Tag: Odia

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Contents

Borderless, July 2025

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

‘…I write from my heart of the raging tempest…’.Click here to read.

Translations

Jibanananda Das’s poem, Given the Boon of Eternity, has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Karim Dashti’s short poems have been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Five poems by Sangram Jena have been translated from Odia by Snehprava Das. Click here to read.

Surya Dhananjay’s story, Mastan Anna, has been translated from Telugu by Rahimanuddin Shaik. Click here to read.

The Last Letter, a poem by Ihlwha Choi  has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Probhatey (In the Morning) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Snehaprava Das, David R Mellor, Snigdha Agrawal, George Freek, Laila Brahmbhatt, Tracy Lee Duffy, John Swain, Amarthya Chandar, Craig Kirchner, Shamim Akhtar, Jason Ryberg, Momina Raza, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Shahriyer Hossain Shetu, Rhys Hughes

Musings/ Slices from Life

What is Great Anyway?

Farouk Gulsara explores the idea of ‘greatness’ as reflected in history. Click here to read.

From Cape Canaveral to Carnarvon

Merdith Stephens writes of her museum experiences with photographs from Alan Nobel. Click here to read.

A Journey through Pages

Odbayar Dorj writes of library culture in Japan and during her childhood, in Mongolia. Click here to read.

By the Banks of the Beautiful Gomti

Prithvijeet Sinha strolls through the park by the riverfront and muses. Click here to read.

Dhruba Esh & Amiyashankar

Ratnottama Sengupta muses on her encounter with the writings of eminent artist and writer, Dhruba Esh, and translates one his many stories, Amiyashankar Go Back Home from Bengali. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Gastronomy & Inspiration? Sherbets and More…, Devraj Singh Kalsi looks at vintage flavours. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Summer Vacation in Japan: Beetle Keeping and Idea Banks, Suzanne Kamata narrates her experience of school holidays in Japan. Click here to read.

Essays


It doesn’t Rain in Phnom Penh

Mohul Bhowmick writes of his trip to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Click here to read.

Haunted by Resemblances: Hunted by Chance

Aparajita De introspects with focus on serendipity. Click here to read.

Stories

Blue Futures, Drowned Pasts

Md Mujib Ullah writes a short cli-fi based on real life events. Click here to read.

Unspoken

Spandan Upadhyay gives a story around relationships. Click here to read.

Misjudged

Vidya Hariharan gives a glimpse of life. Click here to read.

Nico Returns to Burgaz

Paul Mirabile writes about growing up and reclaiming from heritage. Click here to read.

Feature

A review of Anuradha Kumar’s Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India and an interview with the author. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Eleventh Commandment And Other Very Short Fictions. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Snehprava Das’s Keep It Secret. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Dilip K Das’s Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Rajat Chjaudhuri’s Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet. Click here to read.

Gower Bhat has reviewed Neha Bansal’s Six of Cups. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Jagadish Shukla’s A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory. 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 Amazon International

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Editorial

‘…I write from my heart of the raging tempest…’

New buildings almost growing out of old in Rome 
I can see the heartbreak, 
    Hear the wailing, the awakening, 
          I write from my heart
          Of the raging tempest. 

— Translation of Probhatey or ‘In the Morning’ by Rabindranath Tagore (1906)

All around us, we hear of disasters. Often, we try to write of these as Tagore seems to do in the above lines. However, these lines follow after he says he draws solace and inspiration from a ‘serene lotus’, pristine and shining with vibrancy. He gazes at it while looking for that still point which helps him create an impact with words. That is perhaps what we can hope to do too — wait for a morning where clarity will show us the path to express not just what we see, but to find a way to heal and help. Finding parallels in great writings of yore to our own attempts at recreating the present makes us realise that perhaps history is cyclical. In Rome, new structures rear up against thousand-year walls, reflecting how the past congeals into the present.

Congealing the past into our present in this July’s issue are stories of American migrants — like Tom Alter’s family who made India their home — by Anuradha Kumar in her new non-fiction Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India. We feature this book with a review and an interview with the author where she tells us how and why she chose to write on these people. We have more people writing of their own wanderings. Mohul Bhowmick wanders into Cambodia and makes friends over a local sport while Prithvijeet Sinha strolls by the banks of the River Gomti in Lucknow. Meredith Stephens not only takes us to the Prime Meridien in Greenwich but also to Carnarvon which houses a science and technology centre in Australia. Devraj Singh Kalsi wanders with humour to discover gastronomical inspiration and hopes for sweeter recompense.

The dialogue started by Professor Fakrul Alam on libraries earlier with his essay and by Kalsi (with a pinch of humour) has been continued by Odbayar Dorj. She talks of the fading culture of libraries in Mongolia, her home country, and the vibrant culture that has blossomed in Japan. Suzanne Kamata writes of the rituals of summer holidays in Japan… including looking after a pet dung beetles.

Farouk Gulsara muses on ‘greatness’ as a concept with irony. Aparajita De muses on the word serendipity, applying it to her own situation while Ratnottama Sengupta muses on her encounter with the writings of eminent cover artist and writer who is not only a recipient of the Bangla Academy literary award but also immensely popular with children, Dhruba Esh, and translates one his many stories from Bengali.

In translations, Professor Alam has brought to us a beautiful poem by Jibanananda Das. Karim Drashti’s Balochi short poems have been rendered in English by Fazal Baloch and Snehaprava Das has found for us Odia poems of Sangram Jena in translation. Ihlwha Choi has rendered his own Korean poem to English while Tagore’s poem, ‘Probhatey (In the Morning)’ winds up the poetry in this section. We have more in prose — Surya Dhananjay’s story, Mastan Anna, translated from Telugu by Rahimanuddin Shaik.

In fiction, we have stories from around the world. Paul Mirabile sets his story in Burgaz. Spandan Upadhyay gives a mysterious narrative set in a world outside our waking consciousness and Vidya Hariharan gives us a glimpse of life in modern day India. From Bangladesh, Md Mujib Ullah writes a short cli-fi based on real life events.

Taking up the theme of cli-fi, Rajat Chaudhuri’s Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet seems to bring hope by suggesting adapting to changing climes. Rakhi Dalal tells us in her review: “It dares to approach the climate crisis through the lens of empathy and imagination rather than panic or guilt. In doing so, Rajat Chaudhuri gives us what many adult climate narratives fail to deliver—a reason to believe that another world is not only possible but already being imagined by the young. All we need to do is listen.” Bhaskar Parichha has discussed the autobiography of a meteorologist and Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University, Jagadish Shukla. In A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory, he claims Shukla has “revolutionised monsoon forecasting.” Somdatta Mandal has written about Dilip K Das’s Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India. And Gower Bhat reviews Neha Bansal’s best-selling poetry collection, Six of Cups.

Poetry awakens myriad of hues in Borderless with verses from across the world. We have poems from Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Ryan Quinn Flangan, Snehprava Das, George Freek, Laila Brahmbhatt, Tracy Lee Duffy, Amarthya Chandar, Jason Ryberg, Momina Raza, Shahriyer Hossain Shetu and more. Snigdha Agrawal gives a fun-filled poem about a duck and Rhys Hughes has given us a collection of verses like puzzles where we need to guess the animals! We also have an excerpt from Hughes’ The Eleventh Commandment And Other Very Short Fictions and Das’s short stories, Keep It Secret.

With that, we wind up the contents of this month’s issue. Do pause by our content’s page to check it out in more details.

This month’s edition would not have been possible without all our contributors, our fabulous team and especially Sohana Manzoor’s artwork. Huge thanks to all of them and to our wonderful readers who make it worthwhile for us to write and publish. Do write in to us if you have any feedback. Five years ago, we chose to become a monthly from a daily… We have come a long way from then and grown to host writers from more than forty countries and readers from almost all over the world. For this, we owe you all – for being with us and encouraging us to find fresh pastures.

Enjoy the reads!

Wishing you peace and happiness,

Mitali Chakravarty,

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents for the July 2025 Issue

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

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Poetry

Found in Translation: Sangram Jena’s Poetry

Five Odia poems by Sangram Jena have been translated by Snehaprava Das

Sangram Jena
 RETURN

Is there ever a return? 
Do the years left behind, 
Or, water flown away in the river,
Return ever?
Do parents who had quit the world 
years before come back?
Or, the erstwhile beloved
married now to another man? 
What are the things that return 
after having gone?  
Doesn’t the sun that depart every evening
return on the next? 
Perpetually, endlessly? 
Is returning a reality 
or, an illusion of one? 
And, wrapped in it, 
life moves on
from the crib to the crematorium. 
   

                ROCK* 

What did he stumble on?
The unobtrusive block of stone
that lay on his way,
the sacred scriptures, the hearsay 
all carried the story that 
the sinning Ahalya was redeemed 
at the touch of his holy feet;
When Indra had touched her that day,
what was that touch?   
Was it a pretence? A betrayal?
  
It matters little whose touch is it
if there is trust in love! 
A pretense of love is sometimes 
More intimate than a relationship 
that has no life in it!
What promises of redemption the world
That labels love a sin, held out for her?     
She was neither a wife nor a beloved 
after she was transformed 
from a rock to a woman;
Hadn’t it been better
to have remained a rock 
and lived the rest of the life 
holding on to the memory 
of a handful of those ecstatic moments!
 
*Refers to the story of Ahalya in Ramayana

IT IS NOT THERE WHERE YOU LOOK

It is not there where I look!
May be, what appears to be where 
is never there in reality,
Like the face that is not there in the mirror,
Or, the pain in the body, 
Will the words that need to be said
Ever be there in written letters? 
Does the meaning dwell in the words?
Does the sun sit behind the mountains,
Or the sea ends at the skyline? 
Actually, what appears where
Is never there! 

SEARCH

There is no point in searching.

A river flows while 
You keep searching words. 
As you look for the right colours,  
the painting fades. 
The sun drops into night
as you grope for the morning

and a moon comes up while 
you chase the dark.

The petals wilt and drop
before the search for fragrance ends.
The poem is lost 
before the right images are found. 
While you seek the sea,
The horizon shifts further.
The feet are lost 
Through the search for a ground underneath.
The thread of the kite snaps
In the quest for a sky.
The clouds dissipate 
While craving the rain,
And the body dissolves 
While you look for the shadow.

Ther is no point in a search.

Life fritters away quietly 
As you keep browsing. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Life does not flow
the way you expect. 

Do you think morning does not arrive
Till the crows’ caw?
Does the kaash not bloom 
after the river recedes?

Do you think butterflies never circle 
The flower after the petals drop?   
Does no one look up at the sky
After the moon goes into hiding?

Do the frogs stop croaking
When the rain goes away?
Can the night be omnipresent
With its darkness?
Can everyone find the way
When there is light?

Doesn’t your shadow stay back
After you leave?
What do you think?

Sangram Jena (1952), is an eminent poet, translator, critic and editor. He writes both in English and Odia and has published more than 70 books. Translation of his poems have been published in several Indian languages including English, Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Assamese and Marathi. His poetry in English have been published in many magazines in India and abroad. He has translated Classics of World Poetry into Odia and classical, medieval and contemporary Odia Poetry into English. He has received many awards including Sahitya Akademi Award (National Academy of Letters, New Delhi) for translation, a Senior Fellowship from the Department of Culture, Govt. of India and served as a jury member of National Selection Committee (New Delhi) for award of ‘Saraswati Samman’. He edits two literary journals, Nishant in Odia and Marg Asia in English. He has served as Vice-President, Odisha Sahitya Akademi. He lives in Odisha, India.

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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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Excerpt

Keep It Secret

Title: Keep It Secret

Author: Snehaprava Das

Publisher: Black Eagle Books

It was for the first time Karisma had entered her father’s room after he was discharged from the Amrit Hospital. He had suffered that massive paralytic stroke a month and a half back, the night on which she had announced that she had transferred her shares in the company and debentures in the name of Sunil Arya, the company’s junior partner. Doctors had little hope of any significant improvement in his condition. Karisma had engaged a couple of nurses from the hospital who worked in shifts and took care of her father. A doctor visited the house twice a week to examine his vitals.

‘How are you, father?’ Karisma asked. Her voice had a formal, indifferent note. A brief sparkle came to the eyes of the man who lay helpless in the bed. He tried desperate to move his hands that lay dead and stiff.

‘This is the last time you are seeing me father,’ she said softly. ‘I will be leaving this place. I have no idea what I am going to do but I will not return here. I have made all financial arrangements for you. Aruna aunty will see to it that you are taken care of properly as long as you are alive. There will be no lapse in your treatment.’

The man’s eyes darted around revealing how desperate he was and his lips quivered as if he struggled to speak out something but the only sound he made was a muffled groan.

‘I know what you want to say, father,’ Karisma said, a deep agony in her eyes. ‘But I cannot continue to live here now. You have to be alone. Didn’t you want to live in a palace and own heaps of wealth? I have transferred all the amount to your account and authorized Aruna aunty to do all transactions on your behalf. You have avenged the injustice done to you years ago, though I would not call it a heinous sin as you have always believed and made my poor mother believe it to be one. But what did I do to deserve the punishment you meted out to me, father? Which father would subject his daughter to such devilish exploitation? But of course, you were determined to torture your poor wife for the slip she made by punishing me, by snatching away every damn thing I loved, by utilizing me to slake your hunger for money. What a fool have I been to fall for that dirty ‘princess’ trick you played with me! I have never wanted to be a princess father. I was happy in that small tenement house, with the love of my mother.  That was genuine and not fake, motivated by greed and hostility like yours. And of course, there was Ronit! My Ronit! The only silver lining behind my gloomy clouds of despair. You destroyed that too. I do not believe in the existence of a world beyond this one, or that of a hell or a heaven. Each of us has to atone his sin through a penance, through self-afflicted torments, like mother did, like I have been doing all these years. My sin was just that I had a look that constantly reminded you of the slip my mother made.’ Karisma paused for a breath and looked at the eyes that had sunken into the pale, desiccated face. A few drops of tears trickled down from the corners of the dull eyes. Karisma wiped the tears with the end of her sari. ‘There is nothing I could do to help you father.. This is your nemesis and you cannot escape it. And I give you my word father, I will not let the truth come out to the open, ever! It will always remain a secret.’

 She rose to her feet and cast a long pitiful look at the inert figure, then turned and walked towards the door. A frantic but low and muffled animal howl rippled across the room, bringing her to a halt. She repressed the urge to look back and strode out of the room, breaking into a tearless, dry sobbing.

About the Book

Keep It Secret, a collection of ten stories, has in its agenda an effort to cross over the flimsy and floating border between the substance and the shadow, to explore into the jungle within, to study the secrets carefully concealed behind the mask of pretence and shamming of an agreeable and acceptable facade.

In the words of Andre Malraux, ‘Man is not what he thinks, he is what he hides.’ 

The aim, thus in a way, is to unravel the truth man hides and strives to protect it under a falsehood, that, at times projects, reveals itself through a behaviour pattern which may appear absurd. It intends to push aside the deceptively glossy screen of fake complacence, and traverse into that murky, elusive terrain beyond the ordinary logical perceptibility.

This excerpt is the from the title story, a tale of  personal vendetta.

About the Author

 Dr.Snehaprava Das, Former Prof. of English, is a noted author, poet and translator. She has three collections of English stories, five collection of English poems, and thirteen collection of Translated texts (Odia to English) to her credit. She has received  The Prabashi Bhasha Sahitya Samman, The Jivanananda Das award, The Fakirmohan Anuvad Sammana  and Lakshmi Narayan Mohanty translation awards for her contribution to literature.    

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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

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Categories
Contents

Borderless, June 2025

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

‘How do you rebuild a life when all that remains is dust?’… Click here to read.

Translations

The Great War is Over and A Nobody by Jibanananda Das have been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Sukanta Bhattacharya’s poem, Therefore, has been translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

 Five poems by Soubhagyabanta Maharana  have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das. Click here to read.

Animate Debris, a poem by Sangita Swechcha has been translated from Nepali by Saudamini Chalise. Click here to read.

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

Sonar Tori (Golden Boat), a poem by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Allan Lake, Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan, Ron Pickett, Ananya Sarkar, George Freek, Bibhuti Narayan Biswal, Jim Bellamy, Pramod Rastogi, Vern Fein, Saranyan BV, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Juairia Hossain, Gautham Pradeep, Jenny Middleton, Mandavi Choudhary, Rhys Hughes

Musings/Slices from Life

Where Should We Go After the Last Frontiers?

Ahamad Rayees writes from a village in Kashmir which homed refugees and still faced bombing. Click here to read.

The Jetty Chihuahuas

Vela Noble takes us for a stroll to the seaside at Adelaide. Click here to read.

Hope Lies Buried in Eternity

Farouk Gulsara muses on hope. Click here to read.

Undertourism in the Outback

Merdith Stephens writes from the Australian Outback with photographs from Alan Nobel. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Driving with Devraj, Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of his driving lessons. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In The Tent, Suzanne Kamata visits crimes and safety. Click here to read.

Essays

Public Intellectuals Walked, So Influencers Could Run

Lopamudra Nayak explores changing trends. Click here to read.

Where No One Wins or Loses a War…From Lucknow with Love

Prithvijeet Sinha takes us to a palace of a European begum in Lucknow. Click here to read.

Bhaskar’s Corner

In Can Odia Literature Connect Traditional Narratives with Contemporary Ones, Bhaskar Parichha discusses the said issue. Click here to read.

Feature

The story of Hawakal Publishers, based on a face-to-face tête-à-tête, and an online conversation with founder Bitan Chakraborty with his responses in Bengali translated by Kiriti Sengupta. Click here to read.

Stories

The Year the Fireflies Didn’t Come Back

Leishilembi Terem gives a poignant story set in conflict-ridden Manipur. Click here to read.

The Stranger

Jeena R. Papaadi writes of the vagaries of human relationships. Click here to read.

The Opening

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a value based story in a small hamlet of southern India. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Wendy Doniger’s The Cave of Echoes: Stories about Gods, Animals and Other Strangers. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Mohua Chinappa’s Thorns in My Quilt: Letters from a Daughter to Her Father. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Madhurima Vidyarthi’s Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Dhruba Hazarika’s The Shoot: Stories. Click here to read.

Satya Narayan Misra reviews Bakhtiyar K Dadabhoy’s Honest John – A Life of John Matthai. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews David C Engerman’s Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made. 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 Amazon International

Categories
Editorial

‘How do you rebuild a life when all that remains is dust?’

The Great War is over
And yet there is left its vast gloom.
Our skies, light and society’s soul have been overcast…

'The Great War is Over' by Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam.

Jibanananda Das wrote the above lines in the last century and yet great wars rage even now. As the world struggles to breathe looking for a beam of hope to drag itself out of the darkness induced by natural calamities, accidents, terror attacks and wars that seem to rage endlessly, are we moving towards the dystopian scenario created by George Orwell in 1984, which would be around the same time as Jibanananda Das’s ‘The Great War is Over’?

Describing such a scenario, Ahmed Rayees writes a moving piece from the Kashmiri village of Sheeri, the last refuge of the displaced refugees who were bombarded after peace was declared in their refuge during the clash across Indo-Pak borders. He contends: “People walked back not to homes, but to ruins. Entire communities had been reduced to ash and rubble. Crops were destroyed, livestock gone, schools turned into shelters or craters. How do you rebuild a life when all that remains is dust?”

People could be asking the same questions without finding answers in Gaza or Ukraine, where the cities are reduced to rubble. While we look for a ray of sunshine, amidst the rubble, Farouk Gulsara muses on hope that has its roots in eternity. Vela Noble wanders on nostalgic beaches in Adelaide. And Meredith Stephens travels to the Australian outback. Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in lighter notes writing of driving lessons while Suzanne Kamata creeps back to darker recesses musing on likely ‘criminals’ and crimes in her neighbourhood.

Lopamudra Nayak writes on social media and its impact while Bhaskar Parichha writes of trends that could be brought into Odia literature.  What he writes could apply well to all regional literature, where they lose their individual colouring to paint dystopian realities of the present world. Does modernising make us lose our ethnic identity and how important is that? These are questions that sprung to the mind reading his essay. As if in an attempt to hold on to the past ethos, Prithvijeet Sinha wafts around old ruins in Lucknow and sees a cemetery for colonial soldiers and concludes: “Everybody has formidable stakes, and the dead don’t preach the gospel of victory or sombre defeat.”

Taking up a similar theme of death and war is a poem from Saranyan BV. In poetry, we have colours from around the world with poems from Allan Lake, Ron Pickett, Ananya Sarkar, George Freek, Jim Bellamy, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Juairia Hossain, Gautham Pradeep, Jenny Middleton, Mandavi Choudhary and many more. Multiple themes are woven into a variety of perspectives, including nature and environment, with June hosting the World Environment Day. Rhys Hughes gives a funny poem on the Welsh outlaw, Twm Siôn Cati.

We have mainly poetry in translation this time. Snehaprava Das has brought to us Soubhagyabanta Maharana’s poems from Odia and Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. Sangita Swechcha’s poem in Nepali has been rendered to English by Saudamini Chalise. From Bengali, other that Jibanananda Das’s poems translated by Professor Fakrul Alam, we have Tagore’s pensive and beautiful poem, Sonar Tori (the golden boat). Yet another Bengali poet, one who died young and yet left his mark, Sukanta Bhattacharya (1926-1947), has been translated by Kiriti Sengupta. Sengupta has also translated the responses of Bitan Chakravarty in a candid conversation about his dream child — the Hawakal Publishers. We also have a feature on this based on a face-to-face conversation, giving the story of how this publishing house grew out of an idea. Now, they publish poetry traditionally, without costs to the poet. Their range of authors are spread across continents.

Our fiction again returns to the darkness of war. Young Leishilembi Terem has given a story set in conflict-ridden Manipur from where she has emerged safely — a story that reiterates the senselessness of violence and politics. While Jeena R. Papaadi writes of modern human relationships that end without commitment, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a value-based story in a small hamlet of southern India. 

From stories, our book excerpts return to the real world, where a daughter grieves her father in Mohua Chinappa’s Thorns in My Quilt: Letters from a Daughter to Her Father while Wendy Doniger’s The Cave of Echoes: Stories about Gods, Animals and Other Strangers, dwells on demystifying structures that create borders. We have two non-fiction reviews. Parichha writes about David C Engerman’s Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made. And Satya Narayan Misra discusses Bakhtiyar K Dadabhoy’s Honest John – A Life of John Matthai. Somdatta Mandal this time explores a historical fiction based around the founding of Calcutta, Madhurima Vidyarthi’s Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy while Rakhi Dalal looks at fiction born of environmental awareness, Dhruba Hazarika’s The Shoot: Stories.

We have more content. Do pause by our contents page and take a look.

Huge thanks to all our contributors without who this issue would not have materialised. Heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless for their support, especially Sohana Manzoor for her iconic artwork that has almost become a signature statement for Borderless.

Let’s hope that next month brings better news for the whole world.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents for the June 2025 Issue

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

Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Soubhagyabanta Maharana’s Poetry

Five Odia poems by Soubhagyabanta Maharana  have been translated by Snehaprava Das

SUNSET: A SYMBOL 

To bridge the agelessly waiting gap
Between an unvoiced luminosity and a vibrant darkness
Sunset is a magic silence, 
An indulging over the wispy interlapping   
Of light and shadow.

It is an ancient oil-painting 
On the old drawing sheet of the sky by a 
Bohemian, invisible artist who fills the earth 
With a spectrum of the melody of 
An unforgettable twilight.  

Sunset is the gentle thump of 
Disembodied dancers’ feet, tripping  
To the rhythm of witch-chanting
On a phantom, ashy-pale stage.

A lifetime that had glowed like a fake sun
In the crimson smile of the earth 
Slowly turns black, 
And on the black canvas of the sky
Painted in scatters are millions of sparkling stars.

Sunset is a Truth, 
A promise of a melodious, bright morning  
That the sun dreams of 
Slumbering in the palanquin of the night.

SILENCE BETWEEN WORDS

Like a lone, saffron-robed monk 
The silence hiding between the words, waits 
Keeping awake in secret, 
Hoping to get free
from the mysterious chains of mystic incantations.

The bewildering crowd of thoughts stuck between
One word and another,
Before even the mystery of the meaning is unraveled
Confuses the interpreting.

And the silence is left alone,
Weeping, elegizing the loss -- 
A dumb witness to the unwarranted death of words.  

Because the silence does not reveal itself
In happiness, 
A sorrow lives permanently in the palpitations
Of the poet’s heart
To bring the un-wilting flowers of poetry
Molded from the poet’s blood into blooming
in their vivid, picturesque charm.

In the unshackled voice of the poet
words and silence seek a nerve center,
in a sensitive, ultimate moment of love
to melt into each other. 

Who else other than a poet could gauge
The depth of the silence hidden 
In the koel’s song 
To bridge the gap between life and death?  

A VILLAGE THAT WAS: SKETCHING NOSTALGIA  

No one was there waiting eagerly 
To meet my shadow, 
No one to lament the loss of a village 
That was there once.
The smell of love in the wet mud
Has faded with the passage of time.
The melody of spring in the soft breeze,
The shadow of a rainbow on the face of water 
Have disappeared too.

The day when I left the village, 
A fleeting cloud played hide and seek
In my book-satchel.
The fragrance of the lotus in the village-pond
That wished to caress fondly
The vibrance of childhood on my face 
Missed me.
The name of that village lives in me. 
A village crowded with forests of Mahula 
And throbbing with the song of Adivasis  
Dancing in the shadows of the Sal -- 
The village where rings the rhythm of my birth-cries 
in a straw-thatched hut --
the name of that village, has melted into my breath.
  
A deep sadness pricks me though
That just as I understood the village
I lost my way to it,
 Before I could trace the lotus-pond
And inhale its fragrance.
The smoke the factories emitted 
Choked me midway,
As I went on narrating the nostalgia 
I was left with just myself.
Alone.
While I searched for dreams 
Painted in rural shades,
I lost my own self in the pale horizon
Of a smoky, grey sky.  

DECLARATION

I gathered the ardour of that missing warmth
From the ashes of a decadent sun 
To charge the cold blood that run in my veins.
I gathered the exotic smell of blinking stars
To add years to my life.

My skeletal frame that resembles
some ancient sculptor has a voice.
It can speak, and it can hide 
from the eyes of the world
the pain it writhes under,
lest someone use its vulnerability
and sign a sworn statement for befriending 
its invisible blood, flesh and sinews.  

In every corner of my body that is caged,  
In the prison of the elements,
Love sojourns.
And the intimate voice of my shadow-self 
Has reached up to the planets and beyond. 
 
The primeval tale of my century-old wait
Has sheltered in the feeble gaze of my eyes
May be, I am designed to stand as 
The enemy of Time.
It was perhaps designed so,   
That my victory march, with the bugle blowing 
Will be declared a glorious success 
Against a different backdrop. 

RELATIONSHIP: ANOTHER HORIZON 

It feels odd at times 
To play the hero in 
The brief interlude between 
Ignorance and innocence.
There are times when a relationship 
Founded on poisoned, defiled trust
Tastes sweet.
In the dark sanctum of bitter animosity,
 A beguiling god assumes a friendly form
 And embraces to overwhelm you
 with his gratifying blessings.

 Only a fake hero would nurture   
 The overpowering urge to 
 Flaunt himself in vain glory on the 
 Dazzling stage of civility.
 It is he who fosters a brazen wish   
To draw a line on the water,
And to wish for the moon  
In a moonless night-sky. 
 True friendship is where 
The sapling of love grows
Its green foliage  
To reach a lofty height 
And brings life to fruition.
It’s like a faint streak of light 
That illumines a blind alley at night. 

A heart bathed in that love
Becomes more sacred than a shrine,
More craved than the potion of immortality. 
It is the comfort an orphan child enjoys,
Sleeping inside a cozy culvert
In the chilly night of the month of the Pausha*. 

*December- January
Soubhagyabanta Maharana

Soubhagyabanta Maharana (b.1951) in the  Bolangir town, Odisha, is a prominent bilingual poet, critic and translator of Odia and English.  He is an awardee of Odisha Sahitya Akademi for poetry in 2010 along with many prestigious literary awards. He has to his credit nineteen poetry collections  and  six essay collections on modern Odia poetry.

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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Categories
Bhaskar's Corner

Can Odia Literature Connect Traditional Narratives with Contemporary Ones?

By Bhaskar Parichha

From Public Domain

Odia literature is characterised by a profound tradition of classic narratives, with notable examples such as Fakir Mohan Senapati’s timeless Chha Mana Atha Guntha[1].  This literary corpus is further enhanced by an array of mythological and folk narratives that hold significant importance in the cultural legacy of Odisha.

These narratives persist through time because they reflect universal human experiences, encompassing themes such as land, power, family, and morality, all while being intricately linked to the historical context and cultural identity of the region. They serve not only as stories but also as reflections of society, having been shaped and refined over the years.

Readers are consistently attracted to these literary works for reasons similar to those that draw us to the writings of Shakespeare or the epic narrative of the Mahabharata: their themes are enduring, and the insights they provide remain pertinent. Similarly, publishers and curators, even at the national level, often revisit these classic tales, a trend that is entirely justifiable.

However, it is the transition to contemporary matters that strikes a significant chord. Odia literature has been progressing, albeit perhaps not as prominently or visibly as certain other Indian literary landscapes. Modern voices are addressing current issues—urban isolation, the influence of technology, caste relations, and environmental deterioration. The change is evident, yet it remains less pronounced than it has the potential to be.

What accounts for this? There may be multiple reasons.

The literary tradition of Odisha is profoundly embedded in its heritage. Classic literature is not only revered and taught but frequently eclipses modern works. Both publishers and readers exhibit a conservative inclination, preferring established texts. This trend is not unique to Odia literature; for example, Tolstoy remains a central figure in Russian literary discourse. As a result, this inclination obstructs the acknowledgment of new authors.

Modern Odia literature faces considerable challenges in its distribution. In contrast to Bengali or Tamil literature, which benefits from larger urban readerships and established translation networks, Odia books often struggle to reach broader audiences.

While digital platforms are making significant strides in this domain, the overall development is still sluggish. Without a strong market, numerous authors may opt to concentrate on more conventional themes that are viewed as more commercially viable.

The demographic composition of Odisha is primarily rural, where numerous readers find a stronger connection with stories that delve into village life or ethical dilemmas, as opposed to genres like cyberpunk or themes focused on existential angst. Although there are urban Odia authors, their readership is frequently limited in range. As a result, contemporary themes may seem alien to those who maintain a deep bond with traditional cultural settings.

The literary language of Odia typically possesses a formal tone, significantly influenced by its classical roots. This can lead to a conflict with modern terminology and global themes, posing challenges for writers who wish to innovate without jeopardising their connection to the audience. In contrast, languages such as Hindi and Malayalam readily incorporate colloquial expressions, which thrive in contemporary literature.

Nonetheless, modern Odia literature is dynamic and progressing. Short story writers are exploring a variety of topics including religion, science fiction, feminism, leftist ideologies, and climate change. Prominent authors such as Sarojini Sahu, Satya Mishra, Rabi Swain, Sadananda Tripathy, Jyoti Nanda, Bhima Prusty, Janaki Ballabh Mohapatra, Ajaya Swain, Biraja Mohapatra, Sujata Mohapatra and young writers like Debabrata Das  are actively investigating these contemporary themes. Publications like Kadambini, Rebati, and Katha are offering platforms for these creative narratives.

Despite this, the main obstacle remains the need to improve visibility. Social media and over-the-top (OTT) platforms have the potential to revolutionise this landscape—just picture an Odia adaptation of Black Mirror[2]!

There is an immediate need for greater investment in Odia storytelling to effectively bridge the gap between traditional and modern narratives.

.

[1] Six acres and a Third, a novel by Fakir Mohan Senapati(1843-1918) published in 1902

[2]Black Mirror is a British dystopian science fiction television anthology series that started in 2011 and is still on the run.

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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Categories
Editorial

“Imagine all the people/Living life in peace”

God of War by Paul Klee (1879-1940)
The sky weeps blood, the earth cannot contain
The sorrow of the young ones we've slain.
How now do dead kids laugh while stricken by red rain?

— from Stricken by Red Rain: Poems by Jim Bellamy

When there is war
And peace is gone
Where is their home?
Where do they belong?

— from Poems on Migrants by Kajoli Krishnan

Poetry, prose — all art forms — gather our emotions into concentrates that distil perhaps the finest in human emotions. They touch hearts across borders and gather us all with the commonality of feelings. We no longer care for borders drawn by divisive human constructs but find ourselves connecting despite distances. Strangers or enemies can feel the same emotions. Enemies are mostly created to guard walls made by those who want to keep us in boxes, making it easier to manage the masses. It is from these mass of civilians that soldiers are drawn, and from the same crowds, we can find the victims who die in bomb blasts. And yet, we — the masses — fight. For whom, for what and why? A hundred or more years ago, we had poets writing against wars and violence…they still do. Have we learnt nothing from the past, nothing from history — except to repeat ourselves in cycles? By now, war should have become redundant and deadly weapons out of date artefacts instead of threats that are still used to annihilate cities, humans, homes and ravage the Earth. Our major concerns should have evolved to working on social equity, peace, human welfare and climate change.

One of the people who had expressed deep concern for social equity and peace through his films and writings was Satyajit Ray. This issue has an essay that reflects how he used art to concretise his ideas by Dolly Narang, a gallery owner who brought Ray’s handiworks to limelight. The essay includes the maestro’s note in which he admits he considered himself a filmmaker and a writer but never an artist. But Ray had even invented typefaces! Artist Paritosh Sen’s introduction to Ray’s art has been included to add to the impact of Narang’s essay. Another person who consolidates photography and films to do pathbreaking work and tell stories on compelling issues like climate change and helping the differently-abled is Vijay S Jodha. Ratnottama Sengupta has interviewed this upcoming artiste.

Reflecting the themes of welfare and conflict, Prithvijeet Sinha’s essay takes us to a monument in Lucknow that had been built for love but fell victim to war. Some conflicts are personal like the ones of Odbayar Dorj who finds acceptance not in her hometown in Mongolia but in the city, she calls home now. Jun A. Alindogan from Manila explores social media in action whereas Eshana Sarah Singh takes us to her home in Jakarta to celebrate the Chinese New Year! Farouk Gulsara looks into the likely impact of genetic engineering in a world already ripped by violence and Devraj Singh Kalsi muses on his source of inspiration, his writing desk. Meredith Stephens tells the touching story of a mother’s concern for her child in Australia and Suzanne Kamata exhibits the same concern as she travels to Happy Village in Japan to meet her differently-abled daughter and her friends.

As these real-life narratives weave commonalities of human emotions, so do fictive stories. Some reflect the need for change. Fiona Sinclair writes a layered story set in London on how lived experiences define differences in human perspectives while Parnika Shirwaikar explores the need to learn to accept changes set in her part of the universe. Spandan Upadhyay explores the spirit of the city of Kolkata as a migrant with a focus on social equity. Both Paul Mirabile and Naramsetti Umamaheswararao write stories around childhood, one set in Europe and the other in Asia.

As prose weaves humanity together, so does poetry. We have poems from Jim Bellamy and Kajoli Krishnan both reflecting the impact of war and senseless violence on common humanity. Ryan Quinn Flanagan introduces us to Canadian bears in his poetry while Snigdha Agrawal makes us laugh with her lines about dogs and hatching Easter eggs! We have a wide range of poems from Snehprava Das, George Freek, Niranjan Aditya, Christine Belandres, Ajeeti S, Ron Pickett, Stuart McFarlane, Arthur Neong and Elizabeth Anne Pereira. Rhys Hughes concludes his series of photo poems with the one in this issue — especially showcasing how far a vivid imagination can twist reality with a British postman ‘carrying’ sweets from India! His column, laced with humour too, showcases in verse Lafcadio Hearn, a bridge between the East and West from more than a hundred years ago, a man who was born in Greece, worked in America and moved to Japan to even adopt a Japanese name.

Just as Hearn bridged cultures, translations help us discover how similarly all of us think despite distances in time and space. Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s concerns about climate change and melting icecaps does just that! Professor Fakrul Alam’s translation of Nazrul’s lyrics from Bengali on women and on the commonality of human faith also make us wonder if ideas froze despite time moving on. Tagore’s poem titled Asha (hope) tends to make us introspect on the very idea of hope – just as we do now. At a more personal level, a contemporary poem reflecting on the concept of identity by Munir Momin has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. From Korean, Ihlwah Choi translates his own poem about losing the self in a crowd. We start a new column on translated Odia poetry from this month. The first one features the exquisite poetry of Bipin Nayak translated by Snehprava Das. Huge thanks to Bhaskar Parichha for bringing this whole project to fruition.

Parichha has also drawn bridges in reviews by bringing to us the memoirs of a man of mixed heritage, A Stranger in Three Worlds: The Memoirs of Aubrey Menen. Andreas Giesbert from Germany has reviewed Rhys Hughes’ The Devil’s Halo and Somdatta Mandal has discussed Arundhathi Nath’s translation, The Phantom’s Howl: Classic Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings from Bengal. Our book excerpts this time feature Devabrata Das’s One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam, translated by multiple translators from Assamese and Ryan Quinn Flangan’s new book, Ghosting My Way into the Afterlife, definitely poems worth mulling over with a toss of humour.

Do pause by our contents page for this issue and enjoy the reads. We are ever grateful to our ever-growing evergreen readership some of whom have started sharing their fabulous narratives with us. Thanks to all our readers and contributors. Huge thanks to our wonderful team without whose efforts we could not have curated such valuable content and thanks specially to Sohana Manzoor for her art. Thank you all for making a whiff of an idea a reality!

Let’s hope for peace, love and sanity!

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents page for the May 2025 Issue

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Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Bipin Nayak’s Poetry

 Five Odia poems by Bipin Nayak have been translated by Snehaprava Das

WITHIN 
                           
An equestrian within me 
Mounts an unbridled horse
And plays a violin.
A boatman inside me 
Crosses an imaginary river
Again, and again  
In a non-existent boat.
                             
Within me, there is a wayfarer
That refuses to 
Travel the trodden road
And takes a turn.
                              
A lake ripples in me, 
Waiting futilely
To lose itself in the sea,
And a waterfall  
Leaps noisily from above 
To wet the rocks.                            
                                                       
A cloud floats within me,
All of a sudden,
Flashes a lightning smile
And goes back to sleep.
                            
In me, a cowherd
Returns home in the twilight
Painted in the colours of sunset      
And lights a kerosene lamp.
                       
A camel inside me
Sags under a sack-load of salt,
But trudges across the sands
Dreaming of a lush meadow. 
  
A mother in me conceives words,
Bleeds in labour, 
Nourishes the vulnerable words 
With love and care
And watches them grow…                  
                                                                          
PAPER BIRD
                                                       
My woes pull your neck longer.
My beloved words become the air 
To stuff your insides. 
I forge your wings from  
The crumpled paper of my dreams,                           
And mold your beak with my kisses,
Paint you in the colour 
Of my solitary nights….
Trim you with 
All my fears and frustrations.  
Because I could not 
Make a paper-boat of you
To sail in the muddy puddle,
I lift you up  
To fly across 
The monsoon sky.
When you climb a little higher 
Into the air
And are drenched out of shape,
I, a naked child, 
Stand here in the rain, look up and cry! 

THE MAKING 

I pick a few bones of my hardest grief,
Scoop some blood 
Oozing red to create.
                                                                                    
I fix a face of smoke or a patch of weepy cloud    
Mold a nose from the wafting breeze.  
I fix a pair of eyes, like day and night,
There in the face.
In one of them, I put a tornado, 
A bird in the other.
With flowers of joy and grief,
I shape the lips.
The body I try to make 
Out of a river that hides under it,
A fire and a perpetually vain desire 
To reach the sea or a desolate jungle.                                   
I design the limbs from a  
Lingering surge of green.                                  
All these efforts 
Are but only to replicate 
What has been made before.
I set afloat 
Because it has been set to drift
Much before…
And because it has sprinkled  
A cosmic fervour across 
A secret sanctum inside me,
To bring a god to life, 
I worship it! 
I keep trying to create and re-create inside me
Because it has made me much before that!  

            
A SKY AS I AM

I have set out to paint a sky of my own --
A sky that is exactly as I am! 
And for that I have picked up
Some nomadic dreams, a sunset, 
I have collected the blood of flowers,
The tune of a stream that has flown away,
The chirping of orphan birds,
The layers of moss spread over
A decrepit piece of rock-writing.
I have scooped up 
A handful of ash from the debris of
Perished time,
And a wild storm that had retreated 
After having blown me away.
I took out the wet melody from a violin and
the primeval music of the insect,
throbbing inside the grass.
From the reminisces stuck in the sinews 
I have gathered a few scattered sighs,
 And from the darkness, the mysteries of nights,
 I have got warmth from dreams,
 Sin from pollen grains.
 With these elements beside me
 And a canvas in shreds, 
 I sit down to paint a sky of mine
A sky that is exactly as I am!      

LET THEM SING  

Let them sing a song.
I do not mind
If my wound heals them,
Or my tears make them glow,
And my blood paints them crimson.

My quick breathing flits about, but
I do not mind if someone plays a flute
Blowing into the holes of my bones 
And sings through the lips 
Borrowed from me.
 
Let them sing, why must I mind it?
The lips are not mine. Nor is the song!

 

Bipin Nayak

Bipin Nayak (1950), a bold and engaging voice in the literary scenario of modern Odisha, is a trend setter who explored new possibilities for Odia poetry. One of the most significant postmodernist and minimalist poet in Odia, Nayak is a believer in the artefact of words than the meaning and medium. For him poetry is an aesthetic exploration through the fragile, fluid words which could be liberated from its conventional canons and connotations. There is a distinct undertone of metaphysical too in his poetry that hovers over the slim divide between the real and the surreal. Bipin Nayak is a pioneer in Odia auto-fiction writing. His ‘Jatra ra Ketoti Pada’[1], an unprecedented experimental work, that challenges the conventional style through a blending of prose and poetry and does not conform to any traditional literary genre. Besides being the recipient of the prestigious Odisha Sahitya Akademi award the poet has received several accolades for his contribution to Odia literature. Significant amongst them are the Bishuba Jhankar Purashkar, Akhila Mohan Kabita Sammana, Sachivalaya Lekhaka Parishada Sammana and Sammana from Kalinga Sahitya Samaja. He has been widely published in Hindi, Bengali and also in English and has adorned the pages of Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati and other prestigious journals. His major works include Swarachitra (The Painted voice) that fetched him the Odisha Sahitya Akademi award, Nija Nija Barnabodha Apustaka, Sadaja, Bidagdha Bichara, Band Ghara ra Basna.         

[1] Translates to ‘how many steps are there in a journey’

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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