Tag: Meredith Stephens

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Slices from Life

Black Pines and Red Trucks

A narrative set against the 2020 impact of Californian forest fires, a community bent on healing the Earth and a travelogue with photographs by Meredith Stephens

The drive up the mountains to the town of Shaver Lake, California, continues to shock me, even though it has been three years since the 2020 fires. Where there formerly stood proud ponderosa pines extending into the sky, there are now barren mountains exposing charred tree trunks and the view beyond of granite boulders previously hidden. The bottom half of the mountain is scarred on both sides of the road, but the upper half is charred and desolate on one side and partially untouched on the other. As you ascend the mountain you notice gates announcing the entrance to where ranches once stood. Some have positioned a caravan or two on the site where their house was. Once you have passed through the town, at an elevation of almost six thousand feet, you notice a line of ponderosa pines adjoining a barren landscape indicating the point where fire-fighters saved the community.

As the Assistant Chief of the Shaver Lake Volunteer Fire Department, James and his team were saving Shaver Lake, while his own property further down the mountain was under threat. His wife Janet, also a fire-fighter, received a mandate to evacuate. Janet was reluctant to leave her home, but obeyed the order, and left with her two dogs. This was just as well, because their house and property were ravaged by the wildfire and she and her dogs would not have survived had they remained at home.

My partner, Alex, had been put into contact with James and Janet when the fires had begun ravaging the mountain in 2020. A mutual acquaintance sent an email to Alex at his home in Adelaide, Australia, asking whether he could offer his holiday house in Shaver Lake to James and Janet. Alex had been focussed on watching the nightly news of the fires back in Adelaide, and scrutinised the maps of the fires every evening to see whether they would engulf his holiday house. It was spared, so he was able to offer it to James and Janet. Alex was unable to visit California himself because of international travel restrictions during the pandemic.

Cluster of Baby Ponderosas

In 2023, Alex and I made the eight-thousand-mile trip from Adelaide to Shaver Lake. Once we arrived, we indulged in morning and evening walks on an undulating path through the ponderosa pines, Douglas firs, and cedars. The path was soft beneath our feet in the aftermath of rain the day before. There was a scent of pine which was immediately calming. In places it is fashionable to pursue ‘forest-bathing’, but here you can simply walk out of your back door and experience biophilia without having to consciously seek it out. 

Lupins alongside the Forest Path

Whenever I heard a rustle I half-expected to see a kangaroo, as I would have in Australia, but instead spotted squirrels hiding behind tree trunks, or a pair of deer cantering away from us as they heard our voices. The path was adjacent to a national park where hunters could hunt deer with a permit in the hunting season.

“When is the deer hunting season?” I asked Alex.

“Not until autumn.”

Phew! It was still late summer, so I needn’t have worried.

“Best wear a fluorescent top in the hunting season,” he advised.

Can you spot the deer?

When I chatted to residents further down the mountain, some said that they could not bear to rebuild their lives on their beloved mountain, such was the shock and devastation of their loss. They had left the site of their former home and relocated to the city of Fresno at the base of the mountain. Others, like James and Janet, have bravely rebuilt their house and are busily engaged in revegetation.

In August, 2023, James and Janet invited us to a fire-truck “push-in ceremony” at Shaver Lake, to celebrate the arrival of a new firetruck. We drove to the township the next day at three pm. The road was blocked by the flashing lights of the sheriff’s patrol cars. We turned back and parked the car, and then entered the township on foot. A crowd of well-wishers was cheering the volunteer fire-fighters, who were pushing the shiny new firetruck into its new home. They strained as they pushed it into the narrow confines where it will be housed. Once it was pushed in, the crowd cheered, and everyone was offered a free ice-cream.

James, Janet, and Cyclone.

I hope the firetruck remains shiny and new, and never has to confront smoke and flames, so that the people of Shaver Lake, the deer, the squirrels, and the ponderosa pines, can live in peace.

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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

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Contents

Borderless August 2023

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Other Echoes in the Garden… Click here to read.

Interviews

Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister from Canada and former Premier of British Columbia, discusses his autobiography, Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada, and the need for a world with less borders. Click here to read.

Professor Fakrul Alam discusses his new book of Tagore translations, Gitabitan: Selected Song-Lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore. Click here to read.

Translations

Tagore’s Musalmanir Galpa (A Muslim Woman’s Story) has been translated from Bengali by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

Masud Khan’s poem, In Another Galaxy, has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Wakeful Stays the Door, a poem by Munir Momin, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Dangerous Coexistence, written in Korean and translated by Ilhwah Choi. Click here to read.

Proshno or Questions by Tagore has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Pandies Corner

Songs of Freedom: An Ordinary Tale is a narrative by Nandani based on her own experiences, translated from Hindustani by Janees. These narrations highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms, with the support from organisations like Shaktishalini and Pandies. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Jared Carter, Rhys Hughes, Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Saranyan BV, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, A Jessie Michael, Jahnavi Gogoi, George Freek, Koushiki Dasgupta Chaudhuri, David Francis, Akil Contractor, Michael Burch

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In An Experiment with Automatic Poetic Translation, Rhys Hughes auto translates an English poem sequentially through 28 languages and then back to English with hilarious results. Click here to read.

Musings/ Slices from Life

Mister, They’re Coming Anyway

Timothy Jay Smith writes on the refugee crisis in Lesbos Island, Greece with photographs by Michael Honegger. Click here to read.

Migrating to Myself from Kolkata to Singapore

Asad Latif explores selfhood in context of diverse geographies. Click here to read.

Islands that Belong to the Seas

Paul Mirabile muses on how humans are like migrants on islands borrowed from the seas. Click here to read.

Of Dreams, Eagles and Lost Children

Aysha Baqir muses on the narrow, closed borders that condemn children. Click here to read.

Mushroom Clouds and Movies: Response from a Hibakusha’s Daughter

Kathleen Burkinshaw discusses Oppenhiemer the movie. Click here to read.

Sleepless in the High Desert, Slumber in the Sierra

Meredith Stephens covers Nevada to Columbia in a car with her camera. Click here to read.

My Hostel Days

Ravi Shankar reminisces on bygone days. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In The Amateur Professional, Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of a amateur who thought of himself as a professional. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In How I Wound Up in Japan, Suzanne gives her story as an immigrant. Click here to read.

Essays

A Different Persuasion: On Jane Austen’s Novels & their Adaptations

Deepa Onkar delves into the world of Jane Austen books and films. Click here to read.

A Foray into Andamans

Mohul Bhowmik explores Andaman with a camera and narrative. Click here to read.

Bhaskar’s Corner

In Chittaranjan Das: A Centenary Tribute, Bhaskar Parichha discusses the life of one of the most legendary Odia writers. Click here to read.

Stories

Belacan

Farouk Gulsara shares a story based on the life of a migrant in 1950s. Click here to read.

The Japanese Maple

Shivani Shrivastav weaves a story of friendship and loneliness among migrants. Click here to read.

The Coin

Khayma Balakrishnan explores human and supernatural interactions in a school setting in Malaysia. Click here to read.

The Vagrant

Reeti Jamil narrates a strange tale set in a village and told by a farmer. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Ujjal Dosanjh’s Journey After Midnight: A Punjabi Life from Canada to India. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Roses in the Fire of Spring: Better Roses for a Warming World and Other Garden Adventures, by M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Amitav Ghosh’s Smoke and Ashes: A Writer’s Journey Through Opium’s Hidden Histories. Click here to read.

Basudhara Roy reviews Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry, edited by K. Satchidanandan & Nishi Chawla. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Arunava Sinha’s The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told: Fifty Masterpieces from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. Click here to read.

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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

Other Echoes in the Garden…

“Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them…”

— TS Eliot, ‘Four Quartets: Burnt Norton’(1936)

Humans have always been dreamers, ideators and adventurers.

Otherwise, could we have come this far? From trees to caves to complex countries and now perhaps, an attempt to reach out towards outer space for an alternative biome as exploring water, in light of the recent disaster of the Titan, is likely to be tougher than we imagined. In our attempt to survive, to live well by creating imagined constructs, some fabrications backfired. Possibly because, as George Orwell observed with such precision in Animal Farm, some perceived themselves as “more equal”. Of course, his was an animal allegory and we are humans. How different are we from our brethren species on this beautiful planet, which can survive even without us? But can humanity survive without Earth? In science fiction, we have even explored that possibility and found home among stars with the Earth becoming uninhabitable for man. However, humanity as it stands of now, continues to need Earth. To live amicably on the planet in harmony with nature and all the species, including our own, we need to reimagine certain constructs which worked for us in the past but seem to have become divisive and destructive at this point.

Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister in the Canadian cabinet and former Premier of British Columbia, in his autobiography, Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada, talks of regionalism as an alternative to narrow divisive constructs that terrorise and hurt others. He writes in his book: “If humanity isn’t going to drown in the chaos of its own creation, the leading nations of the world will have to create a new world order, which may involve fewer international boundaries.” We have a candid conversation with him about his beliefs and also a powerful excerpt from his autobiography.

An interview with Professor Fakrul Alam takes us into Tagore’s imagined world. He discussed his new book of Tagore translations, Gitabitan: Selected Song-Lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore. He has brought out a collection of 300 songs translated to English. In a bid to emphasise an inclusive world, we also have a translation of Tagore’s ‘Musalmanir Galpa’ (A Muslim Woman’s Story) by Aruna Chakravarti. A transcreation of his poem, called ‘Proshno or Questions’ poses difficult challenges for humanity to move towards a more inclusive world. Our translation by Ihlwha Choi of his own Korean poem to English also touches on his visit to the polymath’s construct in the real world, Santiniketan. All of these centring around Tagore go to commemorate the month in which he breathed his last, August. Professor Alam has also translated a poem from Bengali by Masud Khan that has futuristic overtones and builds on our imagined constructs. From Fazal Baloch we have a Balochi translation of a beautiful, almost a surrealistic poem by Munir Momin.

The poetry selections start with a poem on ‘Wyvern’, an imagined dragon, by Jared Carter. And moves on to the plight of refugees by Michael Burch, A Jessie Michael, and on migrants by Malachi Edwin Vethamani. Ryan Quinn Flanagan has poetry that suggests the plight of refugees at a metaphorical level. Vibrant sprays of colours are brought into this section by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Saranyan BV, Jahnavi Gogoi, George Freek and many more. Rhys Hughes brings in a spot of humour with his mountainous poetry (literally) and a lot of laughter with his or rather Google’s attempt at automatic translation of a poem. Devraj Singh Kalsi has shared a tongue in cheek story about an ‘amateur professional’ — rather a dichotomy.

We travel to Andaman with Mohul Bhowmick and further into Sierra with Meredith Stephens. Ravi Shankar travels back in nostalgia to his hostel and Kathleen Burkinshaw dives into the past — discussing and responding to the media presentation of an event that left her family scarred for life, the atomic holocaust of 1945 in Japan. This was a global event more than seven decades ago that created refugees among the survivors whose homes had been permanently destroyed. Perhaps, their stories are horrific, and heart wrenching like the ones told by those who suffered from the Partition of India and Pakistan, a divide that is celebrated by Independence Days for the two nations based on a legacy of rifts created by the colonials and perpetrated to this day by powerbrokers. Aysha Baqir has written of the wounds suffered by the people with the governance gone awry. Some of the people she writes of would have been refugees and migrants too.

A poignant narrative about refugees who flock to the Greek island of Lesbos by Timothy Jay Smith with photographs by Michael Honegger, both of whom served at the shelters homing the displaced persons, cries out to halt wars and conflicts that displace them. We have multiple narratives of migrants in this issue, with powerful autobiographical stories told by Asad Latif and Suzanne Kamata. Paul Mirabile touches on how humans have adopted islands by borrowing them from seas… rather an unusual approach to migrations. We have an essay on Jane Austen by Deepa Onkar and a centenary tribute to Chittaranjan Das by Bhaskar Parichha.

The theme of migrants is echoed in stories by Farouk Gulsara and Shivani Shrivastav. Young Nandani has given an autobiographical story, translated from Hindustani to English by Janees, in which a migration out of various homes has shredded her family to bits — a narrative tucked in Pandies Corner.  Strange twists of the supernatural are woven into fiction by Khayma Balakrishnan and Reeti Jamil.

In reviews, Parichha has explored Arunava Sinha’s The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told: Fifty Masterpieces from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. Somdatta Mandal’s review of Amitav Ghosh’s Smoke and Ashes: A Writer’s Journey Through Opium’s Hidden Histories seems to be an expose on how historical facts can be rewritten to suit different perceptions and Basudhara Roy has discussed the Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry, edited by K. Satchidanandan and Nishi Chawla.

There is more wonderful content. Pop by our August’s bumper edition to take a look.

I would like to give my grateful thanks to our wonderful team at Borderless, especially to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to all our gifted contributors and our loyal readers. Borderless exists today because of all of you are making an attempt to bringing narratives that build bridges, bringing to mind Lennon’s visionary lyrics:

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Thank you for joining us at Borderless Journal.

Have a wonderful month!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Visit the August 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

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

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Categories
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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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