she phoned one of New Zealand’s best-known authors, Dame Fiona Kidman (whom she didn’t know), and asked her for advice on how a husband could be taught to write poems.
The answer was that I should enrol in one of the courses at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML). My interest piqued, I did as I was told and in 2003 found myself in a class of 15 or so students undertaking a course entitled Writing the Landscape. As I had majored in Geography back in the day, I thought it might hold my attention and provide an easier bridge to learning the craft. The paper was tutored by Dinah Hawken, an IIML graduate and established poet with a growing reputation. Dinah’s expertise soon had us scratching out fair to middling pieces and learning about the forms and devices that a writer should have available in their toolkit. She also taught us how to read poetry out loud and provide critiques of our efforts to one another in ways that were ‘safe’ and didn’t bruise our fledgling-writer personas.
Before the 2000s, had writing been quietly present in your life?
Writing had always been a part of the requirements of my work life so writing poetry and creative non-fiction gave me a more enjoyable set of challenges. In a way, it took me back to the best part of being at school — ‘doing’ a subject I really enjoyed.
When you look back at your earliest published pieces, what do you notice about the writer you were then?
I think I was probably a bit cautious to start with and employed a limited set of tools in the range available to a poet. As I learnt more, I grew more confident, experimented more and worked out what appealed and seemed to work for me.
How would you describe your poetic voice today, and how did you come to recognise it as your own?
It’s hard for me to describe, but the following words are in the mix — eclecticism (in both content and form), accessibility, past and place, memories, social comment, satire and parody, imaginative writing. The more I wrote, the more my pool of poetry seemed to fill with these flavours.
Was there a particular poem, publication, feedback or award that gave you confidence you were on the right path?
In 2011, Interactive Publications (IP), the publisher of Tongues of Ash, which was my first full-length collection of poems, awarded it the ‘best first book prize’ for that year, which both surprised and delighted me. The judges had this to say about the work, which certainly gave me the impetus to continue scribbling:
‘[It is] poetry that reflects beautifully on time and place and its effect on the human spirit. The joy of reading Westwater’s poetry is his obvious skill as a manipulator of language, delving into the reverent, the morose, the gleeful and the humorous without falter. He is fearless in his subject matter and confident in his use of words. The poetry is a true escape from the reader’s present world, a tour in the realms of the imagination.’
As someone whose writing journey began later than many, did you feel a different kind of urgency or clarity about your voice?
Not consciously. There may have been more to draw from in my well as a consequence, so maybe poems were queuing up to be written rather than me trying to write as much as I could.
How does landscape shape your writing — not just as scenery, but as identity?
I remember when we were in Dinah Hawken’s class, there was one session when Bill Manhire stood in for her. He started off by making what could have been taken as derogatory comments about ‘nature’ poetry, which I’m sure were designed to provoke us into questioning our choice of subject matter. I think that poems that are purely descriptive of scenery, or elements of nature (and early on I was guilty of writing a few of these), are weaker than those that include a person’s voice or memories in the scene. The former are more likely to be awe and beauty verses worthy of tourist brochures; the latter are tied to identity and provide the reader with the opportunity to bring their own memories and imagination to bear. If Wordsworth’s field of daffodils hadn’t had him wandering about the poem lonely as a cloud, it probably wouldn’t be remembered today.
How have the different places you have lived shaped you?
Enormously. Tongues of Ash gives testament to that. It includes a map I drew of New Zealand that shows the places that are referenced in the book’s poems (see below) — there are many and I have lived in or near most and visited the others. While in the army, I was posted to Singapore for two years, but funnily enough, that period of time, while hugely broadening my experience and knowledge of different Asian cultures and place, has yet to spawn any poetry.
Map provided by the interviewer
How has your academic background and work experience influenced how you observe and describe landscape?
My academic studies in geography have had a significant influence on my landscape writing. I have previously described the discipline as an enigmatic amalgam of subjects. Some unkindly question geography’s parentage, likening it to a jackdaw that picks the twigs out of other disciplines to build its own nest. I am happy that it borrows topic areas from which it fashions its own lens. For that reason, my poems often address or include references to elements of geographic studies — rocks, weather, beaches, to name a few. I once wrote a poem based on the geomorphological cycle of mountain-building (The love of rocks and water). It included lines that referred to ice as being the ‘hard, cold sister of water’. A critic (whom I’m certain was ignorant of how mountains are made, then over millennia are eroded into the sea only to be uplifted by earth’s forces and fashioned again as mountains) wrote a rather scathing review of it. I think he was using a personification yardstick on the poem, without questioning whether that form of critique (now over 100 years old) was appropriate today.
In what way has completing university writing courses helped, in ways that self-directed writing might not have?
Like with most university study, it provided the meat and bones, the breadth and width, the self-reflection and questioning, the positioning on continuums of knowledge, the variety of approaches that can be selected from and applied, the shades of colour, and the tools, techniques and methodologies available to the writer. Without the courses, I would have been a naïf poet, confined and defined by what I didn’t know I didn’t know.
What does your writing process look like now? Are you disciplined and scheduled, or intuitive and responsive to inspiration?
I think all of these, depending on what is needed for where the writing is at.
Do poems begin with an image, a line, a memory, or something else entirely?
Again, all of the above. Sometimes, with revision and polishing, the first line or stanza becomes the last, or is culled altogether. It’s also being open to a poem that you didn’t know was coming when it knocks on the door. The advice to have something on hand (electronic, or a prehistoric writing tool) to record such moments is worth its weight in words. There is nothing worse than waking up in the morning having written something momentous in your sleep only to find it has vaporised when you wake up.
How much revision is involved in your work? At what point do you know a poem is finished?
For me, revision is very poem-dependent. Some poems are perfectly formed little objects at birth. Others sit and look at you with mournful dog-eyes demanding yet another walk in the field of revision. I think some poems are never ‘finished’.
Your professional life has centred on teaching, learning and development, and structured communication. How different is writing non-fiction or professional material compared to crafting poetry?
There really isn’t much difference. If you have a template for your writing and/or can make decisions regarding form, length, style, etc., it is then a matter of settling on a way into the writing and applying the craft tools appropriate to its type.
Do the two forms feed each other — or do you keep them completely separate? Does poetry offer something that professional writing cannot?
The forms can feed into each other, but it really depends on the writing’s aim and who the audience is. Sometimes a mix of poetry and prose works, at other times it can be off-putting. All forms of writing offer something that probably have a singularity of aptness for each form, but writers often experiment with that aptness and come up with hybrids. For example, My two boyhood memoirs, No one home (Makaro Press) and Home Base (The Cuba Press) are not written as traditional text-based works for this genre, but are structured more like scrapbooks of memories and include a variety of text and image-based objects — poems, short prose, photos, maps, drawings, diary entries, letters, quotations, etc.
What has the journey to publication been like for you — particularly as someone balancing writing with a full career and family life?
I think I have been relatively lucky there. Firstly, my publication journey was relatively quick in terms of submissions made followed by acceptances. The work-life balance was not overly taxing either — our kids had left the nest (relatively speaking) and I was working from home with my own business by the time I set off on the ‘getting published’ yellow brick road. I was able to juggle work and down-time, chew gum and write at the same time.
Were there moments of rejection or doubt that tested your commitment? How did you respond?
Like all writers, I had a few submissions rejected along the way. I quickly learnt not to take it personally and quite often, poems that had been rejected by one journal would be picked up by another. My book-length collections have all been accepted on first submission, so I didn’t suffer angst there.
Do your interests feed your creative life in unexpected ways?
My other interests are pretty Kiwi-pedestrian — watching sport (mainly rugby and cricket), gardening, and trying to find the perfect white and red wines. I have written a couple of poems to do with sport, one of which I’ve included here. It was published by Mark Pirie in his blog, and a friend of mine, who had a career as an international cricket umpire, used it on occasion when speaking at sports dinners. Other than that, gardening and wine poetry lie largely untilled and uncorked:
Road cricket
Driving through town listening to the cricket I saw a man in the road’s grassy middle about to thread a three-lane needle with his body
glass, metal, flesh, blood
He danced ahead like a batsman at the bowler’s end just before the leather leaves the bowler’s hand then scuttled back to bide another chance
walk, run, dive, swallow
You fool, I thought you bloody bunny as my own life’s risky runs replayed for me right then though I knew on his far crease there was no-one looking out to call
YES! NO! WAIT! … sorry
How does visual art intersect with your writing?
I have always been interested in ekphrastic poetry (Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts being a particular favourite). Some of my poems have been inspired by or accompanied by relevant images. About 5 years ago, I started to experiment with composing digital art that used the imagery in a poem (a ‘painted poem’, if you like). The image below is my attempt at representing some of the imagery in WB Yeats’ The Second Coming (‘the widening gyre’, ‘blood-dimmed tide’, ‘a shape with lion body’, ‘rough beast’, ‘desert birds’). This composition was not created by AI and relevant licences and permissions were obtained for images used.
The Second Coming digital artwork, Keith Westwater, 2021
In turn, I used the Second Coming art piece as a springboard to writing a new poem commenting on the current American president and his shenanigans in the Middleeast. It is titled What rough beast? and it is the last poem in my upcoming collection, Sing to me of home.
If you could speak to your 15-year-old self, what advice would you give him?
I’m a little bit clueless here. I was press-ganged into the Army at 15 by a wicked stepmother and it was a reluctant move on my part; it was the only way I could see of continuing my schooling as I was going to be booted out of home regardless. I set a course as a boy soldier that would three years later lead me to university, with the Army sponsoring my study. In terms of advice — over sixty years on, and with hindsight, there is not much I can say to the boy to do things differently.
Is there something you wish you had known earlier about the writing life? What advice would you give aspiring writers in today, especially those who may begin their writing journey later in life?
I worked out early in my writing life that penning poetry as a full-time occupation in New Zealand was more likely to lead to penury than accumulation of even small mounds of money. Unless you aspire to being an academic in a university’s English faculty and thereby could pursue your poetry-penning as part of your job, or have other ‘means’, make sure you don’t stop your paid employment. On the other hand, there are New Zealand writers who have become successful writing in other genres.
Finally, what continues to call you back to the page?
I need to scratch the itch.
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless Journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Meenakshi Malhotra writes of the diverse ways histories can be viewed, reflecting on the perspective from the point of view of water, climate, migrations or women. Click here to read.
Sometimes, we have an idea, a thought and then it takes form and becomes a reality. That is how the Borderless Journal came to be six years ago while the pandemic raged. The pandemic got over and takeovers and wars started. We continued to exist because all of you continue to pitch in, ignoring the differences created by certain human constructs. We meet with the commonality of felt emotions and aesthetics to create a space for all those who believe in looking beyond margins. We try to erase margins or borders that lead to hatred, anger, violence and war. Learning from the natural world, we believe we can be like the colours of the rainbow that seem to grow out of each other or the grass that is allowed to grow freely beyond manmade borders. If nature gives us lessons through its processes, is it not to our advantage to conserve what nurtures us, and in the process, we save our home planet, the Earth? We could all be together in peace, enjoying nature and nurture, living in harmony in the Universe if only we could overlook differences and revel in similarities.
A young poet Nma Dhahir says it all in her poem that is a part of our journal this month —
This is how we stay human together: by refusing the easy damage, by carrying each other without calling it sacrifice, by believing that what we protect in one another eventually protects the world.
Translations has more poetry with Professor Fakrul Alam bringing us Nazrul’s Bengali lyrics in English and Fazal Baloch familiarising us with beautiful Balochi poetry of the late Majeed Ajez, a young poet who left us too soon. Isa Kamari translates his own poems from Malay, capturing the colours of the community in Singapore to blend it with a larger whole. And of course, we have a Tagore poem rendered into English from Bengali. This time it’s a poem called ‘Jatra (Journey)’ which reflects not only on social gaps but also on politics through aeons.
Christine C Fair has translated a story from Punjabi by Lakhvinder Virk, a story that reflects resilience in women who face the dark end of social trends, a theme that reverberates in Flanagan’s poetry and Meenakshi Malhotra’s essay, which while reflecting on the need of different perspectives in histories – like water and nomads — peeks into the need to recall women’s history aswell. This is important not just because March hosts the International Women’s Day (IWD) but because one wonders if women in Afghanistan are better off now than the suffragettes who initiated the idea of such a day more than a century ago?
This time our non-fiction froths over with scrumptious writings from across continents. Tamara-Lee Brereton-Karabetsos muses on looking at numbers and beyond to enjoy the essence of nature. Farouk Gulsara ideates about living on in posterity through deeds and ideas. Gower Bhat shares how he learns story writing skills from watching movies. Meredith Stephens talks of her experience of a fire in the Australian summer. Bhaskar Parichha writes with passion about his region, Odisha. We have a heartfelt tribute to Mark Tully, who transcended borders, from Bhowmick. And an essay on Arundhati Roy’s memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, from Somdatta Mandal, which explores not just the book but also the covers which change with continents. Prithvijeet Sinha travels beyond Lucknow and Suzanne Kamata brings to us stories about her trip to Phnom Penh.
Keith Lyons draws from the current crises and writes about changing times, suggesting: “Changes aren’t endings, but thresholds.” Perhaps, if we see them as ‘thresholds of change’, the current events are emphasising the need to accept that human constructs can be redefined. I am sure a Neolithic or an Australopithecus would have been equally scared of evolving out of their system to one we would deem ‘superior’. Life in certain ways can only evolve towards the future, even if currently certain changes seem to be retrogressive. We can never correctly predict the future… but can only imagine it. And Devraj Singh Kalsi imagines it with a dollop of humour where tails become a trend among humans again!
Humour and absurdity are woven into a series of short fables by Hughes while Naramsetti Umamaheswarao weaves a fable around acceptanceof differences. In fiction, we have stories of resilience from Jonathon B Ferrini and Terry Sanville. Bhat gives us a story set in Kashmir and Sohana Manzoor gives us one set in Dhaka, a narrative that reminds one of Jane Austen… and perhaps even an abbreviated version of the 2001 film, Monsoon Wedding.
In reviews we have, Mohammad Asim Siddiqui discussing Anisur Rahman’s The Essential Ghalib. Rituparna Khan has written on Malashri Lal’s poetry collection reflecting on women, Signing in the Air. And Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed Deepta Roy Chakraverti’s Daktarin Jamini Sen: The Life of British India’s First Woman Doctor, a book that reflects on the resilience that makes great women. Thus, weaving in flavours of the IWD, which applauds women who are resilient while urging humans for equal rights for one half of the world population.
While we ponder on larger realities, Borderless Journal looks forward to a future with more writings centred around humanity, climate change, our planet and all creatures great and small. This year has not only seen a rise in readership and contributors — and the numbers rose further after our unsolicited Duotrope listing in October 2025 — but has also attracted writers from more challenged parts of the world, like Ukraine, Iran, Tunisia and Kurdistan. We are delighted to home writing from all those who attempt to transcend borders and be a part of the larger race of humanity. I would like to quote Margaret Atwood to explain what I mean. “I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‘race’—the human race—and that we are all members of it.” And I would like to extend her view to find solidarity with all living beings. I hope that there will be a point in time when we will realise there’s not much difference between, a lizard, a fly, a human or a tree… All these lifeforms are necessary for our existence.
I would want to hugely thank all our team for stretching out and making this a special issue for our sixth anniversary and Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to all our contributors and readers for being with us through our journey. Let’s change the world with peace, love and friendship!
Last month the Doomsday Clock had moved closer to midnight than at any point since it was created in 1947. Maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the clock is meant to signal how close humanity stands to destroying itself, whether through nuclear conflict, climate breakdown or new technologies. Its latest shift suggests that we are living through a particularly dangerous moment.
That is one way to look at the year ahead.
Another comes from a friend of mine who follows astrology. “2026 will be intense,” she told me after we had worked out the time difference to talk. “There are major planetary shifts happening. But that also means there is potential for growth.”
Between scientific warning and planetary symbolism sits a familiar question. Are we heading towards catastrophe, or simply moving through another period of change?
It is difficult to judge the scale of events while we are inside them. Perspective usually comes later. At the time, everything feels amplified. The media leans towards urgency. Our own thoughts do the same. The expectation of upheaval can sometimes be more overwhelming than the experience itself.
In recent weeks there have been many reminders of transition: the turning of the calendar year; the Lunar New Year observed across China, parts of Southeast Asia, Korea and the Himalayan region; the beginning of Ramadan for Muslims around the world. These moments draw people together in ritual and reflection. They offer continuity, even when the wider world feels unstable.
At the same time, global leaders speak in stark terms. The Secretary-General of the United Nations recently described a world marked by conflict, inequality and unpredictability. Climate scientists warn that we have entered uncharted territory. Heat records continue to fall. Rain arrives in sudden deluges. Winters in some places are no longer as cold as they once were.
For centuries, seasonal rhythms have provided reassurance. Spring follows winter. Festivals return at roughly the same time each year. Even the Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582, was an attempt to bring order to time.
The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, wrote that no person steps into the same river twice. The water flows on, and so do we. It is a simple image, but it captures something steady and true about human life.
What feels different now is the speed. Changes that once unfolded across generations now seem compressed into years. Climate patterns shift within decades. Technology reshapes industries almost overnight. Artificial intelligence systems are altering the nature of work, leaving some people optimistic and others uncertain. I know people who are struggling to find employment, both those nearing the end of long careers and those only just starting out.
My friend attributes the turbulence to a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune. She links economic instability and political upheaval to movements in the sky. When she mentioned the recent increase in visible auroras, I thought of astronomers pointing out that the Sun is nearing the peak of its eleven-year solar cycle. Different explanations, same phenomena.
Whether we turn to science, philosophy or astrology, the underlying experience is similar. Things feel unsettled. Time feels faster. The future feels closer than it used to.
It is tempting either to tune out the warnings or to become consumed by them. Neither response changes what is happening. Ignoring risk does not reduce it. Constant alarm does not resolve it either.
We cannot return to a previous version of stability. The seasons will continue to shift, though perhaps less predictably. Technologies will continue to develop. Political arrangements will evolve. Some changes are small and gradual. Others are abrupt and disorienting.
The real question is how we live through them.
After our conversation, my friend sent a message: “Changes aren’t endings, but thresholds.” It is a hopeful way to think about uncertainty. Crossing a threshold suggests movement rather than collapse.
Perhaps this year calls for small, steady practices. Paying attention to what we consume, digitally and otherwise. Slowing down our thinking when everything pushes us to react. Staying connected to the people around us. These are modest responses, but they are within reach.
We step into the river again. The water is different. So are we.
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Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’sEditorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Six years ago, a few of us got together to bring out the first issue of Borderless Journal. We started as a daily blog and then congealed into a monthly journal offering content that transcends artificial borders to meet with the commonality of felt emotions, celebrating humanity and the Universe. Today as we complete six years of our existence in the clouds, we would like to celebrate with all writers and readers who made our existence a reality. We invite you to savour writings collected over the years that reflect and revel in transcending borders, touching hearts and some even make us laugh while exploring norms.
In this special issue. we can only offer a small sample of writings but you can access many more like these ones at our site…Without further ado, let us harmonise with words. We invite you to lose yourselves in a borderless world in these trying times.
Rebel or ‘Bidrohi’, Nazrul’s signature poem, ‘Bidrohi‘, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Manish Ghatak’s Aagun taader Praan (Fire is their Life) has been translated from Bengali by Indrayudh Sinha. Click here to read.
Tagore’s poem, Tomar Shonkho Dhulay Porey (your conch lies in the dust), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty as ‘The Conch Calls’. Click here to read.
Ihlwha Choi spent some time in Santiniketan and here are poems he wrote in reaction to his observations near the ‘home of R.Tagore’, as he names Santiniketan and the Kobiguru. Click here to read Nandini.
Rituals in the Garden: Marcelo Medone discusses motherhood, aging and loss in this poignant flash fiction from Argentina. Click here to read.
Navigational Error: Luke P.G. Draper explores the impact of pollution with a short compelling narrative. Click here to read.
Henrik’s Journey: Farah Ghuznavi follows a conglomerate of people on board a flight to address issues ranging from Rohingyas to race bias. Click hereto read.
The Magic Staff , a poignant short story about a Rohingya child by Shaheen Akhtar, translated from Bengali by Arifa Ghani Rahman. Click here to read.
A Cat Story : Sohana Manzoor leaves one wondering if the story is about felines or… Clickhere to read.
When West Meets East & Greatness Blooms: Debraj Mookerjee reflects on how syncretism impacts greats like Tagore,Tolstoy, Emerson, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi and many more. Click here to read.
The Day Michael Jackson Died: A tribute by Julian Matthews to the great talented star who died amidst ignominy and controversy. Click here to read.
Potable Water Crisis & the Sunderbans: Camellia Biswas, a visitor to Sunderbans during the cyclone Alia, turns environmentalist and writes about the potable water issue faced by locals. Click here to read.
My Love for RK Narayan, Rhys Hughes discusses the novels by ths legendary writer from India. Click here to read.
Travels ofDebendranath Tagore: These are travel narratives by Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.
Baraf Pora (Snowfall): This narrative gives a glimpse of Tagore’s first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated by Somdatta Mandal . Clickhere to read.
The Day of Annihilation: An essay on climate change by Kazi Nazrul Islam has been translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty. Clickhereto read.
Reminiscences from a Gallery: The Other Ray: Dolly Narang muses on Satyajit Ray’s world beyond films and shares a note by the maestro and an essay on his art by the eminent artist, Paritosh Sen. Click here to read.
The Bauls of Bengal: Aruna Chakravarti writes of wandering minstrels called bauls and the impact they had on Tagore. Click here to read.
Most people like you and me connect with the commonality of felt emotions and needs. We feel hungry, happy, sad, loved or unloved and express a larger plethora of feelings through art, theatre, music, painting, photography and words… With these, we tend to connect. And yet, larger structures created over time to offer security and governance to the masses—of which you and I are a part — have grown divisive, and, by the looks of it, the fences nurtured over time seem insurmountable. To retain these structures that were meant to keep us safe, wars are being fought and many are getting killed, losing homes and going hungry. We showcase such stories, poems and non-fiction to create an awareness among those who are lucky enough to remain untouched. But is there a way out, so that all of us can live peacefully, without war, without hunger and with love and a vision towards surviving climate change which (like it or not) is upon us?
Creating an awareness of hunger and destruction wreaked by war is a heartrending story set in Gaza by JK Miller. While Snigdha Agrawal’s narrative gives a sense of hope, recounting a small kindness by a common person, Sayan Sarkar shares a more personal saga of friendship and disillusionment — where people have choice. But does war leave us a choice as it annihilates friendships, cities, homes and families? Naramsetti Umamaheswararao’s story reiterates the belief in the family – peace being an accepted unit. Vela Noble’s fantastical fiction and art comes like a respite– though there is a darker side to it — with a touch of fun. Perhaps, a bit of fantasy and humour opens the mind to deal with the more sombre notes of existence.
The translation section hosts a story by Hamiruddin Middya, who grew up as a farmer’s son in Bengal. Steeped in local colours, it has been rendered into English by V Ramaswamy. Nazrul’s song revelling in the colours of spring has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Atta Shad’s pensive Balochi lines have been brought to us in English by Fazal Baloch. Isa Kamari continues to bring the flavours of an older, more laid-back Singapore with translations of his own Malay poems. A couple of Persian verses have been rendered into English by the poet, Akram Yazdani, herself. Questing for harmony, Tagore’s translated poem while reflecting on a child’s life, urges us to have the courage to be like a child — open, innocent and willing to imagine a world laced with trust and hope. If we were all to do that, do you think we’d still have wars, violence and walls built on hate and intolerance?
Mario Fenech takes a look at the idea of time. Amir Zadnemat writes of how memory is impacted by both science and humanities while Andriy Nivchuk brings to us snippets from Herodotus’s and Pericles’s lives that still read relevant. Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan gives the journey of chickpeas across space and time, asserting: “The chickpea does not care about your ideology, your portfolio, or your meticulously curated identity. It will grow, fix nitrogen, feed someone, and move on without a press release.” It has survived over aeons in a borderless state!
In book excerpts, we have a book that transcends borders as it’s a translation from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas of Arupa Kalita Patangia’s Moonlight Saga. Any translation is an attempt to integrate the margins into the mainstream of literature, and this is no less. The other excerpt is from Natalie Turner’s The Red Silk Dress. Keith Lyons has interviewed Turner about her novel which crosses multiple cultures too while on a personal quest.
Holding on to that idea, we invite you to savour the contents of our February issue.
Huge thanks to all our contributors and readers for making this issue possible. Heartfelt thanks to our wonderful team, especially Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork.
Enjoy the reads!
Let’s look forward to the spring… May it bring new ideas to help us all move towards more amicable times.
Keith Lyons in conversation with Natalie Turner, author of The Red Silk Dress
Natalie Turner in Lisbon
Tell us about your background and life. If you had to give a relatable elevator pitch to readers, what would you say?
I was born in 1968, a year of social upheaval, into a life shaped early by movement, belief, and questioning. My parents were Christian missionaries, so I grew up immersed in faith, travel, and a strong inner world. From a young age, I wanted to be a writer. I was also restless, resistant to fixed paths, and fiercely independent, which meant that desire took many shapes before it found its way home.
As a young adult, I travelled and worked across Asia and Latin America, experiences that expanded my worldview and quietly dismantled many of the belief systems I had inherited. I later studied politics, economics, and social psychology, worked in Parliament, and then moved into business and innovation, where I continue to help organisations navigate change. Writing stayed alive throughout, mostly through journals and ideas, even when it wasn’t centre stage.
The red thread running through my life has always been transformation. A willingness to question what no longer fits, and the courage to follow what is asking to emerge. Writing fiction felt like the most honest way to bring that thread home.
What first inspired The Red Silk Dress?
The inspiration came from living inside a world that looked complete from the outside but felt fractured beneath the surface. In Southeast Asia, I was surrounded by what’s often called the expat life, glamorous settings, elegant events, and success on display. Yet in quieter moments, especially in conversations with women, a very different story would surface.
Many were intelligent, capable, outwardly fulfilled, yet privately wrestling with a sense of loss. They had raised families and built impressive lives, yet somewhere along the way they felt they had misplaced themselves. The contrast between the polished exterior and the unspoken interior stayed with me.
At the same time, I recognised a parallel in myself. From the outside, my life also looked full and successful. Inside, I sensed something unfinished, something buried. The novel grew from that convergence. From the tension between what we show the world and what quietly asks for attention. Cambodia, and a writing retreat in Siem Reap, became the place where that question could no longer be ignored.
Why did you choose Claudette, a French woman living overseas, as the heart of this story?
I didn’t choose Claudette in a deliberate way. I wasn’t designing a character or thinking about nationality or backstory. She arrived. On the outskirts of Angkor Wat, during a writing retreat, surrounded by experienced writers and acutely aware of my own inexperience, this woman appeared fully formed in my imagination.
She was elegant and guarded, wearing a wide-brimmed white hat and dark glasses. She introduced herself as Claudette, from Paris, and asked me to write her story. When she removed her glasses, what struck me was the sadness in her eyes. That moment carried a quiet insistence. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was unmistakable.
I wrote the opening paragraph that day, and it remains the opening paragraph of the novel. Claudette wasn’t invented to make a point. She was the right vessel for the story that wanted to be told.
The novel explores longing, desire, and reinvention. What drew you to these themes?
Reinvention has always fascinated me because I’ve lived it. I’ve moved countries, changed careers, and rebuilt my life more than once. That capacity for agency, for choosing to become something new, has been a quiet through-line in my work and my thinking.
Longing and desire entered the novel more subtly. At the time, I was living in Penang, Malaysia, immersed in colour, texture, heat, and beauty. I began to experience desire not as something reckless or romanticised, but as a form of intelligence. A way back into memory, creativity, and the parts of us that go dormant when life becomes crowded with too much to do.
Longing, for me, is a signal. If we ignore it, we stay as we are. If we listen, it draws us inward, into an interior journey that can quietly change the course of our lives.
Is The Red Silk Dress a love story, or is it really about something deeper?
It’s about something deeper than a conventional love story. The love affair in The Red Silk Dress isn’t a romance in the usual sense, and it isn’t about escape or transgression for its own sake. It functions as a catalyst. Love, in Claudette’s case, is what wakes her up to herself.
What interested me was eros in its older meaning. A sensual awakening of the body and the senses, of attention and aliveness. A pause that draws us back into ourselves and allows us to inhabit moments more fully.
In that sense, eros doesn’t just awaken desire. It awakens attention. And sustained attention inevitably sharpens conscience. When we feel more alive, more present, more attuned, we become more aware of misalignment. Of what we are complicit in. Of what no longer feels bearable. That awareness naturally turns outward into questions of responsibility.
Places feel very alive in the book. Why were Cambodia, Malaysia, and Paris important settings?
The places are alive in the novel, as much a character as the people who inhabit it. Geography isn’t a backdrop for Claudette’s journey; it actively shapes it.
Cambodia is where the story begins because it is where her inner life is first disturbed and opened. I was deeply affected by Cambodia’s layers of history, from the ancient Angkor civilisation to the energy of contemporary artists, designers, and entrepreneurs rebuilding culture with pride and imagination. There is a sensuality and generosity in the country that opens Claudette.
Malaysia is her lived world. It is where I spent many years, moving between lush, gated communities, international enclaves, and the daily crossings into Singapore. That environment, with its contrasts between order and improvisation, privilege, and dislocation, shaped how Claudette learned to belong and not belong at the same time.
Paris represents origin and memory. It carries sensuality, identity, and an earlier version of herself. It is where Claudette must reckon with who she has been and who she is becoming, not nostalgically, but honestly.
And then there is Portugal, which sits quietly behind the book rather than inside the story. It is where the novel was edited, refined, and completed. After the intensity of Asia, it offered a different rhythm. More space. More listening. It was here that what had been awakened elsewhere could be integrated and shaped with patience.
For me, the locale is never decorative. Each country asks something different of Claudette. Cambodia opens her. Malaysia tests her sense of belonging. Paris calls her to reckon with her past.
What’s your connection with Malaysia, Cambodia, and Singapore, and what was your experience living and working there?
I moved to Singapore in 2010, initially for work. It was still a time when the traditional expat package existed, and the city was dazzling, ordered, and highly curated. I was fascinated by it, not because it was my life, but because of what it revealed about status, success, and performance.
We moved to Malaysia largely for practical reasons. In Johor Bahru, we became part of a more entrepreneurial, improvised community, shaped by people building lives across borders. I crossed into Singapore several times a week, so the contrast between those two societies became part of my daily rhythm.
Penang was where something settled. It was slower, textured, steeped in history. It was also where I returned fully to writing and committed to the novel. After years of living between worlds, Penang became the place where the book could finally be written.
You’ve lived and worked across many countries. How has that shaped the way you write about identity and belonging?
Living across countries has made identity feel less fixed and more relational. Belonging isn’t something you arrive at once and for all. It shifts depending on place, people, and season of life.
Being immersed in different cultures sharpened my sensitivity to belief systems, values, and the ways we construct meaning. Living now in Portugal has added another layer. After years of movement, it has offered a sense of feeling grounded without confinement. A rhythm where I can listen differently.
I now find myself writing more reflective cultural pieces that explore place, memory, and creativity. Belonging, I’ve learned, is not about fitting in neatly. It’s about learning how to be changed by place while remaining true to yourself.
You often write about moments when life quietly asks us to change. Where does that fascination come from?
From my own life. I’ve reinvented not just what I do, but how I think. What interests me most are the subtle moments when something no longer fits and begins to ask different questions.
Real change rarely arrives loudly. It comes as a discomfort, a quiet misalignment. Innovation, like personal change, requires the courage to step beyond conformity and tolerate uncertainty. I’ve always been drawn to that edge because it is where life becomes most alive.
Your professional work focuses on creativity and transformation. Did those ideas find their way into this story?
Yes, though not in a literal way. My work has always been about how change unfolds as lived experience. Claudette’s journey follows that inner arc. Awareness, awakening, investigation, and consequence.
Creativity also enters the novel through the senses. Fabric, silk, touch, style. I wanted creativity to live in the body, not just the mind. In that sense, the story becomes a meeting place between beauty and transformation.
Did writing The Red Silk Dress change how you see yourself or your work?
The act of writing, and the way the book moved me emotionally and sensorially, awakened a level of creative energy I hadn’t experienced before. When I finished the novel, I realised I had opened a door into a new phase of my life.
It also reoriented my work. I no longer separate creativity, leadership, and transformation into neat categories. They belong together. Writing the novel didn’t replace my previous work. It gave it a deeper centre.
In parallel, I continue my work with women in leadership, creating spaces where they can step back from performance and certainty and listen more deeply to themselves. In many ways, those spaces and the novel are in a subtle, mutually reinforcing conversation. Both are about reconnecting with agency, voice, and purpose, not as theory but as lived experience.
Who do you think this book is for?
It will likely resonate most strongly with women who are curious, reflective, and drawn to immersive stories. Readers who want to be transported into another world and enjoy discovering history, culture, and meaning through story.
That said, men have responded deeply too. Several have shared how meaningful it was to inhabit a woman’s inner world so intimately. While it is a woman’s journey, the relationships and portrayals of masculinity are layered and intentional.
At heart, it’s for readers standing at a threshold. Those who sense a quiet unease and are open to being moved by a story that stays with them.
If a reader recognises themselves in Claudette’s struggle, what would you want them to take from her story?
I would want them to pause first. To take a breath and turn inward. Claudette’s story isn’t a prescription or a manifesto. It’s an invitation to reflect.
If there is one thing I hope readers take from her journey, it’s the understanding that feeling trapped does not mean being powerless. Agency often begins quietly, with hope, courage, and a willingness to trust what is asking to emerge.
And that emergence isn’t just personal. It shapes how we show up in our families, our work, our communities. Change, in this story, is not about abandoning life, but about stepping back into it with greater responsibility for the world we are helping to shape.
What do you hope readers feel or reflect on after turning the final page?
Above all, I hope the book creates a pause. A moment of deeper listening. Not a rush to act or decide, but an invitation to sit with what is emerging.
What’s your advice to aspiring writers?
I think writing begins with attention. Being open to life, to what keeps circling at the edges of consciousness, to the story that wants to be told. Craft matters enormously, of course. Writing a novel asks for depth, endurance, and commitment well beyond beautiful prose. Technique only comes alive when it is in the service of something true, something rooted in vulnerability. Finding your story is about learning how to listen, and then having the courage and patience to give it form.
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Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
Incomplete statues of Michelangelo in Accademia Gallery, Florence
In the Accademia Gallery, Florence, are housed incomplete statues by Michelangelo that were supposed to accompany his sculpture of Moses on the grand tomb of Pope Julius II. The sculptures despite being unfinished, incomplete and therefore imperfect, evoke a sense of power. They seem to be wresting forcefully with the uncarved marble to free their own forms — much like humanity struggling to lead their own lives. Life now is comparable to atonal notes of modern compositions that refuse to fall in line with more formal, conventional melodies. The new year continues with residues of unending wars, violence, hate and chaos. Yet amidst all this darkness, we still live, laugh and enjoy small successes. The smaller things in our imperfect existence bring us hope, the necessary ingredient that helps us survive under all circumstances.
Imperfections, like Michelangelo’s Non-finito statues in Florence, or modern atonal notes, go on to create vibrant, relatable art. There is also a belief that when suffering is greatest, arts flourish. Beauty and hope are born of pain. Will great art or literature rise out of the chaos we are living in now? One wonders if ancient art too was born of humanity’s struggle to survive in a comparatively younger world where they did not understand natural forces and whose history we try to piece together with objects from posterity. Starting on a journey of bringing ancient art from her part of the world, Ratnottama Sengupta shares a new column with us from this January.
Drenched in struggles of the past is also Showkat Ali’s The Struggle: A Novel, translated from Bengali by V. Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir. It has been reviewed by Somdatta Mandal who sees it a socio-economic presentation of the times. We also carry an excerpt from the book as we do for Anuradha Marwah’s The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta. Marwha’s novel has been reviewed by Meenakshi Malhotra who sees it as a bildungsroman and a daring book. Bhaskar Parichha has brought to us a discussion on colonial history about Rakesh Dwivedi’s Colonization Crusade and Freedom of India: A Saga of Monstrous British Barbarianism around the Globe. Udita Banerjee has also delved into history with her exploration of Angshuman Kar’s The Lost Pendant, a collection of poems written by poets who lived through the horrors of Partition and translated from Bengali by multiple poets. One of the translators, Rajorshi Patranabis, has also discussed his own book of supernatural encounters, Whereabouts of the Anonymous: Exploration of the Invisible. A Wiccan by choice, Patranbis claims to have met with residual energies or what we in common parlance call ghosts and spoken to many of them. He not only clicked these ethereal beings — and has kindly shared his photos in this feature — but also has written a whole book about his encounters, including with the malevolent spirits of India’s most haunted monument, the Bhangarh Fort.
Bringing us an essay on a book that had spooky encounters is Farouk Gulsara, showing how Dickens’ A Christmas Carolrevived a festival that might have got written off. We have a narrative revoking the past from Larry Su, who writes of his childhood in the China of the 1970s and beyond. He dwells on resilience — one of the themes we love in Borderless Journal. Karen Beatty also invokes ghosts from her past while sharing her memoir. Rick Bailey brings in a feeling of mortality in his musing while Keith Lyons, writes in quest of his friend who mysteriously went missing in Bali. Let’s hope he finds out more about him.
Charudutta Panigrahi writes a lighthearted piece on barbers of yore, some of whom can still be found plying their trade under trees in India. Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia dwells on her favourite place which continues to rejuvenate and excite while Prithvijeet Sinha writes about haunts he is passionate about, the ancient monuments of Lucknow. Gulsara has woven contemporary lores into his satirical piece, involving Messi, the footballer. Bringing compassionate humour with his animal interactions is Devraj Singh Kalsi, who is visited daily by not just a bovine visitor, but cats, monkeys, birds and more — and he feeds them all. Suzanne Kamata takes us to Kishi, brought to us by both her narrative and pictures, including one of a feline stationmaster!
We've run away from the simmering house like milk that is boiling over. Now I'm single again. The sun hangs behind a ruffled up shed, like a bloody yolk on a cold frying pan until the nightfall dumps it in the garbage…
('A Poet in Exile', by Dmitry Blizniuk, translated from Ukranian by Sergey Gerasimov)
In translations, we have Professor Fakrul Alam’s rendition of Nazrul’s mellifluous lyrics from Bengali. Isa Kamari has shared four more of his Malay poems in English bringing us flavours of his culture. Snehaparava Das has similarly given us flavours of Odisha with her translation of Pravasini Mahakuda’s Odia poetry. A taste of Balochistan comes to us from Fazal Baloch’s rendition of Sayad Hashumi’s Balochi quatrains in English. Tagore’s poem ‘Kalponik’ (Imagined) has been rendered in English. This was a poem that was set to music by his niece, Sarala Devi.
After a long hiatus, we are delighted to finally revive Pandies Corner with a story by Sumona translated from Hindustani by Grace M Sukanya. Her story highlights the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms. Sumana has assumed a pen name as her story is true and could be a security risk for her. She is eager to narrate her story — do pause by and take a look.
In fiction, we have a poignant narrative about befriending a tramp by Ross Salvage, and macabre and dark one by Mary Ellen Campagna, written with a light touch. It almost makes one think of Eugene Ionesco. Jonathan B. Ferrini shares a heartfelt story about used Steinway pianos and growing up in Latino Los Angeles. Rajendra Kumar Roul weaves a narrative around compassion and expectations. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives a beautiful fable around roses and bees.
With that, we come to the end of a bumper issue with more than fifty peices. Huge thanks to all our fabulous contributors, some of whom have not just written but shared photographs to illustrate the content. Do pause by our contents page and take a look. My heartfelt thanks to our fabulous team for their output and support, especially Sohana Manzoor who does our cover art. And most of all huge thanks to readers whose numbers keep growing, making it worth our while to offer our fare. Thank you all.
Here’s wishing all of you better prospects for the newborn year and may we move towards peace and sanity in a world that seems to have gone amuck!
Borderless 