Will I see the Oppenheimer film? My answer – NO! I have no issues with the director, Christopher Nolan, as a person, nor toward the talented actors.
Do I hope people who haven’t considered nuclear weapons a current threat before, will now make nuclear disarmament part of their conversations (along with the demons plaguing a brilliant physicist during/after he developed the atomic bomb for our country’s war effort)? Yes!
That said, I don’t need to see Oppenheimer because I know how the story ends-even if they weren’t brave enough to show that in the movie itself.
I’ve needed some time to process my emotions after reading reviews, interviews, and social media posts. I discovered that Oppenheimer, even with 3 hours screen time, dismissed the rest of the story.
Spoiler alert — the bomb killed members of my family. My mother was 12 years old on August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima. She watched her beloved Papa die, lost her friends, and her home. 145,000 people died within the first 5 years of the bomb being dropped. And, not always mentioned — thousands survived only to carry the emotional/physical scars their entire life, unintentionally passing it on to their next generations-as my mother did to me.
The novel tells her mother’s saga as a survivor of the Hiroshima blastKathleen Burkinshaw and her mother(left)Photos provided by Kathleen Burkinshaw
So, I find it appalling that neither the death, injuries, nor damage from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs were depicted. Not to mention the omission of victims who suffered/continue to suffer from the Trinity test, despite filming the explosion for Oppenheimer in New Mexico!
Oppenheimer is not the first film about Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombing that I’ve avoided. I can’t even listen to the specific chapters depicting the bombing in the audiobook for my own novel, The Last Cherry Blossom (TLCB) — it’s no fault to the lovely, talented narrator. But researching and writing those chapters devastated me. I’ve read a short section of the bombing to students for more than 11 years, and I cry every time. I still hear the agony in my mother’s voice, her sobs each time she shared the horror of that day. I can still hear her screams as she relived them in her nightmares — nightmares that lasted her entire life. Just as she couldn’t unsee it, I can’t unhear the pain in her voice.
Greg Mitchell’s headline for his Mother Jones article,‘Oppenheimer’ is a Good Film that Bolsters a Problematic Narrative, also touched on another issue for me. Mitchell described the lone narrative used in the movie about dropping the atomic bombs, “… an officer who insists the Japanese won’t surrender otherwise, … a host of American soldiers will then have to die storming the country’s beaches…reminded of how savagely the Japanese have fought to the last man in other circumstances.”
Why is this problematic? It’s false. There were many complicated reasons involved in the decision to use the atomic bomb. To me, the American/Allied soldiers who fought, gave their lives especially in the last two pivotal Pacific battles, won the war. The atomic bombs were just science experiments and a warning to other countries.
This issue has been argued by many scholars*. Yet rather than debating the ‘why’, what matters now, in 2023 is showing the Hell that the atomic bombs (along with the mining/testing of nuclear weapons) unleashed 78 years ago.
I realise that Oppenheimer depicts a “singular dramatic moment in history…” a phrase referenced to Nolan on motionpictures.org post.
Kathleen Burkinshaw’s Grandfather & Mother. Photos provided by Kathleen Burkinshaw
But what about that same singular dramatic moment in the lives of Hibakushas (atomic bomb victims)? Because of that moment, I witnessed the frightening effects of my mother’s PTSD throughout my childhood — such as her hours in a darkened room holding the few pictures she had left of her loved ones.
I live with it now having a chronic progressive nerve pain disease. My damaged immune system is attributed to my mother’s exposure to radiation from the atomic bombing.
Before my last thought, I must mention that I began my mission to educate students about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (and why my mother finally let me tell her story to students) 14 years ago, because my daughter (then in 7th grade) was so upset when she heard students discuss that “cool” #mushroom cloud picture.
She asked me to speak with her class about the PEOPLE under that famous mushroom cloud, like her Grandma. My mom finally gave me permission to discuss it. She realized these students are future voters and should know why nuclear weapons should never be used again.
I wrote TLCB not just to honor my mom, my family, and all the atomic bomb victims. I also wrote it so that readers could connect with the people in Hiroshima during the last year of WWII – to show that the children in Japan loved their families, worried what would happen, cried over lost loved ones, and wished for peace-Allied children were feeling and wishing the very same things. We must connect with the humanity under the famous mushroom clouds, so not to repeat the same horrific mistake. Students in my daughter’s class weren’t being cruel, they needed a connection.
And I must say, I’ve had the privilege of making this connection with thousands of students around the world. It’s these future voters/leaders’ compassion and empathy that gives me hope that peace and nuclear disarmament could be achieved.
Photos provieded by Kathleen Burkinshaw
You might understand then, why I’m furious about the “Boppenheimer” /”Barbenheimer” memes. Believe me, the irony of two movies so polar opposites premiering the same day hadn’t escaped me.
However, I’ve seen pictures of Barbie and Ken dolls in the cute pink convertible with the mushroom cloud behind them, swimsuit Barbie with sunglasses standing in front of a PINK mushroom cloud, and the worst – the mushroom cloud wall art. Yes, it exists,and it is NOT “…beautiful within the chaos…”
Under that mushroom cloud are 80,000 people that died immediately or within hours that day-like my grandfather. Many people evaporated from the extreme heat of that blast-with only their shadows left to prove their existence. No family should ever have to experience that ever again.
One final thought, followed by a final question. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had the strength of 15,000 tons of TNT. Even so-called low yield nuclear weapons (which is an oxymoron) have a strength higher than that. So, the next time a nuke is used it could be 800,000 people dead in a large US city, in one day. Tell me, would you want someone selling mushroom cloud art after your family members are killed under that same cloud, now that you know the rest of the story?
Kathleen Burkinshaw, the daughter of a hibakusha, is the writer of The Last Cherry Blossom, a book that has been adopted by the UNODA as Education Resource for students and teachers to sensitise the world about the suffering involved in the atomic bomb blast. She first wrote and published this article in her own blog.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
The ship hauled anchor then glid smoothly over the placid, thick black waters. Overhead, thousands of stars studded the midnight sky. Most of the passengers chose to sleep but not Reuven, who at starboard, leaning heavily on the railing, inhaled and exhaled that nocturnal air of sea lust he nurtured, yearned and desired. Reuven had walked the decks of so many ships at night. He slept restlessly during the day. For it was at night that the treasures of the sea beckoned him with their illuminating allure, whose phosphorescent radiance touched and tugged at his heart as he attempted to pry open the lid of that still undiscovered treasure hidden unfathomed within him.
The ship rocked ever so gently as he peered into the inky depths. Deeper and deeper Reuven sought to probe, to sound, to err amongst the phantoms. But as night advanced, and the air grew cooler and he had to stop. His lungs were at the point of bursting. He gasped for air. He had failed once again, panting breathlessly. It was only the first white ray of the morning that he returned to the surface, throbbing with anguish, shivering with cold, smelling of brine.
He would have to exercise himself more strenuously, discipline his breathing rhythms, purify his heart further in order to attain … to attain what ? The un-pried trove ? The entrance to the azure cave whose lithic cavities and chambers would deliver him to the heart of his ‘Quest’ ? “But all three are One !” he murmured to the morning light. “All three are decidedly One, I’m sure of it.” He concluded.
But was he absolutely sure ? Since the nineteen-seventies how many years, how many vessels, how many dives into the oceans and seas of the world had he waited, ridden out, taken in in search of the seemingly unattainable? How many nights aboard the rocking and rolling bridges, under the brilliant or luminous less skies had he held his breath and made the vital plunge ? At times, he felt that he had ‘touched’ something : shoals of darting fish, a school of breaching dolphins, curious at this interloper, a lone blue or white whale ready to swallow him up like Jonas, yet hesitant due to the urgency of the diver’s dive downwards, and perhaps also to the oddity of such a ‘mouthful’. Once a soft, silken squid touched him with its suction-cupped tentacles. This touch sent icy chills through his body. Other odd phantoms that wiggled through the depths eyed him with their bulging, bulbous eyes rolling in their protruding orbits as they rubbed noses with him. Alas, this was the furthest he had sounded: the crushing coldness of the sea enveloped his body, and his lungs, aching, failed him once again. His lungs and his will ! This lack of intestinal fortitude and energy in overcoming the frigid deep would bring tears to his red, fatigued eyes …
“How many plunges would it then take ? How many crossings and trials ? Confrontations with the phantoms of the deep ? Were these uncanny and oftentimes terrifying creatures the guardians of the cherished trove ? Were they responsible for my lack of will … my shortage of breath … my fear of limits ? But is not the tracing of a limit a means of surmounting it ?
“I class these plunges as voyages. They are extraordinary. Extraordinary because beyond what I may call ordinary reality. For this extraordinary reason I believe my will retracts, my lungs fail, my fear reaches an acme of indescribable terror. Yet, I persevere. No treasure chest is easily discovered and its lid pried open. This knowledge I acknowledge, and in doing so, have hurried half the way by overcoming the consensus of a sole vision of reality. For I have come to understand that the treasure I have so desperately sought lies not in an ordinary vision of things, but within them, through them, over and under them. There lies the treasure I am speaking about. There in a land or space of the ‘Other Reality’,” wrote the dauntless diver in his logbook.
“And this space exists ! I have plunged into it, but have been thwarted in my attempts to reach ‘the bottom’, if that is all possible. The ‘bottom’ where lies the treasure …”
And so many years passed. Many decks paced. Many plunges plunged. Many expectancies sunk …
“It was on this particular cargo vessel as we left Southhampton for Cape Town that my efforts would prevail …or I believed would prevail. At the equator, one very still and humid night, the waters of the Atlantic were as thick as molasses, as calm as a pond in a wooded glen, as black as pitch. I leaned at the railing, quite alone at late hours of the night. I peered down into this uncanny oceanic instant and a sentiment of great excitement crept up upon me …
“It was the instant expected : I plunged anew …
“As I slowly descended the stillness of the cool waters, the titillating sensation of my kindling blood awakened a contrast that my mind found difficult to organise. It were as if my subjective make-up, my ‘personal space’ lay exposed to the various living entities that either obstructed my way, obliging me to circumvent them, or rushed towards me as if to scrutinise this alien interloper that had trespassed their ‘personal space’. It was not an uncomfortable feeling at all, but the collision of the two ‘personal spaces’ seemed to meld into an ‘impersonal one’, drawing me now out of my self now drawing them into me. Beautiful crimson corals provided the backdrop of this alternating movement, aglow with bulbous branch tips that undulated at my approach ; its branches were aswarm with sponges, molluscs, star fish, sea urchins and sea spiders. The coral quivered and quaked under their continual agitation, a silent and stunning quavering as I passed them by, several detaching themselves to examine the diver! Yet, they kept at a reasonable distance, hardly inhospitable, even friendly, my ‘human aura’ perhaps attracting them as they slid through the myriad incandescent branches …
“I felt so relieved that these fellow creatures welcomed my presence amongst them, and I thanked them for not upsetting my rhythmic breathing as I descended. I broke through layers of soft, silent, swishy beds of seagrass of the most viridian green. Nothing stirred within them; only the strong current of waters tossed them to and fro — like the sea vessel that I had long since abandoned — or so it seemed. Here at these depths ,Time had lost its tick-tock humdrum. It had become Space.
“Gradually the waters became terribly cold. My heart was palpitating. At these inky depths, no ray of the sun penetrated. No sound, human or other, pervaded. Now the queerest of creatures swam in the wake of my vertical drop, glaring at me either through tubular eyes that swivelled or through telescopic ones with lenses. They appeared amiable, in spite of the fact that I had disturbed their environment. They meant me no harm, even a giant squid, terrifying creature, who had made a bee-line towards me, stopped a short distance away. The creature began to feel my body with the many suction cups that padded its lengthy tentacles. I imagine it was verifying whether I were friend or foe. After several minutes, it let me pass, its beady eyes encrusted in its bulbous mantle fixed on me as I drifted deeper into colder waters, waters that were compressing my body and soul more and more.
“The darkness became truly frightening. My drop slowed down as if the waters were solidifying, gripping me in some viscid, glutinous substance. An image from the past darted through my mind : it was in the Pacific, I had encountered the terrible phantom of the abyss and had skirted that danger, miraculously. All of a sudden I was shaken out of my reminiscence by many spots of soft ochre-yellow light that sluggishly trudged their way towards me : I believe they were lantern fish flashing upon their prey. They swarmed around me, training their luminous photophore organs into my face. What an unusual prey they had stumbled upon! So huge. So unappetising. So unlike their daily diet. I think I was dealing with a viperfish, whose enormous dagger-like teeth shone under the softness of its lantern organ. And there, to the left, swimming as speedily as the thickness would allow it, a humpback angelfish, an ugly beast indeed with its deadly spiked teeth ready to devour me. Both of them eyed me, until at length turned against themselves. The turbulence of the waters blurred my vision, thousands and thousands of bubbles jolted and jostled me from left to right, dragged me downwards, helplessly caught in the vortex of this bellicose maelstrom. When the tempest had abated, peace and darkness reigned once again. Regaining my composure, I ventured a peek upwards: nothing …
“Heavier and heavier my body weighed, lighter and lighter my head as I plummeted to deeper depths, quite unknown to me. I became estranged from my Self … from my human identity. I had never experienced such uncanny emotions in my former marine voyages. It were as if my body had blended into the environment, had become one with it, whereas my mind, quite lucid, refused to yield to this inhuman ‘It’. Was my body detaching itself away from my mind ? How could that be ? They are inextricably connected … or so I thought … How many hours now beneath the ocean ? How many days ? Would I have both the physical and mental strength to weather the fathomless Deep … the soundless ‘It’ ? To overcome the abyss ? To reach the treasured Depth ? Yes, I must advance wither : Had I any other chance ? It was too late to turn back … Yet I had to surface at some time …
“Ah ! Now what is this ? I’ve seen that bugger before in picture-books – the black swallower. This phantom of the deep can be a deadly adversary with its bloated, distensible belly that even swallows small whales. It’s coming straight at me and I have nothing to defend myself, only prayers, only a thought of the Absolute One whom I seek with firm resolution. And there, a blazing light burns through the thickness. Either it too is headed for me or for the charging black swallower. It’s the pelican eel that was going into battle against the other, brandishing a large photophore at the end of its tail to attract the terrible black swallower away from me. Its enormous mouth has dropped open and in a jiffy the unprepared black swallower existed no longer, gobbled up within the grinding cavity. The spot lights of the eel flashed on and off as it struggled to digest such a crude repast. All this emotion caused my heart to beat faster and faster … my chest ached and swelled. My breathing became more and more erratic, almost uncontrollable. As I witnessed these turbulent events a rather metaphysical thought crossed my mind : Are all these creatures not traces, imprints, vestiges of His Presence ? Are they not, in the chilliest depths of the deep, enigmatic signs, obscure indeed, even frightening, of my communication … no, of my communion with Him, however ugly, gruesome or hostile their appearance be to me ? They are the true signs that I am on the right road : the Royal Road …
“My eyelids no longer obeyed their nerve commands to remain on the alert. I wished to sleep. To lay down and doze off for a while … a long while. I’ve had enough. I’ve come too far and my quest has come to nothing. I long to see the light of day, to savour earthly creatures, to breathe an unsalty air. I yearned to return to humankind. To the colours and sounds of life … Yet, I’m still alive, or at least I believe I am alive, albeit everything I touch has no feeling. A numbness has settled into my drifting body ; so light, so weary, so empty … a floating debris from an embattled, erring vessel …
“The debris floats into the crevice of a sponge-like lithic palisade. I am penetrating some sort of grotto, drifting in an airless, soundless world, tugged along horizontally as if a strong current were tossing and rocking me gently from one wall to the other. The haze that had veiled my eyes slowly lifts, and I discern a phosphorescent glow of myriad colours. The colours played upon my sensations without disturbing the numbness that had seized my body. At last, the ‘Separate Reality’? The twilight of gleams and glimpses ? Of undulating figures or phantoms that emerge in my mind when I feel myself entwined within the fumes of sleep ?
“But I am fully awake to my novel surroundings: A purple haze has crept into this grotto, chandelier-like stalactites hang in series of threes, all perfectly symmetric in their sponge-like textures and forms. I reach out to touch them but I felt nothing, my arm balancing heavily in some sort airless vacuum. Gigantic stalagmites studded with bulging, knotty boles and prominent tumours soared high into empty chambers like frothy fairy chimneys, dripping colours of blue and green, fading fast as they penetrate the darkened upper cavities. And away I drift, billows of silken lithic walls roll by. I serpentine like a snake through this intestinal gallery, chamber to chamber, passageway to passageway, the air or water current conducting me deeper into intermittent contrasts of sapphire flush, ultramarine malachite and pall blackness. Air or water current ? My body breathes ‘normally’, although I cannot ‘feel’ the air through my nostrils or throat. Have I transcended the conditioned reality ? Have I identified myself with this unknown alienness … reached the ‘Separate Reality of the Divine One’? The Absolute One is indeed known to us naturally, but will I be able to recognise him ?
“Nothing moves: no fish, no reptiles. I myself cannot move, yet beyond the inertness of my corporality something enlightens me upon the marvels of this cavernous world. All beauty does have a sense of the physical. Alas, I am quite unable to participate ‘corporally’ in that sensation, for I possess at these very moments none. A tulle-like curtain is drawn before my eyes; but on each side of me what an enchanting view of so many enfiladed pillars, like ossified soldiers on guard duty. Are they real ? Am I dreaming them ? I must say, however, that in spite of my benumbed state, I do feel this polychromic beauty. A sort of conscious feeling of a penetration of colours and configurations that leaves trails and traces as I sail by them, or better put, as they engulf me then expel me further into the never-ending warren of passageways and chambers.
“Ah ! Wonders of wonders ! Here and there I discern mural drawings of the most exquisite artistic stamp : aurochs, bisons, horses, hands with thick thumbs, tiny ochre-coloured men shooting arrows … Perhaps these regions were inhabited by creatures like myself. Prehistoric or primitive artists carving out their visions of reality, real or imagined.
“Am I then dead to this forlorn world ? To mine ? Am I passing into the Other World ? Is this where the quest has brought me … to the end … or to the beginning ? The phosphorescence glows of melding colours: blues slipping into turquoise, greens into shades of violent. Slashing amber yellows drip into rushes of rusty reds, which in turn suddenly explode into large patches of black shutting out all until bursts of dulcet rose and bright orange bring tears to my half-closed eyes. This I sense but without a sense of being separate from it all.
“Yes, there is something eerie about this voyage, something uncommon. From one of the arched, vaulted chambers a shower of arrow-like sparks falls upon me ; yet I feel nothing. I speed through a maze of silver and gold. I circumvent a sulphurous gauze of stalagmites of the most confounding shapes: pillars whose capitals overflow with spongy tendrils and drooping pistils, sprouting mushrooms, swollen menhirs, frozen standing stones and other awesome monoliths coated with red damask, crustacean Moorish arches, spiky gold steeples and then the passage cleaves into opaque chambers, odourless, soundless, fraught with the feeling of hopelessness. From one of the greenish Moorish arches, I see a stone mouse hanging by its tail, or so it appeared, and from another, silken silvery threads of weird waning, waxing waterfalls.
“Here, afloat, I am spinning through a wondrous world quite impervious to its smells and touches, yet moved by it as if it were sheltered within me. Sheltered by the commotion of colours and the seductive shapes, the endless erring of the same patches of pitch black, exposed to the sudden bursts of iridescent colours, I turn and turn and turn in circles ever wider.
“The momentous moment has it arrived? The Great Encounter — I mean between myself and the Absolute. No, impossible, why all this turning and turning ? Why the intermittent snatches of blackness that smother the chromatic bursts of phosphorescent hope ? Why am I not able to voice or move within the vortex of the revelation ? And the sacred trove ? Am I not worthy of it ?
“My heart bursts with melancholic joy. Pangs of glee spill out … I sense the midst of mellow musings rising like a curtain; the lid has opened, and the image of the Invisible One has come upon me … I gasp in awesome delight: No more angry, reddening suns will henceforth set upon me…”
*
After several hours of searching the sailors finally found Reuven’s bloated body floating in the ocean. The crew and passengers had been searching for him since his disappearance on deck after midnight. The doctor aboard concluded that his lungs had burst. His body was filled with water and microscopic sea creatures.
When the cargo ship ported at Cape Town, the captain reported the incident to the police. A certain Reuven Whaler had apparently fallen overboard during their route, and not having been seen by either crew or passenger, had drowned. When the police enquired whether he might have committed suicide, the captain shrugged his shoulders. When asked about a possible murder, the good captain turned red and vehemently denied any possible attempt of murder, premeditated or not!
In spite of the captain’s affirmative disposition against any sort of mischief aboard his vessel, all the crew members and passengers were subject to long interrogations: No one was permitted to disembark for two or three days until the coroner’s inquest had been completed and delivered to the police aboard the ship. The inquest stated that the aforementioned passenger, Reuven Whaler, forty-nine years of age, had drowned by accident off the coast of Gabon. As he had no family or close relatives, no further enquiries were made.
Reuven’s death thus remained somewhat veiled in mystery. Whether his body was buried or thrown back into the sea is anyone’s guess …
Now the readers may be curious to know how is it that I have come to relate these incidents given the fact that Reuven vanished one balmy night off the coast of Africa quite alone. How is it that I can account with such precision and emotion his ‘plunge’. Fortunately I was Reuven’s cabin mate aboard that cargo vessel, and when his body was discovered, before the captain arrived to check his cabin belongings, I quickly recuperated the logbook that he had been keeping and hid it in my belongings. I do not consider it as a theft, but as a keepsake … a testimony to Reuven’s ardent quest for the Absolute.
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNA
I sat down to write a new story and as I did so, I thought aloud: “I want it to be about a talking cat,” and much to my surprise my own cat, who happened to be crouching on my desk, shook her head.
Then she said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” I wanted to know.
“It’s corny and a cliché. It has been done too many times before. It’s twee and awfully sentimental. Childish too.”
“I feel rather discouraged now,” I admitted.
“Oh, don’t take it so badly. You can write my story, if you like. Just don’t say I’m a talking cat when you do.”
“And what is your story? I knew you when you were a kitten. You haven’t done much since then, to be honest.”
“You are wrong. My life has been dramatic.”
“I don’t call sleeping most of the day and sitting in boxes very exciting. In fact, your ability to talk is by far the most interesting thing about you. If I can’t mention that, why should I bother?”
“You don’t know what I get up to at night. But I will tell you. Pick up your pen and get ready to make notes.”
I did as I was bid and my cat began…
You are generally fast asleep (she said) when I go off on my adventures. There’s a rug in the lounge that is a magic carpet. You don’t know this because you have never tried to activate it. Scratching it in a certain way, pulling out threads here and there, makes it fly. I discovered all this by accident, of course. It was a night last spring and you had left the window open for a cool breeze. The rug rose in the air and carried me out into the garden.
Then it climbed higher and higher and soon the town was tiny beneath me. I didn’t know how to control the thing and I padded it with my paws in various places. Eventually I learned how to steer it by moving my weight from one side to the other. I used my tail as a rudder to make steering even more precise. And when I wanted to go faster, I just opened my mouth wide and mewled. I flew off and enjoyed exploring distant countries.
Where did you get the rug from? Magic carpets are far more common than people think. You assumed it was just an ordinary floor covering when you went into a shop to buy it. The threads woven into it might originally have come from India or Persia. I wondered how fast it could fly and so I decided to find out. I mewled and mewled as loud as I could and the rug accelerated until the ground beneath me became a blur. That was fun!
The wind stroked my fur and it was a pleasant sensation but it occurred to me that I might crash into a mountain if I couldn’t see where I was going. I shut my mouth and immediately started to slow down. It was night and the stars were big and bright above me and then I saw stars below me too, and I was baffled by this, because the lower stars seemed cleaner, as if they had been washed. Maybe some giant cosmic cat had licked them?
It took me a long time to understand that the lower stars were reflections in the sea and not real stars at all. I was over an ocean. I can’t say I was pleased by this, because water has always seemed a suspicious substance to me, something not to be trusted, avoided even, though I concede that it’s often necessary to life, which is why I sometimes stoop to drinking it. But all this is irrelevant. No land was in sight in any direction. I had flown halfway round the world and was now cruising above the Pacific. How risky!
My calculations were instinctive rather than mathematical, but cats have an aptitude for sensing where they are and as a navigator I’m reliable, but my exact latitude and longitude was impossible to specify. I was still travelling forward at a reduced velocity and I noticed other objects flying to my left and right, smaller than aeroplanes and soundless, and after a while it became clear they were much nearer to me than before, converging at an unseen point ahead, some destination beyond the horizon, and I was intrigued.
Soon enough, I was able to discern the details of these mysterious craft and I saw they were rugs of many different colours, magic carpets just like mine, an armada of levitating floor coverings, a flotilla if you prefer, all piloted by sundry animals: dogs, rabbits, snakes, squirrels, wombats. And the rug on my starboard side was so close that its occupant, a monkey of some kind, was able to shout at me and be understood. He yelled:
“You are the cat representative, I take it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You must be. You are a cat sitting on a magic carpet and you are flying to the assigned rendezvous. Therefore–”
“But what is waiting at that rendezvous?”
“An urgent meeting.”
“But a meeting with whom?”
“With us!” he cried, astonished at my ignorance. “One talking animal from every species on the planet.”
“The point of this meeting is what?”
“The conferring of special powers on attendees, as promised in the oracles of ancient days. Surely you haven’t forgotten the words of the oracles? They are unambiguous about this event.”
He continued to talk, despite the shaking of my head. He said, “We talk but that’s the only way we exceed our limitations. After the meeting we will be able to do everything that humans can.”
“Already we may do more than men.”
“True, but we can also do less. It depends on the task, and they are superior when it comes to power. After the meeting, this imbalance will change. We will be better than them in every way.”
“I never received an invitation,” I protested.
“Yes, you did, or you wouldn’t be here now, on a magic carpet, heading in the right direction. Do you expect me to believe that you are here by accident, a rogue feline who flies to the island thanks to coincidence alone? Do you wish to imply that the genuine cat representative is elsewhere, perhaps having overslept in a basket, as your kind often do?”
“I can’t say,” I said.
“The oracles have given us the sacred date. The day that humans call May Day and shortly those tyrants will be calling ‘mayday’ when we dislodge them from their undeserved thrones.”
“May Day,” I repeated, still puzzled.
“Yes,” he said, pleased.
“I never know the names of days.”
“The island is not far now. Soon it will be visible. I know your ignorance is a pretence. Now let us focus on flying. We are converging from every direction and the sky will be thick with magic carpets. Accidents will happen if we aren’t very careful with our steering.”
I nodded, for I knew not what else to do.
And then I saw it.
A mountain rising out of the sea.
It was an enormous peak, shaped like a pyramid, with smooth sides and a truncated summit, so that instead of a sharp apex it had a flat space at the top, an area the size of a square dinner table. But that flat space was utterly black and I realised it wasn’t solid. It was an entrance into the hollow mountain. This was a place where animals could meet secretly in considerable safety. The only danger was the chance of midair collisions as all the magic carpets tried to dive down into that small opening. I grew nervous.
I decided to drop behind a little, to give the others a chance to enter before me and clear the airways for my own approach and descent. I still wasn’t sure I was supposed to be going to the meeting or not. Maybe I had been invited ages ago and had forgotten. It was possible. I thought that if I went I would find out for sure, and I doubted I would be deeply in trouble if it turned out I wasn’t the official delegate. I applied the air brake.
In other words, I raised my tail and increased the drag coefficient. Soon my speed was only half of the other flying carpets and they flew ahead. One by one they reached the mountain and zoomed through the narrow entrance and to my astonishment there were no accidents. The sky cleared and at last it was my turn and I felt more confident about a safe landing. The mountain was just ahead of me now and so I began a smooth descent.
But I am a cat and my essential feline nature took over. How could I settle down to rest on an island without circling it first? I was filled with an irresistible urge to fly around that island a few times before dipping into the opening on the top of the mountain. And that’s what I did. Clockwise around the island flew my rug as I gracefully steered it. I circled the mountain four and a half times and the number seemed right to me. Then I dropped into the hole and landed on a basalt platform far below in a very dim light.
I thought that the interior of the mountain would be crowded with the other animals that had preceded me, but it was empty. No creatures and no carpets. At first I supposed they had gone off into an adjacent chamber for their meeting but it soon became obvious that the chamber I was in was the only room down here. Just this immense space inside a hollow mountain and nothing else. It was the greatest mystery I had encountered in my life. The animals had vanished! What could be the reason for this? And how?
I pondered the matter for a long time, an hour or more, and then the answer occurred to me. The island was located in the Pacific and so is the International Date Line. I surmised that the line itself passed right through the middle of this peculiar mountain. I circled the island four and a half times, which means that I entered the hollow mass of rock from the opposite side to the one from which I had approached it. In other words, I had crossed the Date Lane and was one day early for the meeting. Instead of it being May Day it was the day before. What a curious situation to be in! So I waited.
I sat patiently on my rug for an entire day and when midnight passed and it was tomorrow again, I was ready to receive the other animals, who were due to arrive on May Day. But none of them showed up. Then I examined what I knew about geography and I realised my terrible mistake. I had crossed the Date Line in a westerly direction, ending up in the eastern hemisphere, which meant that I had arrived a day late rather than a day early. May Day had been and gone. The meeting was over and I had missed it.
This made me feel despondent and I scratched my rug to cause it to ascend through the hole and hover above the mountain. I now saw I wasn’t the only one to have made a mistake. The dog delegate was still circling the island, having an even stronger desire to go round and round before settling down than I did. We called out to each other and I told him the meeting was over. At first he doubted my words and thought I was just a cat trying to trick him, as cats often do, but I eventually convinced him of the facts.
With his tail between his legs, he zoomed away, howling forlornly, his ears flapping in the breeze as he accelerated. I also turned my carpet in the direction of home. I wondered if the real cat delegate had turned up or not. I asked myself if all other species of animal would now have special powers with the exception of cats and dogs. It was sobering. Dogs would definitely miss out, but cats still had a chance. It depended, as I have said, on the official cat guest. Even to this day I don’t know if he or she successfully attended the meeting. I don’t feel an increase in my powers, but who knows?
I returned home and glided in through the open window while you were in the garage tinkering with something or other. You came into the house and were delighted to see me. I had been missing for a full day and more and you thought I might have become lost or stuck up a tree. You hadn’t noticed that the rug was gone too. You aren’t very observant really. But that works to my advantage, so I don’t mind. You made a fuss of me and that was the right thing for you to do. It is my longest journey on the magic carpet to date, but I might go even further in the future. It all depends on how I feel.
“And that’s your story?” I cried.
“Yes,” said my cat.
“And you want me to write it down?”
“You can, if you like.”
“But without mentioning the fact you can talk?”
She nodded. “Indeed.”
I was exasperated and shouted, “How can I leave out that detail? The entire point of your story hinges on the fact you can talk. It is about speaking animals. If I’m not allowed to mention your vocal abilities, I might as well not bother to write the story at all. You have set me an impossible task. To omit the one thing that makes the tale worth telling!”
She shrugged. “You are the human, not I.”
“What do you mean?”
“Humans are the ones who think they are so clever and capable. They give the impression that they can achieve anything, that we are just dumb beasts and they are the supreme intellectuals.”
I was unable to find an appropriate reply.
She continued, “So if you can’t think of a way to square the circle and tell my story without telling it, that’s not my concern. But I strongly advise you not to tell any other story about a talking cat, because it’s a theme that is worn out. It should be my story or nothing.”
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
“It just so happens that their[1] universes were different from ours: because why would their imaginations be constrained by a nation-state that would not exist for another thousand years?”
These lines from a recent article on conquests carried out by the Indian subcontinent in ancient times brings to focus that earlier countries or nation-states as we know of them today did not exist till the industrial revolution set the concept in motion. In the month many countries in Asia celebrate their independent existence or rather the drawing of borders based on colonial mapmakers’ whims, we should perhaps relook at the way the world stands divided.
Is this what we want as humans? Where are we headed? While conquerors write the history, we tend to gloss over what is left unsaid. The millions who died crossing borders, in race riots and of hunger, starvation and disease in refugee camps is overlooked, or worse, used to justify the divisions that still hurt the residents of the sub-continent and try to destroy any sense of oneness among the human species. We tend not to forget the atrocities of the colonials but we overlook the violence of the mobs that incensed with hatred instilled by politics annihilated and murdered. Their story is reduced to “us” and “them”. In our mood of jubilation, the recent bombings in the Middle East and the Ukraine-Russia war have already been delegated to the newsreels. But these are all people who are killed and displaced without any justification for the need to do so. One of the things that George Orwell had depicted in 1984 was an acceptance of a constant state of war. Are we stepping into that frame of mind with our cold acceptance of the situation worldwide?
In the last century, many united against the atrocities of the empire builders. They wanted to rise above the divides. At least greats like Nazrul vociferously objected to the basis of divides that were used to draw the borders. Translations brought to us by Professor Fakrul Alam showcase such poetry as does much of Tagore’s own writing and actions. Tagore organised a protest march against the colonial proposal of Partition of Bengal in 1905 by taking a procession in which he encouraged Hindu and Muslim women to tie rakhis[2] on men from the other community and make them their brothers. Tagore put the welfare of humanity above nationalism as can be seen in his writings and speeches. Reflecting on humanity, we have Munshi Premchand’s powerful story,Pus Ki Raat or A Frigid Winter’s Night, translated from Hindi by C Christine Fair, dwelling on the sad state of peasantry under the Raj. In a bid to rouse people like the protagonist of Premchand’s story, Tagore wrote inspirational songs, one of which, Hobe Joye(Victory will be Ours) has been translated on our pages. We also continue sharing Rabindranath’s humour with a skit translated by Somdatta Mandal from Bengali.
Humour is also stirred into Borderless by Rhys Hughes with a series of mini sagas in his column and a trip around the world in eighty couplets. These couplets actually are more in number — I tried counting them — and are guaranteed to make you laugh. We have travel stories in plenty too. Ravi Shankar again treks to the Himalayas and brings us wonderful photographs of his journey and G Venkatesh stops over at Istanbul airport to find a friend from across the border. Meredith Stephens travels to a French colony called Lifou Island — sounds unbelievable as in the month we celebrate the independence of so many countries across Asia, there is still a country in the Pacific that owes allegiance to a democratic European power! But other than writing about the beaches, Stephens talks of a temporary pet dog while Suzanne Kamata gives us cat talk in her notes from Japan in a lighter vein — a very pleasant glimpse of life. Devraj Singh Kalsi brings a grin when he talks of his stint at trying to run a restaurant.
Interesting non-fictions from a book lover, Sindhu Shivprasad, and from PG Thomas who talks of King Lear performed a la classical Indian dance mode, Kathakali, by an international caste add to narratives that focus on bringing the pleasanter side of life to our readers. Such stories are a welcome relief in dark times when people find themselves caught between price hikes due to the pandemic and wars. An essay by Candice Louisa Daquin looks for a way out of the stresses of these times. Erwin Coombs gives us a funny, poignant and tragic classroom encounter which reminds me of the 1967 Sidney Poiter movie, To Sir, with Love. We have darker tones brought into our journal also with Aysha Baqir’s story on child exploitation, a sad but hopeful narrative from Nepal by Santosh Kalwar about the rejection of a girl-child by her mother and a horrific murder brought to us by Paul Mirabile.
An excerpt from B. M. Zuhara’sThe Dreams of a Mappila Girl: A Memoir, translated from Malayalam by Fehmida Zakeer, brings us close to a community we know very less about in the Southern part of India. Meenakshi Malhotra has reviewed Tagore’s Four Chapters translated from Bengali and introduced by Radha Chakravarty, a book that is a powerful voice against violence in the name of nationalism touching on the independence of women, a theme that is reiterated in another book that has been visited by Rakhi Dalal. While exploring Neelum Saran Gour’s Requiem in Raga Janki, Dalal contends that the book familiarises us with a singer “who carved her own destiny and lived life on her own terms, in times when women were generally subjugated and confined to roles given by society”. Gracy Samjetsabam has visited Mamang Dai’s Escaping the Land, a novel that tries to weave issues faced in the Northeast of India and integrate it with the mainstream by stirring human emotions. Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed Rakesh Batabyal’s Building a Free India, a collection of powerful speeches from the past.
Within the confines of the Raj, there was a long court case where a prince who had been declared dead resurfaced as a Naga sadhu[3], a claimant to the throne, this time not to abuse his power as of past but to be a sympathiser of the people in their tryst to fight the Raj. Aruna Chakravarti has woven a historical fiction around this controversy centring around the prince of Bhawal. In an exclusive interview, she tells us the story behind the making of The Mendicant Prince— her novel that was published just last month. Her responses could well teach us how to write a historical novel.
We have much more than the fare that has been mentioned here. Pause by on our contents page to take a look. My heartfelt thanks to the whole team at Borderless for helping with this issue, which we managed to get out in a shorter time than usual and Sohana Manzoor for her wonderful artwork. I am grateful to all our contributors as well as our readers. We could not have made it this far without all of you.
In the spirit of uniting under a borderless sky, let us look forward to cooler climes and happier times.
[1] Guptas (4-6 century CE), Cholas (300 BCE -1279 CE) and other ancient rulers in the Indian sub-continent
[2] A festival held in August where sisters of all ages tie a talisman or amulet called the rakhi around the wrists of their brothers, who promise to protect them.
We set sail south from Dublin town
with forty-five sailors and one clown.
But before we reached the wide Atlantic
the frantic antics of the clown dismayed us.
Should we therefore throw him overboard?
we asked ourselves in urgent conference.
It would give us a chance to proceed
in peace and harmony, free from jokes.
Ah, to continue our voyage without fuss!
That was the issue we yearned to discuss.
And eventually we came to an agreement
that dunking was no cure for torment.
And murder was too extreme a measure
to improve the leisure of our journey.
The clown was a man, his painted smile
could be easily smudged with a frown.
There was no need to send his soul down
to the circus hell where clown ghosts go.
No! Let us find some alternative method
to restrain the fool and hobble his tricks!
We therefore employed him as a topsail
whenever the breeze turned into a gale.
And as his Pierrot costume billowed out
he would wail and occasionally shout.
Especially if he spied a distant whale
in a white dinner jacket, obviously male.
But that didn’t happen on a daily basis
for most of the whales had female faces.
Anyway, I have gone off on a tangent,
the sound of hornpipes is quite plangent.
And they call me back to my nautical duty
which is to lace up all the crew’s booties.
Not much else happened for several days
until mountains loomed through the haze.
We had reached Sierra Leone on our own,
just forty-five sailors and a lofty buffoon.
What an excellent marker of our progress!
It cheered us up and reduced our stress.
There was room in the hold for tropic fruits
and so we went ashore for an afternoon.
We bought bananas, mangoes and guavas
without anyone causing a hell of a palaver.
And then we set sail again, or should I say
we set clown again, and went on our way.
Shortly we passed the island of São Tomé
engorged on fruit with rather sore tummies.
It was at this point that symmetry suffered
a relatively modest but disturbing calamity.
For we had reached a latitude
where the second line of any couplet has an unbalanced longitude.
But we soon passed to happier frothy waters
full of strong mermen and their daughters.
A little later it was with squids we played
and afterwards with octopuses we prayed.
We safely rounded the Cape of Good Hope
and raised and lowered the clown on a rope.
By now he was fully reconciled to his position
and in fact embraced the ideals of our mission.
And those ideals were to circumnavigate Earth
and at the same time, to increase our girth.
Thus we devoured the fruit stored below deck
until juice ran out of our noses, flipping heck!
In the Indian Ocean we played deck test cricket
using the first mate’s wooden legs for a wicket.
Because there wasn’t much else for us to do
apart from stirring big barrels of strong glue.
Why the captain needed adhesive, I can’t say
but sticky wickets were the order of the day.
And that’s why we continued to bowl and bat
using avocado pears for balls that went splat.
But take care, shipmates! That was my shout
when beneath our hull erupted a waterspout.
It was so powerful that it lifted us up high
and then we were sailing through the sky.
Clouds filled the shrouds with damp fleece
and gulls in flight honked at us like geese.
Our altitude increased and we were chilled
and soon I supposed we would all be killed.
But when the waterspout turned itself off
we didn’t drop back into a terminal trough.
No! The clown on a mast extended his arms
and span on his axis to save us from harm.
Like a helicopter he was, but not a good one,
and for him, it can’t have been too much fun.
Yet his rotary action was certainly well-meant
and provided enough lift for our safe descent.
We landed in waters on the far side of Borneo
but jumbled up was our carefully stored cargo.
The clown was quite dizzy, but what of that?
So are rooms in which you might swing a cat.
Or is it the cat that is giddy thereafter? I can
never remember the exact categorical order.
The fruit in the hold had transformed into juice
and some nails in the planks had worked loose.
But we were still seaworthy and shipshape
and would remain so while on the seascape.
So we sloshed along like a wooden breakfast
with the clown, our saviour, sick on the mast.
But he would recover, he needed no physician,
for dizziness is merely a temporary condition.
And now we concentrated instead on the terrific
news that already our vessel was in the Pacific.
Leagues and leagues of unislanded blue water, see!
But is ‘unislanded’ a word that if used, oughta be?
I don’t know about that, I’m not a lexicographer,
and in fact I’m not even a competent geographer.
No matter! Onwards! We are circling the globe
and it doesn’t matter how quickly we are going.
Slow or fast, start and stop, and if the mate bellows:
“Avast!” we all know such a pause will hardly last.
And now we are sailing steadily east with no fruit
to feast on, but plenty of juice to swim in, undilute.
Solid food is what we require, growled the captain!
Though there’s no cellophane for it to be wrapped in.
Thus we stopped off at an island just beyond Fiji
to buy some cream fudge from a Heebie-Jeebie.
In nautical lingo a Heebie-Jeebie is a shrewd adventurer
marooned long ago who now has a commercial venture.
The fudge was copious and also coconut-flavoured
and he gave us extra portions as some sort of favour.
I think it was because he was originally from Dublin
and we reminded him of the things he was missing.
But there was sadly no room on board to take him along
so we departed while singing him a fudge-mangled song.
“Don’t worry too much and don’t make too big a fuss,
keep making your fudge and all will be fine, trust us!”
The lyrics of that song were probably a cruel deception
but when he heard them he gave them a good reception.
Anyway! Enough of that. Without wishing to fudge
the issue, we have other things to trouble our minds.
I’m a little bit concerned about how the lines of each couplet
seem to be getting longer and longer as this poem progresses.
They are almost twice the length of the opening lines
which, if you remember, formed the following rhyme:
“We set sail south from Dublin town
with forty-five sailors and one clown.”
So let us endeavour to sail closer to a shorter length
for the sake of the reader’s mental and poetic health!
And now we are nearing stormy Cape Horn,
as good a place as any for mariners to mourn.
Tossed on the waves for two and a half days
we were lucky to emerge wholly unscathed.
Back into the Atlantic we plunged in alarm
while the clown vibrated from the yardarm.
But finally in calmer waters we settled down,
the odds reduced that any of us might drown.
As for myself, I looked forward to docking
yet again in the harbour of old Dublin town.
Weary of travel and the fathomless blue deep,
tired of this poem and exhausted with sleep.
Lacing booties to furious hornpipe melodies
no longer fills me with joy but only self-pity.
But only a score of leagues or so left to go
and with this wind there is no need to row.
The night was dark like a pint of stout beer
and then I knew that home really was near.
How glad was I to spy right in our midst
the Emerald Isle looming out of the mist!
Mission accomplished, let’s all dance a jig
and finally discard our stale seaweed wigs!
Explanatory Notes
Why take a clown aboard a ship?
Because we were so very bored.
Yes, whales may go to formal dinners.
If they don’t, they will be much thinner
Hornpipes are musical unicorns,
piercing ears like mythical thorns.
Cricket on deck is such an odd sport,
umpires snort when a ball is caught.
Waterspouts are fountains malign,
always of brine and never of wine.
The South Pacific is a very nice place
unless your booties need to be laced.
Cape Horn is loud and rather sharp,
the diametric opposite of Cape Harp.
Ireland, my Ireland, how I love thee!
Two shots of whisky please in my tea.
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Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
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