In conversation with Teresa Rehmanwith focus on her non-fiction, Bulletproof: A Journalist’s Notebook on Reporting Conflict and a brief introduction to her book. Click here to read.
Translations
Robihara(Sunless)by Kazi Nazrul Islam has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam from Bengali. Clickhere to read.
Four of his ownMalay poems have been translated by Isa Kamari. Click here to read.
In a world torn by conflict, why would one mention hope or compassion? In an age of dystopian scenarios, why would we dream of utopias?
Perhaps it’s wishful musings, but at some level what people need to survive is probably something to look forward to — a speck of light — a wishful idea called hope. Hope builds resilience. Utopias are built on hope, on love and compassion. Dystopias are built on desperation and despair. They take fear or horror to the extreme and play on people’s vulnerabilities. They might induce a cathartic effect and one might say— we are better off as we are in the present or we must act so that this never happens. Is that something we can really say in a world where wars are disrupting peace and lives of all humanity, where violence against civilians is becoming an accepted norm, where shortages could also be a reality for most of us? Utopias, on the other hand, build on the element of an ideal, a dream towards which we can move on the bleakest day of our existence. They could be used to stir hope and envision a reality devoid of violence. And perhaps, some of it would congeal into a real-world scenario with smaller doses of the bad and ugly. In a conflict-ridden world, which almost feels like a reenactment of George Orwell’s 1984 (only about four and a half decades after his predicted date) what would touch your heart, give you a sense of relief— hope for a better future or dwelling on doomsday predictions? What would you want for your progeny?
Just before the pandemic changed our lives, a book was published where while questing for their own utopia, a group of young people became part of a dystopian reality. They were known as the ULFA rebels[1] and their story was told in Bulletproof:A Journalist’s Notebook on Reporting Conflict by Teresa Rehman. The current relevance of this book cannot be undermined because not only does it humanise the insurgents perspective, but it also shows how a centrist set up can neglect the needs of particular fringe communities. In addition, Rehman’s heartrending stories of poachers and people who live unaccepted in the margins only strengthen the need for an unboxed world where tolerance and compassion would transcend these artificially created fences that divide and lead to violence. This issue features Rehman’s book and an online discussion with her which stretches beyond the confines of pages.
We have more poetry in our translations, some sombre and some funny. A Bengali poem written as a tribute by Nazrul on the death of his older friend, Rabindranath Tagore, has been rendered into English by Professor Fakrul Alam. To add a lighter touch, we have translated a fun-filled poem by Tagore. Isa Kamari continues to translate his own Malay poems to bring in flavours of the culture. This time his poems seem to urge a need to transcend age-old stratifications. We also have a Balochi human-interest story by Younus Hussain brought to us in English by Fazal Baloch.
Hughes’ column too has fiction. His humorous and absurdist fables continue to urge re-evaluation of the world as well as genres. We also have a poignant narrative built around a Vietnamese migrant family by Mario Fenech. Sayan Sarkar shares a tale upending norms set in Kolkata while Naramsetti Umamaheswararao narrates a story about a young boy overcoming his fears. Abhik Ganguly gives us a strange fiction set in the future in a different galaxy, where Earth is seen as the original planet of human evolution.
C Christine Fair, who is an established translator, has surprised us — like Lyons — this time with a personal memoir which dwells on the deeply annihilating impact of norms that define gender roles. Upending the idea of an immutable ruler who can overpower us, is an essay by Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan with its roots in the ruins Rameses II — known as Ozymandias too — and Shelley’s poem of the same name.
We have had an overflow of writing about the unusual and redefining norms in our non-fiction section. Odbayar Dorj weaves an unusual narrative and shares photographs from a village of scarecrows in Japan that has a population of 27 humans and 370 scarecrows. She tells us: “In a place where people and scarecrows live side by side, I began to understand something simple but profound: sometimes, when human presence fades, we find our own ways to fill the silence with memories, imagination, and love.” Humanity never ceases to hope. Filling in silences are narratives by Arathi Devandran and Mubida Rohman on how they deal with the quietness left by departed loved ones.
We have more from Meredith Stephens with photographs by Alan Noble on their trip to Vietnam — as they travel to places that are less touristy while Gower Bhat explores the Sunday Book Bazaar at Old Delhi. Farouk Gulsara travels back to Penang where he spent his childhood and reflects on changes. Are they always for the best?
Suzanne Kamata takes up changes with a soupçon of humour as she writes of how the AI finally conceded to her husband, “Your wife is not wrong…” while Jun A. Alindogan writes of how social media can create mayhem if misused to spread fake news. Devraj Singh Kalsi resorts to sardonic humour of a darker hue as he explores ways to make a living.
Gulsara has also explored Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asiawhich starts with the extent of the British Empire with its western-most point at Aden and stretching in the east to Burma. There was a period from 1839 to 1867, when it stretched from Aden to Singapore[2], which was a part of Malaya, leaving out Siam or Thailand which never succumbed to colonial rule. The book starts at a later date — 1928 — and talks of the piecing of the British Empire, with questionable stances taken by historically heroic figures, thus urging a critical relook at our own past — just over the last hundred years.
Our reviews include Rakhi Dalal’s take on Maithreyi Karnoor’s rather unusual stories fromGooday Nagar.Bhaskar Parichhahas wandered back to non-fiction with the late Kaukub Talat Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza’s Wajid Ali Shah: A Cultural and Literary Legacy, translated from Urdu by Talat Fatima, a history that makes us reassess views on the last of the Awadhi nawabs. Somdatta Mandal has also shares a discussion on Sushila Takbhaure’s My Shackled Life, translated from Hindi by Deeba Zafir and Preeti Dewan, a narrative that showcases the resilience of the author.
This issue could not have been put together without all our wonderful contributors. Heartfelt thanks for sharing your gems with us. Huge thanks to the Borderless team too who continue to support bringing in variety, colour and reinforcing our values. Much thanks to Sohana Manzoor for the fabulous cover art and to all those who share vibrant visuals with their writing. Many thanks to our readers too who make our efforts worthwhile. Do write in with your comments.
Look forward to greeting you all again next month!
Weeks have passed since you left us, and today I write to you with the quiet certainty that love does not vanish when a life ends. Somewhere beyond time and space, words spoken with affection still find their way.
I do not know how such messages travel. Through memory, perhaps. Through silence. Through the small things you left behind, which now seem to carry more meaning than they once did.
Still, I write, trusting that words offered with love are never truly lost.
I had known of you long before I truly knew you.
We had spoken briefly on the phone before my wedding, while planning it and in the days just after. If one were to count the actual days we spent in each other’s presence, they would seem very few. Yet what remains in my heart is not the brevity of those days, but the curious feeling that I had known you for much longer than time would allow.
The heart, perhaps, keeps a different calendar.
Growing up, we are taught to fear our sasurbari (in-laws’ house). And not without reason. Women grow up hearing stories, witnessing them, and carrying the inherited caution of those who came before us — our grandmothers, our mothers, our sisters, and the countless unnamed women whose griefs have travelled silently through generations.
Apprehension becomes a companion. It settles somewhere inside the body, as though the bones themselves remember old warnings.
Be careful. Do not trust too soon. Do not expect too much.
And so when I crossed the threshold of your home in Guwahati, I carried that same silent apprehension with me.
When my family left me there, my uncle said softly,
“Amar suwali apunalukok gotalu.” (We entrust our daughter to your family.)
And you replied, with a certainty that asked for no ceremony,
“Sinta nokoribo, taai etiya amar suwali.” (Do not worry, she is our daughter now.)
At that moment I did not yet know how deeply you meant those words, or how faithfully you would live by them.
The days after the wedding passed quickly. Guests filled the house and laughter moved from room to room. Conversations, rituals, food, and movement seemed to blur together until everything felt as though it was happening at once.
In the middle of it all, you would appear from time to time. Sometimes to offer a witty remark. Sometimes simply to observe the proceedings with soft amusement. Sometimes to express mild annoyance that I had not yet eaten dinner at the proper hour.
You had apparently told Amma[2] that I must be given dinner before seven in the evening, because that was the time I had always eaten. I had never told you this myself. Zubair had mentioned it in passing. Yet you had taken note of it and remembered it with that careful tenderness that says more than elaborate affection ever can.
Two days after the wedding we sat together on the verandah, soaking in the winter sun before another day of guests began.
I remember saying casually that someday, during long holidays, I would like to return and sit there with you and Amma and listen to all your stories.
You smiled and said,“Aitu tu birat bhal kotha.” (That is a very wonderful idea.)
Something about that moment stayed with me.
Zubair and I then came back to my mother’s place for our reception. We sent you updates on WhatsApp, and you replied promptly. Your replies were never long or dramatic, but they carried a steady warmth. You were always thinking of us and making sure everything was going well.
After the reception, Zubair had to leave. Duty called, as it always does. I stayed back with my mother for a few more days, planning to return soon to my sasurbari and spend some time with you and Amma.
Somewhere in my heart, the urgency to rush back to Germany had softened. Something within me felt that I needed more time there, on that verandah with you, beneath the shade of the pink and white bougainvillea, where light fell in warm golden strips through the leaves and unruly branches. The bottle gourd creeper climbed along with a strong resolve. A few stubborn tendrils seemed determined to encroach our sitting space.
And then there was your small but ingenious arrangement: a bowl tied to a string, which you would lower and pull back up to send money to the beggars who passed by so often. Climbing the stairs had become difficult, but kindness, as always, found its way.
Then came 27 January 2026, the day I landed at Guwahati airport. You insisted on coming to receive me despite your poor health and ailing heart.
The WhatsApp messages we exchanged that day, and the voice note you sent on your way to pick me up, have now become precious fragments of memory.
I listen to that voice note almost every day.
When I was young, I envied children whose fathers arrived on scooters or motorbikes, got down, looked at themselves in the rear-view mirror, combed their hair, and then walked in to attend the parent-teacher meeting. Even when I grew older, and though my mother and uncles often came to receive me at airports and stations with warmth and smiles, my eyes would often drift toward girls who ran to their fathers, shouting Papa or Baba.
There was always some unfulfilled corner in me that looked toward that scene, for I was far too young when my father left us for his heavenly abode.
That day you messaged,“We will reach in 15 minutes, Inshallah. I will ring you when to come out.”
Just as I picked up my luggage and stepped outside, you called.
And there you were, waiting with your walking stick in hand, your clothes neatly ironed, wearing that warm smile on your face. You laughed and said what a lucky coincidence it was that you had arrived at the airport just as I stepped out, so neither of us had to wait long. Perhaps, you added with a smile, we might even escape the parking fee.
That image of you standing there, smiling, will remain in my heart forever.
Without even knowing it, you fulfilled one of the deepest wishes I had carried since childhood.
On the drive home, we talked without a pause. We talked about Satyajit Ray’s work, the Assamese literature you said I must read someday, and about Zubair’s childhood in that affectionate way only a father can.
The days that followed passed quietly.
Every morning after tea we sat together on the verandah. You recited the Quran and then turned to the newspapers. I sat beside you, struggling to pronounce the long words in the Assamese paper, until you gently took it from my hands and passed me The Hindu instead.
We peeled oranges and pomegranates together. We ate your favourite jujubes while butterflies drifted slowly through the winter air.
Those days felt brief while they were happening. Now they feel immeasurably large.
You shared stories of exam anxieties and enduring friendships, of staying out past midnight to shop for a friend’s son’s wedding, and of the night you ran for your life, and of the family during an attack in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid riots.
I learned about the difficulties of your engineering days and your years in the Water Resources Department — supervising drilling sites across Assam and travelling through landscapes where rivers could nourish a village one season and destroy it the next.
Perhaps that is why water held such meaning in your life.
At home you conserved it with almost scientific care.
The water used for washing vegetables watered the plants. The water from the handwashing basin became water for flushing. I became cautious at home, often worrying that I might be wasting water. You would gently reassure me that the water that could be saved would find its way to be saved.
Only after your passing did we begin to understand the full shape of your life, and the extent of all that you had set in motion.
People began arriving at our home from distant towns and villages. Many of them were strangers to us, but not to you.
With them came stories. Stories of Md. Ziaul Islam, of a life we had only seen in parts.
We learnt how you once took a bus after work and stayed with a friend through the night, helping him prepare for a bank examination. The next morning, you boarded another bus and went straight to your office, reporting for duty as though the night had asked nothing of you.
Someone spoke of the vegetable seller you would take to the cancer hospital. Amma fed him liquid food when his body could no longer accept anything else. After he passed away, you travelled to his village and helped build a house for his wife and children, ensuring that his family would not be left without shelter.
The security guard remembered his persistent cough, and how you took him repeatedly to the doctor until his treatment was complete and he recovered from tuberculosis.
We heard from the ones you taught and from their families. We heard from the orphanages you had quietly supported. Slowly we began to understand how many futures you had helped set in motion.
We met your former students who remembered the lessons you gave them after returning home from work. Others spoke of the classes you continued to take even after retirement, long after your body had begun to grow frail.
You expected nothing in return — only one hope that education might help them grow and rescue them, even if slowly, from the economic conditions into which they had been born. You never spoke about these things.
You often said that charity should be given in such a way that the left hand does not know what the right hand has spent. In that belief there was dignity, restraint, and a deep understanding of human pride, of how help must be given without diminishing the person who receives it.
In a world where charity is often displayed and recorded, your way feels rare. We wonder now whether we will ever be able to walk the path you lived. We know we may fall short.
Be our guiding star, so that even in our smaller and imperfect ways, we may follow where your life pointed.
Even while living in the same house, we continued exchanging WhatsApp messages whenever I stepped out. Those messages came to a halt on 4th February 2026, the day we admitted you to the hospital for your surgery.
In the hospital, I saw another side of you: the steadfast fighter determined to recover, someone who, even in pain and exhaustion, worried about the well-being of the people around him. I also saw the child within you, your vulnerability, your stubbornness. your sweetness.
It made me feel as though I was the guardian of that child, not only on hospital documents, but also in my heart.
You let me comb your hair the way I liked. You laughed at my silly jokes even though you were in pain. You drank the tasteless tea I made without complaint.
Sometimes you had to be coaxed to eat. Your stomach resisted, and at the sight of the daliyakhichdi[3] and oats your expression would change instantly. Even now, I can still hear your tired voice saying, “Aru nuwarim niki khabo ma.” (I don’t think I can eat anymore, dear.)
You wanted nothing more than to return home. To the verandah, to your chair, to the familiar light.
I think often of how little time we had together. How I wish I had not given in when you kept asking me to book my tickets quickly after your discharge. So many times I wish I could stretch the small timeline we shared and make room for all that could not happen.
Perhaps somewhere in another universe, that version still exists. In that version you sit beneath the bougainvillea on the verandah, surrounded by your family. You recite lines of Ghalib and Gulzar from memory, smiling with the gentle pleasure of remembering something beloved. Beside you lies a small pile of books you had hoped to read after discharge. The Prophet rests in your hands as you continue from where you left off, pausing now and then to marvel at Gibran’s words.
In that other stretch of time, the days are fuller and longer. Mosquitoes circle lazily while I chase them with the electric racket, each spark sounding like a tiny firecracker. You watch, amused, and say again with a smile,
“Waah, iman futise.”
(Wow, such crackings!)
Abba, thank you for letting me into your heart, even if, measured by human calendars, it was only for a few days.
Thank you for answering when I called you Abba, and for replying so often, “O ma…[4]”
Thank you for the smiles, for the concern hidden in your messages, for coming to the airport to receive me.
You did not speak of love often. But you practiced it in enduring ways: on duty, by being attentive, remembering small things, living simply and giving quietly.
Love does not always arrive in grand declarations. Sometimes it lives quietly inside habits, inside responsibility, inside the steady rhythm of a life lived with integrity.
Sometimes it lives in the smallest gestures, where the deepest reservoirs are held.
And so your story does not end with your passing.
In many ways, it begins here, in the slow unfolding of all that you were.
The boy who grew up in the shadows of Partition, his childhood shaped by a divided homeland and families torn apart by a line drawn on a map over a lunch break: the boy whose mother wrote down the names of books she longed to read and sent him searching for them through the town of Shillong. And the man he became, a civil engineer who measured rivers, listened to birds, loved books, carried a Yashica camera, and believed that life’s gifts must be shared.
This pause here does not mean an end. One day, all of us return to where we came from — to the interiors of collapsing stars from which we are made.
Until that day, Abba, we will keep finding you in small places — in the sunlight falling across our verandah, in the rustle of the pink and white bougainvillea, in the sweetness of oranges, pomegranate seeds, and jujubes, in the trees and plants you tended for generations beyond your own, in the pages of the books you held.
And sometimes, unexpectedly, in the sharp crackle of a mosquito racket.
For a moment it sounds like a tiny firework, and it almost feels as though you are still sitting nearby, smiling softly and saying,
“Waah, iman futise.”
And if love can survive in voices, gestures, verandahs, books left half-read, and in the habits of those who remain, then perhaps you have not gone very far at all.
Perhaps you are still here, just beyond the reach of our hands, but never beyond the reach of the heart, where winter light falls gently, where butterflies drift slowly, where the conversation has not ended, only moved, perhaps, to a quieter room where we have yet to learn how to listen.
Mubida Rohman is a writer, photographer, and intercultural coach from Assam, currently based in Berlin. Her work explores memory, culture, and the intimate textures of everyday life, often weaving personal narratives with a deep sense of place. She writes on her blog Cultureyogi.in
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