Tag: Meredith Stephens

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Slices from Life

Sleepless in the High Desert, Slumber in the Sierra

Narrative and photographs by Meredith Stephens

Alex and I had completed our road trip from California to Colorado and now it was time to make the two-day drive back along the interminable desert roads.

Every time we stopped, I would try to get into the driver’s side of the vehicle, thinking it was the passenger side. My brain would not adapt to a car with the steering wheel on the left. Once back in the passenger seat, the sun blazed on my temple, so I manoeuvred my visor to cover the right window to block it from penetrating my eyes. It was hard sitting still, so I stretched my legs before me, then slid them beneath me to elevate my height.

“As soon as we hit the Nevada border you will see a casino town,” Alex informed me.

Sure enough, we crossed the border into Nevada from Utah and a town immediately arose from the desert. Alex made a detour into the town to get some fuel.

“Can we drive down the strip?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied. “Are you hoping to find a hotel here?”

Yes, I thought, but kept my silence. I was too proud to confess that I wanted to stay anywhere near a casino, but I would have welcomed clean sheets and hot water.

I took hold of Alex’s phone and searched for campsites en route, but they all involved deviations that would rob us of precious time.

“We can always stop at a rest area,” suggested Alex.

He searched his phone and found a rest area nestled into a hill, with outdoor tables surrounded by trees. We arrived at sunset and parked the car at the far end, away from other vehicles. We gratefully hopped out, picked up the ice box, and headed for the picnic tables, which we had to ourselves. No sooner had we started anticipating our picnic than we heard the murmur of a refrigerated truck.

“He probably has to keep his engine on to keep the food cool,” observed Alex.

The din was inescapable, so we decided to park back near the entrance to the rest area. I noticed a car parked with sheets draping the windows. Clearly, we were not the only ones seeking sleep in the rest area. Alex parked the car at an angle contrary to the parking lines so that nobody would be tempted to park right next to us. We hauled the icebox to a nearby picnic table to consume our leftovers. Alex proceeded to pour us a glass of wine, and we snacked on sourdough, cheese, avocado, deli meats, and corn chips.

I ate a little too quickly because it was getting late, and I was hungry. It was high desert, so the air was cool, even though it was mid-June. We packed up our picnic and headed for the car, where Alex moved all of our goods to the front seat and made up our bed in the back.

It was nearly 9 pm and we went to bed in the twilight. I revelled in the sensation of the thick flannelette cotton sheets, but I could not slip into a deep sleep. The overhead lights snuck through cracks in the fabric I had put up to cover the window, and the traffic rumbled on the adjoining freeway. Then, a few hours into the night, I heard a clanging outside the car. I peered myopically outside.

“That’s just a dumpster diver,” explained Alex, who turned back to sleep, obviously not too alarmed.

I had never heard that expression before, but I realised that some poor soul was working their way through the bins in the rest area in the wee hours when nobody could see them. I reflected on what I had thrown out after dinner, which had included a nectarine seed, and hoped their fingers did not come into contact with its slime. Then I started worrying whether the dumpster diver would come after us in the night. The next morning Alex explained to me that they were probably collecting cans to sell to a recycling centre. That, at least, was preferable to scrounging around in the bins for food.

We left early the next morning because Alex wanted to show me Lake Tahoe en route to California.

“That reminds me of Lac Leman in Switzerland,” I told him.

“Yes, there’s California on one side, and Nevada on the other. They share the lake.”

We stopped for photos, then resumed our way, winding through snowy mountains, and passing cattle, horses and foals down below. It was a huge relief after the deserts of Utah and Nevada. Then we wound our way through a canyon, following a rushing river, passing through picturesque towns adjoining Yosemite National Park.

“I need a coffee,” lamented Alex, typing ‘coffee shop’ into Google Maps. We entered the town of Columbia, heeding Google’s directions. We were directed down a narrow road through wooded hills. We passed a large car park the size of an oval, much too large for this rolling wooded area. Then Google Maps told us we had arrived. We parked under some shady trees to arrive at a tea shop from another place and time.

We wandered inside. They had a wide range of teas but no coffee, so we took our leave. The voice on Google Maps kept insisting we take a detour, so we followed her urgings past what seemed to be a historical town.

We turned the corner to find the coffee shop Google Maps had been directing us to. We entered and ordered Americano coffee, which despite the 19th-century decor was served in 21st-century paper cups.

We then realised in our quest to find a roadside coffee shop we had stumbled on Columbia Historic Park. The buildings which had been used in the town in the gold rush had been restored and made available to tourists. I wanted to linger in this authentic setting. Unlike a theme park, this was not a re-creation. Alex was worried that we still had several hours driving to go, so we had to resume our journey.

We wound back home through gentle valleys, passing cattle and horses. The sun in my eyes gave me an aura; a circle of lights started appearing in my vision. After 25 hours of driving, we arrived at our cabin at Shaver Lake. I crashed on the sofa, while Alex made a fire. He made up a bed in cotton flannelette sheets in front of the fire, and I rolled onto it from the sofa. What a relief it was to sleep in comfort, in contrast to the person in the rest area scrounging for cans in the wee hours. For us, sleeping in a rest area was a novelty, but for others, it was a way of life.

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.

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

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

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

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Editorial

As Imagination Bodies Forth…

Painting by Sybil Pretious
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!

Keith Lyons has mused on attitudes too, though with a more candid outlook as has Devraj Singh Kalsi with a touch of nostalgia. Ramona Sen has brought in humour to the non-fiction section with her tasteful palate. Meredith Stephens takes us on a picturesque adventure to Sierra Nevada Mountains with her camera and narrative while Ravi Shankar journeys through museums in Kuala Lumpur. We travel to Japan with Suzanne Kamata and, through fiction, to different parts of the Earth as the narratives hail from Bangladesh, France and Singapore.

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 Afghanistan by 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.

Thank you all.

Have a wonderful month!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Visit the July edition’s content page by clicking here

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

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Slices from Life

Awesome Arches and Acrophobia

Narrative and photographs by Meredith Stephens

My partner, Alex, has always been enthralled with the natural beauty of the west of the United States, having spent sixteen years studying and working there in his youth. He wanted to share his love of this part of the world with me, so took me on a seven-day road trip from his base in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Fort Collins in Colorado and back.

“You must see Arches National Park in Utah!” urged Alex’ long-time friend Ryan. “Bryce National Park is worth visiting too.”

Two days later we arrived at Bryce National Park. At first, the scenery was pleasant but unremarkable. I wondered why there were so many tourists and so many cars in the carpark. We donned our raincoats and walked towards the trail to follow the other tourists. It started hailing and I pulled my hood around my face. Thunder and lightning resounded. A tall thin park ranger approached us from the other direction and looked directly at me.

“We advise you to turn around immediately and seek shelter. We have lost ten people in twenty-five years in these weather conditions.”

We looked at the brochure to confirm this and read that there had been four fatalities and six injuries. I would have been happy to follow the park ranger’s advice, but we had driven for eleven hours to get there and were too curious to turn back. We started walking towards the Navajo Loop trailhead at Sunset Point. Tourists were posing for photographs at the rim. I wondered what the attraction was and peered over the rim myself. Suddenly, I understood why the site was so crowded.

Navajo Loop

I gingerly placed one foot after another to carefully descend the steep muddy trail. Each time I planted my foot down I held it steadily to ensure I would not slide. A couple approached us from the opposite direction as they ascended the trail.

“We strongly recommend you turn around immediately!” they warned. “It’s treacherous in these muddy conditions.”

Muddy trail

We thanked them, but I continued to gingerly traipse through the mud along the downward trail for a few metres.

“You go ahead,” I urged Alex. “I can’t go any further.”

It continued to hail, and we could hear thunder. I turned around and slowly plodded back up the muddy trail back to the edge of the rim, closely followed by Alex. We contented ourselves with the less slippery 2 km walk along the rim to Sunrise Point and back. Back at the car, we scraped the mud off our shoes, fairly unsuccessfully, and continued our drive to Arches National Park.

The Arches National Park is so popular that visitors have to book through a timed entry system. At 6 pm, when the booking system opened, Alex opened the booking site and secured one of the few remaining availabilities for a 7am entry the next day. He hoped we could also enter just before sunset that day, after 6pm when entry was not timed.

Four-and-a half-hours later we arrived at Arches National Park. The drive had been uneventful along straight desert roads and it had been difficult to force myself to stay awake, as I sat in the passenger seat.

“If we are too tired, we can go straight to our accommodation,” suggested Alex.

I hoped we would do so. I needed to escape from the enclosed space of the passenger seat. Suddenly huge rock formations loomed just beyond the park gates, and we decided to enter. I was lulled from my stupor into a sense of shock from the grandeur of the giant ochre rocks emerging from the plains. I could sense the onset of palpitations.

“I think I’m going to faint, Alex,” I warned him.

“I think you’re experiencing ‘geophilia’,” he responded.

Suddenly, I realised why people found the study of geology so fascinating. Strata upon strata of ochre rocks rose before us. Their layers indicated the movement of the earth’s surface over eons of time,

Entrance to the Arches

The sunset light flattered the rock formations. Cars lined the road heading to the distant formation of Delicate Arch thirteen miles into the park, and tourists parked their vehicles at the many carparks along the wayside to walk amongst the various giant rock formations.

The next morning, we rose to meet our 7am booking to enter the park. The light portrayed the rock formations in a slightly different way from the light of the evening before. We headed to the trail leading to the Delicate Arch. Even at that early hour, the carpark was almost full, and we secured a space before following the throng of tourists walking the trail heading to the arch. We scrambled across rocks and boulders in the piercing sunshine. I glanced at the climbers ahead of me and thought it would be impossible to reach where they were climbing, but with Alex’s encouragement found myself joining them. After a series of false summits, we found ourselves within sight of the arch. I looked at the abyss below and suddenly decided I would content myself with watching others pose for photographs in the arch rather than entering myself. A photographer was set facing a couple posing in the arches perilously close to the drop-off. Couples and children walked across the rocks in front of me towards the arches.

“I feel sick, Alex! I can’t go any further.”

I wondered why the others were walking so freely along the rocks in front of me, in full view of the yawning abyss.

“I promise I’ll hold your hand.”

“I don’t want to drag you down!”

“You won’t!”

I continued to worry I would drag Alex down with me in the abyss, but as usual, succumbed to his confidence. I gripped his hand and refused to gaze below me, carefully placing one foot in front of the other. Fellow tourists were taking turns to pose under the arch. A couple noticed us heading towards the arches.

“Shall we take your photo for you?” they offered.

Alex accepted and handed them his phone.

We continued to inch towards the arch. Finally we reached it and posed beneath it. I tried to assume a confident stance that I did not feel, all the while steeling myself away from glancing down at the abyss. I was naturally inclined to hold myself steady in a tense position, but instead decided to stretch my free arm outwards and pretend to exert confidence.

Arches

After standing there for long enough for the couple to take turns photographing us, we returned to the smooth large boulders ready for our trail down the mountain. As we walked down, I started reflecting on the contrast between how brave others seemed to feel as they freely walked over the boulders facing the abyss, and how timid I had felt.

“I think I have a fear of heights!” I announced to Alex. “I don’t know how I made it to retirement age without noticing this.”

There was one more trail we wanted to pursue, namely, the Devil’s Garden. As before, there were few empty places in the carpark. We finally edged into a free space, and then headed to the trail on our way to the Landscape Arch. This time I decided to read the information posted on the sign at the entrance. It read “Drop-offs on both sides challenge those with fear of heights”. I realised that there must be at least some people who shared my fear.

Arches National Park remains the most impressive national park I have ever visited. The force of nature had never felt so overwhelming.  I felt small in this vast ancient landscape but privileged to be able to witness it.

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.

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

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

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

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Contents

Borderless June 2023

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

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

Translations

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

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

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

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

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

Conversations

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

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

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

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

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

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

Musings/Slices from Life

Humbled by a Pig

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

Spring Surprise in the Sierra

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

Lemon Pickle without Oil

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

Apples & Apricots in Alchi

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

Musings of a Copywriter

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

Notes from Japan

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

Stories

The Trial of Veg Biryani

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

Am I enough?

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

Arthur’s Subterranean Adventure

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

Essays

No Bucket Lists, No Regrets

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

In Search of the Perfect Dosa

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

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

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

Book Excerpts

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

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

Book Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Editorial

Where have All the People Gone?

Courtesy: Creative Commons

Can humankind ever stop warring and find peace?

Perhaps, most sceptics will say it is against human nature to stop fighting and fanning differences. The first recorded war was fought more than 13,000 years ago in what is now a desert but was green long ago. Nature changed its face. Continents altered over time. And now again, we are faced with strange shifts in climate that could redefine not just the dimensions of the surface area available to humankind but also our very physical existence. Can we absorb these changes as a species when we cannot change our nature to self-destruct for concepts that with a little redefining could move towards a world without wars leading to famines, starvation, destruction of beautiful edifices of nature and those built by humankind? That we could feed all of humans — a theory that won economist Abhijit Banerjee his Nobel Prize in 2019 so coveted by all humanity — almost seems to have taken a backseat. This confuses — as lemmings self-destruct…do humans too? I would have thought that all humanity would have moved towards resolving hunger and facing the climate crises post-2019 and post-pandemic, instead of killing each other for retaining constructs created by powerbrokers.

In the timeless lyrics of ‘Imagine’, John Lennon found peace by suggesting we do away with manmade constructs which breed war, anger and divisions and share the world as one. Wilfred Owen and many writers involved in the World Wars wrote to showcase the desolation and the heartfelt darkness that is brought on by such acts. Nazrul also created a story based on his experience in the First World War, ‘Hena’, translated for us by Sohana Manzoor. Showcasing the downside of another kind of conflict, a struggle to survive, is a story with a distinctive and yet light touch from S Ramakrishnan translated from Tamil by B Chandramouli. And yet in a conflict-ridden world, humans still yearn to survive, as is evident from Tagore’s poem Pran or ‘Life’. Reflecting it is the conditioning that we go through from our birth that makes us act as we do are translations by Professor Fakrul Alam of Masud Khan’s poetry and from Korean by Ihlwha Choi.

A figure who questioned his own conditioning and founded a new path towards survival; propounded living by need, and not greed; renounced violence and founded a creed that has survived more than 2500 years, is the man who rose to be the Buddha. Born as Prince Siddhartha, he redefined the norms with messages of love and peace. Reiterating the story of this legendary human is debutante author, Advait Kottary with his compelling Siddhartha: The Boy Who Became the Buddha, a book that has been featured in our excerpts too. In an interview, Kottary tells us more of what went into the making of the book which perhaps is the best survivor’s guide for humanity — not that we need to all become Buddhas but more that we need to relook at our own beliefs, choices and ways of life.

Another thinker-cum-film maker interviewed in this edition is Vinta Nanda for her film Shout, which highlights and seeks resolutions for another kind of crisis faced by one half of the world population today. She has been interviewed and her documentary reviewed by Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri. Chaudhuri has also given us an essay on a bookshop called Kunzum which continues to expand and go against the belief we have of shrinking hardcopy markets.

The bookshop has set out to redefine norms as have some of the books featured in our reviews this time, such as Rhys Hughes’ latest The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm. The reviewed by Rakhi Dalal contends that the subtitle is especially relevant as it explores what it says — “The Absurdity of Existence and The Futility of Human Desire” to arrive at what a person really needs. Prerna Gill’s Meanwhile reviewed by Basudhara Roy and poetry excerpted from Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry, edited by K. Satchidanandan and Nishi Chawla, also make for relooking at the world through different lenses. Somdatta Mandal has written about Behind Latticed Marble: Inner Worlds of Women by Jyotirmoyee Devi Sen, translated by Apala G. Egan and Bhaskar Parichha has taken us on a gastronomic tour with Zac O’Yeah’s Digesting India: A Travel Writer’s Sub-Continental Adventures with the Tummy (A Memoir À La Carte).

Gastronomical adventures seem to be another concurrent theme in this edition. Rhys Hughes has written of the Indian sweets with gulab jamun as the ultimate life saver from Yetis while trekking in the Himalayas! A musing on lemon pickle by Raka Banerjee and Ravi Shankar’s quest for the ultimate dosa around the world — from India, to Malaysia, to Aruba, Nepal and more… tickle our palate and make us wonder at the role of food in our lives as does the story about biryani battles by Anagaha Narasimha.

Talk of war, perhaps, conjures up gastronomic dreams as often scarcity of food and resources, even potable water and electricity is a reality of war or conflict. Michael Burch brings to us poignant poetry about war as Ramesh Karthik Nayak has a poem on a weapon used in wars. Ryan Quinn Flanagan has brought another kind of ongoing conflict to our focus with his poetry centring on the National Day (May 5th) in Canada for Vigils for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women by hanging red clothes from trees, an issue that perhaps has echoes of Vinta Nanda’s Shout and Suzanne Kamata’s poetry for her friend who went missing decades ago as opposed to Rachel Jayen’s defiant poetry where she asserts her womanhood. Ron Pickett, George Freek and Sayantan Sur have given us introspective perspectives in verse. We have more poetry asking for a relook at societal norms with tongue-in -cheek humour by Jason Ryberg and of course, Rhys Hughes with his heartfelt poem on raiders in deserts.

The piece that really brought a smile to the lips this time was Farouk Gulsara’s ‘Humbled by a Pig’, a humorous recount of man’s struggles with nature after he has disrupted it. Keith Lyons has taken a look at the concept of bucket lists, another strange construct, in a light vein. Devraj Singh Kalsi has given a poignant and empathetic piece about trees with a self-reflective and ironic twist. We have narratives from around the world with Suzanne Kamata taking us to Osaka Comic Convention, Meredith Stephens to Sierra Nevada and Shivani Shrivastav to Ladakh. Paul Mirabile has travelled to the subterranean world with his fiction, in the footsteps perhaps of Jules Verne but not quite.

We are grateful to all our wonderful contributors some of whom have not been mentioned here but their works were selected because they truly enriched our June edition. Do visit our contents page to meet and greet all our wonderful authors. I would like to thank the team at Borderless without whose efforts and encouragement our journal would not exist and Sohana Manzoor especially for her fantastic artwork as well. Thank you all.

Wish you another lovely month of interesting reads!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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

Categories
Slices from Life

Spring Surprise in the Sierra

Narrative and photographs by Meredith Stephens

Grief was something I thought I could run away from. If I created as much physical distance as I could from my place of loss, surely I could find healing. I had just lost my beautiful sister Stephanie after more than five decades of sisterhood and hoped that I could find healing in travelling to distant climes. There couldn’t be anywhere more distant than the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. The time zone is sixteen hours behind Adelaide, and the season is contrasting. Surely by distancing myself in time and space I could recover from my grief.

My partner Alex’s chief pleasures are planting trees, sailing, and hiking. In the Sierra Nevada, he could indulge his passion for hiking. We arrived in the Sierra in early June and stayed in a cedar house surrounded by ponderosa pines, Douglas firs and junipers, yawning into the sky. Every day we planned a hike along the numerous trails winding through the mountains. Even in June, it was pleasantly cool. Alex lit a fire in the fireplace every evening, and I donned a thick jumper. On our third day, our chosen hike followed a trail alongside the northern shoreline of Shaver Lake.

“If a bear approaches, the worst thing you can do is run away. Hold your ground and shout at them. Otherwise, they will think you are prey,” warned Alex.

Till then, I had been enjoying my stroll through the mountains at an elevation of almost 1800 metres, and it never occurred to me that we could cross paths with a bear. In Australia we often crossed paths with kangaroos, who would hold our gaze for a few seconds before gracefully hopping away. I had never considered that wild animals could be predators. Then, on second thoughts, I thought it would be nice to see a bear, and with Alex alongside me, felt less vulnerable.

“You have encountered wild bears before in California, haven’t you?” I quizzed Alex.

“Oh yes, several times,” he confirmed.

“Wasn’t there one time when you were alarmed?”

“Yes. That was when I was hiking alone in Montana. They couldn’t hear me. If a bear can hear you, they are more likely to stay out of your way. Some people use whistles.”

I started scanning the hillside for signs of large moving creatures, but instead my attention was drawn to the abundant wildflowers that I had never seen in Australia. I noticed bright red flowers protruding beneath the huge pine trees, known as Snow plants.

Snow plant (Sarcodes sanguinea)

I kept longing to spot a bear, but instead continued to notice wildflowers. The most common wildflowers were sensed by smell before I sighted them, small creamy flowers with a heady fragrance of rich honey. I wished I could photograph the smell.

Buck brush (Ceanothus cuneatus)

The nearby town of Shaver Lake had been saved by the firefighters in the 2020 wildfire known as the Creek Fire, the largest fire in California’s history. You could see the line where the fire had been stopped. On one side were scarred mountains which had lost their vegetation, and on the other remained majestic pine and fir trees.

Fire Devastation

On the side that had been spared, some pink flowers, known as mountain pride, asserted themselves through a crack in a boulder.

Mountain pride (Penstemon newberry)

I had been looking for bears, but instead found myself in the midst of a North American spring. Splashes of colour of ever more exotic wildflowers emerged along the roadsides and the trails.

Path through the forest

My hope to overcome grief through travel to a distant land had been in vain. Moving from a southern hemispheric autumn to a northern spring, and moving back sixteen hours in time to yesterday, was not enough to relieve me of my mourning. I missed phone calls and text messages from my sister Stephanie, and especially the opportunity to recount the tales of my travels when I returned home. Stephanie was my most avid listener, and never expressed any envy when I regaled my travel tales. Her concentration propelled me to provide ever more details of my travels. Now, I honour her memory by continuing to pursue the kinds of activities that she took delight in and writing the kinds of stories that she enjoyed.

In Loving Memory of Stephanie, Entrusted to God’s Care

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.

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

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

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, May 2023

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Dancing in May? … Click here to read.

Translations

Aparichita by Tagore has been translated from Bengali as The Stranger by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

The Kabbadi Player, a short story by the late Nadir Ali, has been translated from Punjabi by Amna Ali. Click here to read.

Carnival Time by Masud Khan has been translated from the Bengali poem by Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Desolation, a poem by Munir Momin, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

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

Jonmodiner Gaan or Birthday Song by Tagore has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Conversations

A conversation with Mitra Phukan about her latest novel, What Will People Say? A Novel along with a brief introduction to the book. Click here to read.

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri converses with Prerna Gill on her poetry and her new book of poetry, Meanwhile. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Lakshmi Kannan, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Shahriyer Hossain Shetu, Peter Cashorali, K.V. Raghupathi, Wilda Morris, Ashok Suri, William Miller, Khayma Balakrishnan, Md Mujib Ullah, Urmi Chakravorty, Sreekanth Kopuri, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In What I Thought I Knew About India When I was Young, Rhys Hughes travels back to his childhood with a soupçon of humour. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

A Towering Inferno, A Girl-next-door & the Big City

Ratnottama Sengupta writes of actress Jaya Bachchan recounting her first day on the sets of Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar. Click here to read.

Kissed on Kangaroo Island

Meredith Stephens travels with her camera and her narrative to capture the flora and fauna of the island. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In The Reader, Devraj Singh Kalsi revisits his experiences at school. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Making Chop Suey in South Carolina, Suzanne Kamata recaptures a flavour from her past. Click here to read.

Essays

Rabindranath’s Monsoonal Music

Professor Fakrul Alam brings to us Tagore songs in translation and in discussion on the season that follows the scorching heat of summer months. Click here to read.

A Night Hike in Nepal

Ravi Shankar hikes uphill in Nepal on a wet and rainy night along with leeches and water buffaloes. Click here to read.

Moving Images of Tagore

Ratnottama Sengupta talks of Tagore and cinema. Click here to read.

Stories

Threads

Julian Gallo explores addiction. Click here to read.

The Whirlpool

Abdullah Rayhan takes us back to a village in Bangladesh to give a poignant story about a young boy who dreamt of hunting. Click here to read.

Look but with Love

Sreelekha Chatterjee writes a story set in the world of media. Click here to read.

The Mysterious Murder of Adamov Plut

A globe-trotting murder mystery by Paul Mirabile, a sequel to his last month’s story, ‘The Book Hunter’. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Aruna Chakravarti’s Daughter’s of Jorasanko describing the last birthday celebration of Tagore. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Bhubaneswar@75 – Perspectives, edited by Bhaskar Parichha/ Charudutta Panigrahi. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Meenakshi Malhotra revisits Tagore’s Farewell Song, translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Somdatta Mandal reviews KR Meera’s Jezebel translated from Malayalam by Abhirami Girija Sriram and K. S. Bijukumar. Click here to read.

Lakshmi Kannan has reviewed Jaydeep Sarangi’s collection of poems, letters in lower case. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada by Ujjal Dosanjh. Click here to read.

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

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

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

Categories
Editorial

Dancing in May?

Courtesy: Creative Commons
“May is pretty, May is mild,
Dances like a happy child…”

Annette Wynne (Early twentieth century)

Each month is expressed in a different form by nature in various parts of the world. In the tropics, May is sweltering and hot — peak summer. In the Southern hemisphere, it is cold. However, with climate change setting in, the patterns are changing, and the temperatures are swinging to extremes. Sometimes, one wonders if this is a reflection of human minds, which seem to swing like pendulums to create dissensions and conflicts in the current world. Nothing seems constant and the winds of change have taken on a menacing appearance. If we go by Nazrul’s outlook, destruction is a part of creating a new way of life as he contends in his poem, ‘Ring Bells of Victory’ — “Why fear destruction? It’s the gateway to creation!” Is this how we will move towards ‘dancing like a happy child’?

Mitra Phukan addresses this need for change in her novel, What Will People Say — not with intensity of Nazrul nor in poetry but with a light feathery wand, more in the tradition of Jane Austen. Her narrative reflects on change at various levels to explore the destruction of old customs giving way to new that are more accepting and kinder to inclusivity, addressing issues like widow remarriage in conservative Hindu frameworks, female fellowship and ageing as Phukan tells us in her interview. Upcoming voice, Prerna Gill, lauded by names like Arundhathi Subramaniam and Chitra Divakaruni, has also been in conversation with Shantanu Ray Choudhuri on her book of verses, Meanwhile. She has refreshing perspectives on life and literature.

Poetry in Borderless means variety and diaspora. Peter Cashorali’s poem addresses changes that quite literally upend the sky and the Earth! Michael Burch reflects on a change that continues to evolve – climate change. Ryan Quinn Flanagan explores societal irritants with irony. Seasons are explored by KV Raghupathi and Ashok Suri. Wilda Morris brings in humour with universal truths. William Miller explores crime and punishment. Lakshmi Kannan and Shahriyer Hossain Shetu weave words around mythical lore. We have passionate poetry from Md Mujib Ullah and Urmi Chakravorty. It is difficult to go into each poem with their diverse colours but Rhys Hughes has brought in wry humour with his long poem on eighteen goblins… or is the count nineteen? In his column, Hughes has dwelt on tall tales he heard about India during his childhood in a light tone, stories that sound truly fantastic…

Devraj Singh Kalsi has written a nostalgic piece that hovers between irony and perhaps, a reformatory urge… I am not quite sure, but it is as enjoyable and compelling as Meredith Stephen’s narrative on her conservation efforts in Kangaroo Island in the Southern hemisphere and fantastic animals she meets, livened further by her photography. Ravi Shankar talks of his night hikes in the Northern hemisphere, more accurately, in the Himalayas. While trekking at night seems a risky task, trying to recreate dishes from the past is no less daunting, as Suzanne Kamata tells us in her Notes from Japan.

May hosts the birthday of a number of greats, including Tagore and Satyajit Ray. Ratnottama Sengupta’s piece on Ray’s birth anniversary celebrations with actress Jaya Bachchan recounting her experience while working for Ray in Mahanagar (Big City), a film that has been restored and was part of celebrations for the filmmaker’s 102nd Birth anniversary captures the nostalgia of a famous actress on the greatest filmmakers of our times. She has also given us an essay on Tagore and cinema in memory of the great soul, who was just sixty years older to Ray and impacted the filmmaker too. Ray had a year-long sojourn in Santiniketan during his youth.

Eulogising Rabindrasangeet and its lyrics is an essay by Professor Fakrul Alam on Tagore. Professor Alam has translated number of his songs for the essay as he has, a powerful poem from Bengali by Masud Khan. A transcreation of Tagore’s first birthday poem , a wonderful translation of Balochi poetry by Fazal Baloch of Munir Momin’s verses, another one from Korean by Ihlwha Choi rounds up the translated poetry in this edition. Stories that reach out with their poignant telling include Nadir Ali’s narrative, translated from Punjabi by his daughter, Amna Ali, and Aruna Chakravarti’s translation of a short story by Tagore. We have more stories from around the world with Julian Gallo exploring addiction, Abdullah Rayhan with a poignant narrative from Bangladesh, Sreelekha Chatterjee with a short funny tale and Paul Mirabile exploring the supernatural and horror, a sequel to ‘The Book Hunter‘, published in the April issue.

All the genres we host seem to be topped with a sprinkling of pieces on Tagore as this is his birth month. A book excerpt from Chakravarti’s Daughters of Jorasanko narrates her well-researched version of Tagore’s last birthday celebration and carries her translation of the last birthday song by the giant of Bengali literature. The other book excerpt is from Bhubaneswar@75 – Perspectives, edited by Bhaskar Parichha/ Charudutta Panigrahi. Parichha has also reviewed Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada by Ujjal Dosanjh, a book that starts in pre-independent India and travels with the writer to Canada via UK. Again to commemorate the maestro’s birth anniversary, Meenakshi Malhotra has revisited Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Tagore’s Farewell Song. Somdatta Mandal has critiqued KR Meera’s Jezebel, translated from Malayalam by Abhirami Girija Sriram and K. S. Bijukuma. Lakshmi Kannan has introduced to us Jaydeep Sarangi’s collection of poems, letters in lower case.

There are pieces that still reach out to be mentioned. Do visit our content page for May. I would like to thank Sohana Manzoor for her fantastic artwork and continued editorial support for the Tagore translations and the whole team for helping me put together this issue. Thank you. A huge thanks to our loyal readers and contributors who continue to bring in vibrant content, photography and artwork. Without you all, we would not be where we are today.

Wish you a lovely month.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Categories
Slices from Life

Kissed on Kangaroo Island

Narrative and photographs by Meredith Stephens

We are regular visitors to Kangaroo Island, a nature-lovers’ delight that lies 14 kilometres off the South Australian coast. Much of our time there is spent trying to atone for the environmental damage caused by our European forebears. Swathes of the vegetation have been cleared due to almost two centuries of European farming. Thousands of sheep have grazed on this cleared land for much of that time, and European crops have replaced much of the original flora. The crops have been fertilized for years, and now that we allow the land to remain fallow, noxious weeds take over, fueled by the remnant fertilizer in the soil. Our mission is revegetation, trying to reverse some of the damage from farming.

On our most recent visit, one of my jobs was to uproot the weeds. The task was impossible given that they sprawled across the land as far as the horizon, so we focused on a small fenced-off area. We dared not poison the weeds because they could be consumed by endangered bird species, such as the white-bellied sea eagles that nest nearby. For the same reason we never use rodent poison, but instead trap mice in buckets of water.

White-bellied sea eagle soaring above us

I donned my gardening gloves and grabbed the weeds by their roots, pitted my body weight against the plants, and uprooted them and before discarding them onto the weed pile.

Meanwhile my partner Alex was busying himself planting yet more trees. He was somewhat disgruntled because his boat was being repaired in Yaringa, near Melbourne, after being dismasted in Bass Strait. He gazed longingly out to sea, but seemed to regain a sense of contentment when he was planting trees. For him, planting trees was not a chore, but rather a consuming passion. He made deep holes in the rocky ground with his fencing crowbar, delicately coaxed the seedlings out of their containers, pushed the roots into the hole, pressed the soil back around the seedling, and made a berm around each plant to trap water. Then he drove stakes into the ground around each plant, and encircled them with either a corflute tree guard, or a wire cage, or both. These measures were necessary to protect them from marauding possums and kangaroos, which would otherwise devour the plants overnight.

The fenced-off orchard where we weeded, flanked by Investigator Strait.

There is only so much revegetation you can do without hankering for some relief. Alex was content to plant trees from dawn to dusk but I pressed him to take me on a day excursion. Besides, coming to Kangaroo Island was not just about our earnest efforts at revegetation; it was also meant to be a romantic getaway. Our first outing was to Seal Bay, where the attraction was not in fact seals but rather Australian sea lions. We drove there, now an official tourist destination, and entered through the park office. We walked along the boardwalk with the other tourists, many being international visitors, and gazed down at the sea lions enjoying lying in the sand in the sunshine.

Sea lions under the boardwalk at Seal Bay, Kangaroo Island

Back at the revegetation site, we resumed our routine of weed-whacking and planting for the next few days, by which time we felt we deserved another outing. This time we chose to visit American River (named after visiting American sealers in 1803) known for its picturesque harbour and fresh seafood. But for me, American River was less about the view and the seafood than spotting sea lions. I had spied one on a previous visit and was hoping to see some again. I walked onto the boat ramp near the shed where the reconstruction of the Independence schooner was taking place. (The Independence was the first ship constructed in South Australia, in 1803, commissioned by a visiting American shipmaster and sealer, Isaac Pendleton.) I walked past the door to the boat shed, because as much as I would like to claim interest in the history of local shipbuilding, my real interest was in finding a sea lion.

I was not disappointed. Behind a ‘Resting Seal’ sign explaining that you were required to keep a thirty metre distance from the sea lion, we found what we were looking for.

Sea lion in American River, Kangaroo Island

I glanced into the lagoon, and spied the sea lion’s mate, proudly flipping his body around in the water, before he scrambled onto the shore to demonstrate his supremacy in this territory.

An American tourist next to us asked Alex, “How far is thirty meters?”

He replied, “About one hundred feet, which is twice the distance we are now!”

We all walked backwards trying to preserve the thirty-metre distance between the sea lion and ourselves.

It was mid-afternoon and there were still hours of daylight left, so we decided to visit the nearby eucalyptus distillery. Before entering the building our attention was arrested by young kangaroos, known as joeys, hopping freely around the outside of the building. We entered the premises and purchased some eucalyptus products, and as we left, approached one of the joeys.

Kangaroo Island, like many parts of Australia, has dead wallabies and kangaroos alongside its roads, victims of road-kill. Because kangaroos are marsupials, some of their young may be found alive inside their pouch, even after the mother has been killed. Those finding the road-kill may drag it safely away from the road, after ensuring that no approaching cars are in sight, and then remove the joey from its mother’s pouch. The joeys we came across had been rescued in this way, and hand reared. Unlike most kangaroos, they had no fear of humans. I knelt to pat one of the joeys, and then he gently raised his pointy face to my ear and whispered in it. Then he raised his lips to mine and brushed them against me.

“Don’t let him!” urged Alex. “You’ll get germs from a wild animal.”

I let the joey tickle my lips for a few more seconds, before heeding his urgings. I had been kissed by a kangaroo!

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.

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

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

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

Categories
Earth Day

Celebrating Our Planet

To care,
Nurture and
Cherish till
Death do us part —

A day to celebrate the
Fecundity
Fertility and the
Rites of the passage of
Time.

-- Earth Day, Countercurrents,org

Earth Day is a celebration of our planet that has been our cradle and our home for the last 200,000 years, though the Earth itself is much, much older. It is more 4.5 billion years in age…Perhaps a number unimaginable in the small speck of our existence…

Our oeuvre for this occasion starts with non-fiction that celebrates the beauty, the fecundity of the planet along with its colours — travel stories from Himalayas to Antarctica. We meet whales and sail or climb mountains to see what we have done to Earth and its other residents. Through poetry and fiction, including translations of greats like Tagore, Jibanananda Das and Nazrul, we quest to understand the needs of our planet better… Do join us in celebrating our home — yours and mine…

Non-Fiction

In A view of Mt Everest, Ravi Shankar travels in the freezing cold of Himalayan splendour and shares magnificent photographs of Mt Everest. Click here to read.

In Four Seasons and an Indian Summer, Keith Lyons travels to Antarctica and shares magnificent photographs. Click here to read.

In Sails, Whales, and Whimsical Winds, Meredith Stephens writes of her sailing adventures in New South Wales and spots some sporting whales. Click here to read. 

In Climbing Sri Pada, Rhys Hughes takes us on a trek to the hilltop with unusual perceptive remarks which could evoke laughter. Click here to read.

Poetry

Rows of Betel Vines by My Window by Nazrul has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Jibananda Das’s Where have all these Birds Gone & On the Pathways for Long… has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Fiction

The Parrot’s Tale by Rabindranath Tagore has been translated by Radha Chakravarty Click here to read

A Curse by San Lin Tun is set in the woods of Myanmar. Click here to read.

Navigational Error by Luke P.G. Draper explores the impact of pollution with a short compelling narrative. Click here to read.