Tag: Partition

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Review

How Suffering Unites across Borders

Book review by Rakhi Dalal

Title: Life Was Here Somewhere

Author: Ajeet Cour

Translators: Ajeet Cour and Minoo Minocha

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

India’s independence in 1947 came with its own set of political as well as social uncertainties and challenges. For the people displaced from their native places, it was a struggle to find a home in unknown places amidst strangers, a firm footing to hold. The stories in this collection by Ajeet Cour, a profound and powerful voice in Punjabi Literature, offer observation of everyday lives of common people in the wake of Partition and during the early years of settling of migrants in Delhi and Punjab. But more than accounts of struggle for their livelihoods, these are stories of interpersonal relationships, of pain, anguish, betrayal and heartbreaks.

Ajeet Cour was born in 1934 in Lahore and migrated to Delhi in 1947 after the Partition. She began writing short stories as a teenager and today is the author of twenty-two books which include novels, novellas, short stories, biographical sketches and translations. In 1986, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for her autobiography. In 2006, she was awarded the Padma Shri for her writing and her contributions in the field of social upliftment. She is the Founder President of the Indian Council for Poverty Alleviation, and has been President, Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature. In 1977, Ajeet Cour also founded the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, a non-commercial institution in New Delhi for the promotion of the arts, literature, theatre, music and dance.

This book is a collection of fourteen short stories translated from Punjabi to English by Ajeet Cour and Minoo Minocha. In her note at the beginning of this collection, the author says:

“I write because I am a witness to the horrors of daily life, day-to-day existence of people living next door, or in Punjab or Kashmir or Assam, or in Bosnia or Chechnya or Rawanda, or anywhere else in the world, feeling my destiny entwined with theirs, living in fear, dying like flies. And I can’t look the other way. I write because I believe that those who remain silent become a part of the dark conspiracy.”

The stories comprising this collection are accounts of everyday horrors faced by common people, of the brunt of estranged and conflicted relationships bore by people even as they grappled to find and hold onto a ground in life after the suffering endured during partition. Most of these stories are women centered and carry a first person narrator. The story ‘Walking a Tightrope’ is that of a woman torn between her husband and an irresponsible son disowned by his father. The author offers a nuanced glimpse into before/after the partition in a big household. She employs the image of kitchen to demonstrate a married woman’s domain as well as her confines in a patriarchal household. ‘Death Among Strangers’ is a story of a grief stricken daughter who could not take care well for her father post Partition due to the apathy of her husband. Both stories use death as the pivot which jostles the main women characters out of their pre-determined roles of mother and wife respectively. 

In some of the stories, characters navigate through the ‘babudom’ of Indian Bureaucracy. Trying to find ways to get their problems addressed, they often surrender to the system which becomes increasingly inaccessible to them. Often, the characters are irritated by the system which makes them invisible and works only at the behest of those in power. The title of such a story ‘Clerk Maharaja’, otherwise an oxymoron, denotes the high esteem accorded to a regular class government employee who carries enormous power when it comes to the movement of files from one desk to the other.

In the titular story ‘Life Was Here Somewhere’, a helpless and disgruntled narrator declares the whole country as a heap of garbage no one is interested in cleaning, and those running the country as visceral creatures feasting on the stinking pile.

The story ‘The Kettle is Whispering’ explores kinship between a single and a widowed woman whereas the story ‘Unsought Passion’ explores the ugliness of unwarranted attention. Both stories take us to the corridors of working women hostels in the early years of Delhi post independence, presenting a window to the dynamics of interactions and disagreements.

In a couple of stories the horror of terrorism is explored where the loved ones are either targeted by extremists or by the forces fighting extremism. These stories focus upon the suffering families, their anxieties and pain as they try to make sense of their loss. In ‘Dead-End’ a young woman tries to save a young wounded extremist even though she is apprehensive that he might have killed her brother.

Ajeet Cour poignantly portrays the internal and interpersonal conflicts as faced by ordinary people in the course of their everyday lives in the stories of this collection. Her writing resonates with their pain, her words capture their mindscapes bearing witness to horrifying bestiality humans are capable of and continue to exhibit in their dealings with their fellow human beings. 

Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .

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

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

The L-o-s-t Bengal Project 

By Isha Sharma

The year is 1905

The tunes of Tagore’s Amar Sonar Bangla* flower in the streets of Bengal

Curzon calls the Partition to create a divide

However, ‘culture’ thrives 

As Muslims and Hindus, unite

 

The year is 1947

Bloodshed and madness pick up as 

Radcliffe creates new lines

People leave ‘homes’

To find new ones 

Violence slices humanity 

How could Bengal survive?

 

The year is 1965

Bengal has two sons, one -- West Bengal 

The second,  ‘East Pakistan’ 

As conflicts flare again, the memory of the lost home revives

Women adorning sarees sing the lyrics of that Rabindra Sangeet 

 

The year is 1971

Liberation calls are made

As women get raped

A new nation is born but the legacy of the past still prospers

 

A woman in Bangladesh teaches her daughter tunes of Tagore’s song written in 1905 --

Amar Sonar Bangla may have been lost but is it fully forgotten?

It still hums ...somewhere 



* The national anthem adopted by Bangladesh in 1971. It was written by Tagore to unite Bengalis together to oppose the 1905 Partition.

Isha Sharma is passionate about the process of translating emotions into verses. Her works, including articles and poems, have been published in Borderless Journal, Kitaab International, The Indian Literary Review, The Indian Periodical, The Indian Express, Indus Women Writing Newsletter, The Feminist Times, and The Tribune (Student Edition).

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

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

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

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Review

Naulakhi Kothi: A Saga by Ali Akbar Natiq

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Naulakhi Kothi

Author: Ali Akbar Natiq (Written originally in Urdu)

Translator: Naima Rashid

Publisher: Penguin Random House India

The recent interest of big publishing houses in India venturing to bring out translated texts from various regional languages and bhasha[1] literatures into English is adding not only richness to the publishing arena but is also spreading the awareness of the existence of so many classic Indian texts which were inaccessible to the layman reader due to their inability to read the language used by the author. This has not only increased pan-Indian readership but spread the richness of Indian literature worldwide.

The novel, Naulakhi Kothi[2], containing 56 chapters and 464 pages, was written originally in Urdu by Ali Akbar Natiq, and has been translated into English by Naima Rashid. It contains a wide historical and meticulous geographical canvas in the micro-level as well as the sweeping narrative of rural Punjab that begins in British India and goes on in the years leading up to the Partition and ends around the nineteen-eighties. It brings us face to face with the lived culture of this place. The days of ordinary people of the entire rural Punjab region going about their business also come alive before us.

The wide canvas of Naulakhi Kothi offers more or less three simultaneous perspectives – that of the feud in the villages of Punjab between the Muslims and the Sikhs and the role of the British administrators who, in trying to maintain law and order in the region, also have their own axe to grind. In the sprawling canvas of characters, in the intricate, multi-layered world that Natiq conjures, with subtext, backstory and arcs, it seems as if we are literally living in the world and conversing daily with its contours.

The first chapter aptly titled “Homecoming” tells us the story of one of the protagonists of the novel, the Britisher, William, who after eight long years in England was returning to Hindustan, the land he had spent his childhood, to work as the newly appointed assistant commissioner of Jalalabad in eastern Punjab. He dreamt of returning ‘home’ to the idyllic Naulakhi Kothi, the titular bungalow built by his grandfather. The manner in which the Britishers had been spoilt silly in Hindustan made many families live like Nawabs and they lived a class apart – often more powerful than the kings who ruled the country. Throughout the novel William is warned by the hardened commissioner Hailey that his behaviour and softness towards the locals does not bode well for any British officer living in Hindustan. His nature was said to display “signs of a certain rebellion and a proclivity towards a poetic bent of mind”.  He was reminded that the British were there to rule these lands and not to romance them. He was asked to maintain a distance between the ruler and the ruled and in dispensing justice, distance himself from the wrongdoer and the wronged.

For the four years he was posted in Jalalabad, William took many radical steps. He toiled so diligently, putting his heart and soul in his work that he managed to change the entire face of the region. The standard of education alone had surpassed that in all other tehsils[3] of Punjab. He also had a new canal and several other small streams built. As a result of these, there was a plentiful supply of water across the tehsil, and an abundant produce of wheat, rice, and maize crops; a general well-being began to show on people’s faces. Because of his connections he could prevent his transfer from the place for some time but could not do so for ever. Through many twists and turns of events, after frequent transfers, and after the war broke out, he realised there was a grand conspiracy in which everyone had teamed up against him – the Hindus, the Muslims and the British. By the end of the novel, we find a decrepit old man who, shorn of his former British glory and power, living a lonely life in Naulakhi Kothi when his wife and children left him and went back to England. But soon he was even thrown out of that place to settle in one of the nehri kothis [4]nearby, and in the end, he died like a pauper with no one to even remember him. So much for his love for Hindustan!

The next sub-plot centres around Maulavi Karamat who for the past thirty years, had been the head imam of the small village mosque. The poor people of the village who could barely make ends meet, could not pay him a salary but instead supplied him with rotis daily which were religiously collected every day by his son Fazal Din. Whatever Maulavi Karamat had learnt from his father, Ahmed Din, and even that which he didn’t fully know, he used to transfer it all to Fazal Din, for the survival of their family rested with him. The fortunes of this man took a good turn when he was appointed by William to become the head munshi in Jalalabad and teach Urdu, Arabic and Persian to young children. This move was basically undertaken to do away with the disparity and poor percentage of Muslim students attending the government schools. From then on, we find Maulavi’s fortunes rising and gradually his son Fazal Din turns into a mature and sensible sarkari babu[5]. After two years of working at the Governor House, Fazal Din had enough to buy his own land and build a house. Post Partition, Fazal Din’s work increased considerably and with adequate means to prepare false property documents, he got enmeshed in corruption and amassed a great amount of wealth. His desire to learn more English and to go to Britain to rise above his class is an example often found among those who worked in the administrative service of the government.

The other most significant strand in the narrative is of course the constant enmity between the Muslims and the Sikhs. We are given the story of Sher Haidar who was the zamindar of a certain area being killed by Sardar Sauda Singh and his men — not in a clandestine way, but in an open, offensive manner. Ghulam Haidar, the son of Sher Haidar was entrusted by his subjects and relatives who pledged their loyalty to the new heir to take revenge of the killing and after a lot of incidents, looting, and fighting that ensues between the two rival religious groups, their fortunes kept fluctuating while the ordinary villagers continue suffering. The Sikh leader who was accused of murder remains free and he showed his prowess by moving around with arms in the open. Detailed descriptions of attack and counterattacks between the warring groups are narrated meticulously and one becomes aware of the looting, arson and treachery that prevailed in the villages of Punjab at that time.

It is difficult do justice to the vast canvas of storyline that Natiq so brilliantly interweaves throughout the novel in this review. The problems the British rulers faced during the world war, the changing equations in the country with the Quit India Movement, Jinnah’s policy for an independent Pakistan, the role of the Muslim League, the silent exodus of the British leaving Hindustan, the idea of Partition that had silently started ripping the population apart,  the resultant flow of refugees after the Partition was officially declared, the exodus – all these find detailed mention in the narrative as well.

Ali Akbar Natiq’s unique narrative style and the equally brilliant translation by Naima Rashid that stays close to the Urdu text preserving the flavour of Urdu sprinkled with regional dialect is to be really appreciated. There are no footnotes or glossaries but the context holds enough clues for flow of the narrative. In the translator’s note at the beginning, Rashid mentions that in the creative choices she has made. She favoured the mood and tone of the original – “If it’s bitingly sarcastic or insulting in the original, I’ve attempted to recreate the same tone and tailored the other choices accordingly.”  Throughout the novel the very detailed descriptions of characters and incidents create a great visual impact upon the reader, and we see the sequences like we do in films. Natiq has managed to cover such a wide canvas of the storyline with dexterity by juxtaposing chapters in such a way that they unfold like a cinematic reel in front of our eyes. Thus, despite its length, this novel with its social, political, religious, historical, and geographical issues covering a wide cross-section of the Punjab region remains a page-turner and is strongly recommended for all classes of reader alike.

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[1]  Language, referring to different languages of India

[2] Translates to House of nine lakhs(ninety thousand)

[3] Subdistricts

[4] Houses by the river

[5] Government officer

Somdatta Mandal, critic, academic, and translator is a former professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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
Narratives of Humankind

Looking for a Refuge

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Our population crossed the 8 billion mark in November, 2022. As we move towards trying to hunt for alternative domiciles for our ever-expanding population, even in outer space, we still have to take into account  the increased movement of people across the Earth in search of alternative homes driven by external circumstances or by personal needs.

Some have lost their homes and lands to war, some to climate emergencies and some moved out out of choice. Here we have collected narratives of past and present migrations, emphasising the fluidity of borders, despite the lines drawn artificially by manmade constructs. In an earlier interview, Anthony Sattin talks of nomadic migrations and the concept of asabiyya, or brotherhood, which tied humans to ideas and ideals instead of a piece of land mooted in Arabia by Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century. Has the time come to revive this concept with conflicts and the climate crises becoming real? As weapons, fire and water affect our habitats, one wonders if reverting to the concept of nomadic existence is not becoming a necessity… This small collection of writings will hopefully highlight the concerns.

Migrants

In Migrating to Myself from Kolkata to Singapore, Asad Latif explores selfhood in context of diverse geographies. Click here to read.

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

In Belacan, Farouk Gulsara shares a narrative based on the life of a migrant in 1950s Malaysia. Click here to read.

Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister from Canada and former Premier of British Columbia, talks of his own journey and learning as he migrated out of India to Canada. Click here to read.

Migrant poems by Malachi Edwin Vethamani. Click here to read. 

Refugees

In Mister, They’re Coming Anyway,  Timothy Jay Smith writes on the refugee crisis in Lesbos Island, Greece, in 2016 with photographs by Michael Honegger. Click here to read.

In A Voice from Kharkiv: A Refugee in her Own Country, Lesya Bakun relates her journey out of Ukraine as a refugee and the need for the resistance in 2022. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Ramy Al-Asheq’s Ever Since I Did Not Die, translated from Arabic by Isis Nusair, edited by Levi Thompson. The author was born in a refugee camp. Click here to read.

Refugee in my Own Country/ I am Ukraine… Poetry by Lesya Bakun. Click here to read.

Bringing Along their Homeland, a poem by Abdul Jamil Urfi, for refugees from the India- Pakistan Partition. Click here to read. 

In 1947, a biographical poem by Masha Hassan, set during the India-Pakistan Partition. Click here to read. 

The Grave is Wide, poems on refugees by Michael R Burch. Click here to read. 

Art by Sohana Manzoor

We are very grateful to our contributors who shared these unique narratives with us.

Categories
Review

Behind Latticed Marble: Inner Worlds of Women

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Behind Latticed Marble: Inner Worlds of Women

Author: Jyotirmoyee Devi Sen, translated from Bengali by Apala G. Egan

New Delhi: Niyogi Books

The very mention of the name of Jyotirmoyee Devi (1894 – 1988) brings to our mind the strong feminist Bengali writer, author of the famous Partition novel, Epar Ganga Opar Ganga (The River Churning), mainly depicted the lives of the women in Bengal who bore the burden of this communal divide, their bodies being inflicted with sexual violence, rape, and social exclusion as a consequence to the former two. Owing to the dearth in the literature that records such gruesome atrocities that were inflicted upon women, till date her work is extremely important. This present anthology however focuses on a totally different perspective of the writer where she tells us interesting stories about the life of the women and little girls of Rajasthan, and the discriminatory gender and caste norms that policed and defined their existence. 

Jyotirmoyee Devi was born in Jaipur in an upper-caste and economically well-off family. Her grandfather, who had emigrated there from Bengal during the British Raj, rose to occupy a high administrative position as the dewan or prime minister to the Maharaja of Jaipur. Thus, Rajasthan had a profound impact on her writings in the later years. Not being given an opportunity for formal education, her sole means to establish a relationship with reading became her grandfather’s library where she, along with her sister, were assigned to arrange newly arrived books and magazines. Therefore, even though she was a little girl, she attempted to make use of her multiple privileges that could help her access books and writing material. Married at the age of ten and widowed at twenty-five, she returned to her parents’ home along with her children and became a prolific writer during her long period of widowhood.

The ten fictional narratives in this anthology are all set in Rajasthan, and they create an elegant tapestry amidst the backdrop of Rajput grandeur and chivalry. Based on an eyewitness account of life in royal harems, these stories describe the very human interaction between men and women in this milieu. They highlight power play, disinheritance, and the threat of assault, which are perennial concerns for women. These include fascinating narration about the machinations that went on inside the royal households, as well as stories which tells us the plight of the veiled women in different strata of society. For instance, in “Beneath the Aravalli Hills,” a young village girl Dhapi disappears in the city where her father sold her for two hundred rupees. She is kept in a harem and punished for entering the festive hall without permission, she ends her life in prison. In “Frame Up” when the king dies, there is a heavy pall of suspicion in the kingdom that the queen had murdered him. Two decades later, when she is on her deathbed, she calls her son to tell him that the harem housekeeper and the chief eunuch had hatched a plot to kill his father but the young king walks away without acknowledging his mother’s innocence. In “The Child Bride” we read about the plight of a young widow Kesar whose jewellery is unlawfully snatched from her by the in-laws and she spends the rest of her life in poverty by serving like other destitute widows in the Govindji temple at Vrindavan.

Women-centric issues also recur in a story called “The Queen and the Concubine” where despite having plenty of riches befitting the Rajput royals, the ladies muse secret sorrows since their husbands, seldom, if ever, visited them. They spent their time in their sumptuous villas by holding pageants, dance dramas, and musical soirees. It tells the story of how the protagonist Kesar moved to the king’s harem upon his desire, metamorphosed from a mere maid to a courtesan, till she was burnt to death in the end. As per the rules of the state, sons of courtesans and concubines also lived luxurious and leisure lives, but somehow there always existed a fine dividing line between these men and the real heir to the throne. “The Taint” tells us of the king’s youngest son Samudra, who after receiving college education decides to take up a simple job in the British Indian army while his father arranges for his marriage with plenty of dowry albeit without his consent.

The human side of man is beautifully expressed in “Ungendered” where the royal eunuch decides not to have an heir and lets two young boys live a normal man’s life. Several other stories reiterate tragic tales of women in purdah and how many of them reach unfortunate ends when they try to escape from the strict socially imposed patriarchal norms that keep them totally voiceless. “The Princess Baby” (Beti ka Baap or Father of a daughter) calls for attention towards the evil of female infanticide by feeding them with an overdose of opium and focus on the limited social interactions allowed to young women. Though sometimes repetitive, the stories overall try and tell us about the miserable plight of women in Rajasthan, whether they were commoners or part of the royalty.

Before concluding, a few words about the translation. This anthology contains ten stories, each of which had been translated and published in different journals abroad (nine in different American journals and one in Turkey) before collating them into this present volume. The translator, residing in the USA, obviously had the western reader in mind and sometimes several complicated and difficult words and phrases are used probably to remain politically correct to the original text. But what this reviewer finds problematic is the introduction by the author. Who are the targeted readers? In her introduction, she mentions at random women’s issues from around the world and in different ages one wonders why the context of the stories translated here is not provided at all — except for giving us a bio-note of Jyotirmoyee Devi which is briefly included in the back flap cover. Also, the page-long bibliography provided at the end of the rather out-of-context introduction seems totally redundant. Apart from this lacuna of course, the volume will interest those readers who marvel at the eyewitness accounts of life of women and men, common and royal alike, in Rajasthan in the first few decades of the twentieth century.

Somdatta Mandal, author, academic and translator, is former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.

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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
Editorial

Can Love Change the World?

The night has nearly come to an end.
The old year is almost past.
Under this dust, it will lay down
Its worn-out life at last.
Whether friend or foe,      wherever you go,
Old wrongs cast
Away. On this auspicious day,
Old grievances shed as the old year parts.

— Nobo Borshe or on New Year by Tagore
Art by Sohana Manzoor

Mid-April, Thailand celebrates Songkran and Cambodia, Thingyan — water festivals like Holi. These coincide with the celebration of multiple New Years across Asia. Sikhs celebrate Baisakhi. Kerala celebrates Bishu and Tamil Nadu, Puthandu. Nepal celebrates Nava Varsha and Bengal Nobo Borsho or Poila Boisakh. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the Bengali New Year in spirit asks us to dispense with our past angst and open our hearts to the new day — perhaps an attitude that might bring in changes that are so needed in a world torn with conflicts, hatred and anger. The poet goes on to say, “I want to tie all lives with love” but do we do that in our lives? Can we? Masud Khan’s poems on love translated by Professor Fakrul Alam explore this from a modern context. From Korea, Ihlwha Choi tells us in his translation, “Loving birds is like loving stars”. But the translation that really dwells on love bringing in changes is Nabendu Ghosh’s ‘Gandhiji’, translated by Ratnottama Sengupta, his daughter. The short story by Ghosh highlights the transformation of a murderous villain to a defender of a victim of communal violence, towering above divides drawn by politics of religion.

Another daughter who has been translating her father’s works is Amna Ali, daughter of award-winning Punjabi writer, Nadir Ali. In ‘Khaira, the Blind‘, the father-daughter duo have brought to Anglophone readers a lighter narrative highlighting the erasure of divides and inclusivity. A folktale from Balochistan, translated by Fazal Baloch, echoes in the footsteps of ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ — a story that can found in the Andersen’s Fairy Tales published in the nineteenth century. I wonder which narrative had come first? And how did it cross cultures retaining the original ideas and yet giving it a local colour? Was it with traders or immigrants?

That such narratives or thoughts are a global phenomenon is brought to the fore by a conversation between Keith Lyons and Asian Australian poet Adam Aitken. Aitken has discussed his cross-cultural identity, the challenges of travel, writing, and belonging. Belonging is perhaps also associated with acceptance. How much do we accept a person, a writer or his works? How much do we empathise with it — is that what makes for popularity?

Cross cultural interactions are always interesting as Rhys Hughes tells us in his essay titled ‘My Love for RK Narayan’. He writes: “Narayan is able to do two contradictory things simultaneously, namely (1) show that we are all the same throughout the world, and (2) show how cultures and people around the world differ from each other.” The underlying emotions that tie us together in a bond of empathy and commonality are compassion and love, something that many great writers have found it necessary to emphasise.

Mitra Phukan’s What Will People say?: A Novel is built around such feelings of love, compassion and patience that can gently change narrow norms which draw terrifying borders of hate and unacceptance. We carry an excerpt this time from her ‘Prologue’. Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Chitra Banerjee Divakurni’s latest , Independence. Starting from around the time of the Indian Independence too is Song of the Golden Sparrow – A Novel History of Free India by Nilanjan P. Choudhary, which has been discussed by Rakhi Dalal. The Partition seems to colour narratives often as does the Holocaust. Sometimes, one wonders if humanity will ever get over the negative emotions set into play in the last century.

Closer to our times, when mingling of diverse cultures is becoming more acceptable in arts, Basudhara Roy introduces us to Bina Sarkar Ellias’s Ukiyo-e Days…Haiku Moments, a book that links poetry to a Japanese art-form. While a non-fiction that highlights the suffering of workers by enforcing unacceptable work ethics, Japanese Management, Indian Resistance: The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers by Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar has been reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha. The narrative, he writes, “tells the story of the biggest car manufacturer in India through the voices of the workers, interviewed over three years. They give us an understanding that the Maruti Suzuki revolution wasn’t the unmitigated success it was touted to be when they tell us about their resistance to being turned into robots by uncompromising management.” That lack of human touch creates distress in people’s hearts, even if we have an efficient system of management and mass production is well elucidated in the review.

To lighten the mood, we have humour in verses from Rhys Hughes and Richard Stevenson’s tongue-in-cheek dino poems. Michael Burch’s poetry explores nuances of love and, yet, changes wrought in love has become the subject of poetry by Malachi Edwin Vethamani and Anasuya Bhar with more wistful lines by George Freek highlighting evanescence.  Sutputra Radheye and Jim Landwehr bring darker nuances into poetry while Scott Thomas Outlar mingles nature with philosophical meanderings. We have more poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Abdul Jamil Urfi and many more exploring various facets of changes in our lives.

These changes are reflected in our musings too. Sengupta has written on how change is wrought on a murderous villain by the charisma of Gandhi in her father’s fiction, as well as this world leader’s impact on Ghosh and her. Devraj Singh Kalsi addresses food fads with a pinch of sarcasm. From Japan, Suzanne Kamata has written of a little island with Greek influences, a result of cultural ties brought in by the emperor Hirohito. Ravi Shankar takes us to Pokhara, Nepal, and Meredith Stephen expresses surprise on meeting a shipload of people from Colorado in the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere while on her sailing adventures with beautiful photographs. Stories by moderns reflect diverse nuances depicting change. While Brindley Hallam Dennis writes of the passing of an era, PG Thomas integrates the past into the present to reflect how they have a symbiotic structure in the scheme of creating or recreating natural movements through changes wrought over time in his story. Paul Mirabile explores the darker recesses of the human existence in his fiction. As if in continuation, the excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm seems to step out of darker facets of humanity with a soupçon of wit at its best.

To create a world that endures, one looks for values that create inclusivity as reflected in these lines from Charles Chaplin’s My Autobiography, “Mother illuminated to me the kindliest light this world has ever known, which has endowed literature and the theatre with their greatest themes: love, pity and humanity.” This quote starts off a wonderful essay from film-buff Nirupama Kotru. Her narrative carries the tenor of Chaplin’s ‘themes’ to highlight not only her visit to the actor’s last home in Switzerland but also glances at his philosophy and his contributions to cinema across borders.

Our issue rotates around changes and the need for love and compassion to rise in a choral crescendo whirling with the voices of Tagore, Charles Chaplin as well as that of twenty-first century writers. Perhaps this new year, we can move towards a world – at least an imagined world — where love will wipe away weapons and war, where love will take us towards a future filled with the acceptance of myriad colours, where events like the Partition and the Holocaust will be history, just like dinosaurs.

Huge thanks to all our readers and contributors, some of whom may not have been mentioned here but are an integral and necessary part of the issue. Do pause by our April edition. I would also like to give my thanks to our indefatigable team whose efforts breathe life into our journal every month. Sohana Manzoor needs a special mention for her lovely artwork.

Thank you all and wish you a wonderful April.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Read reviews and learn more about Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World by clicking here

Categories
Poetry

Bringing along their homeland

Poetry by Abdul Jamil Urfi

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Delhi in the 1960’s:
Nostalgia about Lahore was high.
Partition displaced refugees spoke of 
misery, mayhem, murder. Deda Ji regretted 
that, at the time of leaving, a pillowcase of house jewels
was misplaced. Bhabhi Ji had similar regrets--
leaving priceless possessions behind in Lahore
and friends.
 
But what struck us-- newcomers to the grand city
were the names of shops.
So many of them were
named after places in Western Punjab,
or those now in Pakistan. For instance, 
A popular eatery called ‘Lahorian di Hatti’
‘Quetta DAV School’.
Small eateries served dishes called ‘Pindi ke Chholey Bhatoorey’. 
A shop with the name ‘New Lyallpur Cloth House’. 
There were ‘Lahorian Jewellers’, ‘Sindh Wood & Ply’, 
Karachi Sweet Shop, Karachi Stationery Mart, Quetta Store, 
Peshawar Sweet Bhandar, Lahore Watch Co., Sialkot Jewellers 
and also ‘Abbott Drycleaner’s’, whose shop, it turned out, 
had not been named after some monastery’s abbot 
but after ‘Abbottabad’ --a town in Pakistan 
(made famous by the capture of Osama Bin Laden by US Navy Seals)
Thus, many places in erstwhile undivided India, 
but no more in India now.
Lahore, Quetta, Rawalpindi, Lyallpur, Sindh, 
Abbottabad, Karachi, Peshawar, Sialkot 
made their presence felt in a walk in any area of Delhi. 
The Partition displaced people had suffered immense tragedies and losses
And had also brought a little bit of their homeland with them.

Abdul Jamil Urfi published ‘Memoirs of the bygone century, Beeswin Sadi- Growing up in Delhi during the 1960’s and 70’s’, which was extracted and reviewed in The Friday Times (Lahore), Firstpost, India of the Past, Caleidescope, New Asian Writing, Scroll.in and The Quint. He works in Delhi as a university teacher. His poems have appeared in ‘Skylark’,  NAW and Vayavya.

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Categories
Review

A Thinker who Fought for an Inclusive India

Book Review by Bhaskar Parichha

Title: Maulana Azad – A Life

Author: S.Irfan Habib

Publisher: Aleph Book Company

At a time when India is celebrating its 75th anniversary of independence, it is only fitting that Maulana Azad’s contributions to the country should be remembered. He was one of the most prominent Muslim leaders in India’s freedom movement, whose contribution to the establishment of the education foundation in India is recognised by observing his birthday across the country as “National Education Day”.

Azad became the youngest member of Congress to hold a presidential post. Using his position to work to re-unite the Swarajists and the Khilafat leaders under the common banner of the Congress. He opposed the Partition of India because he thought Muslims would be more powerful and dominant in a united India. After independence, he became the first Minister of Education in the Indian government. In 1992, he was posthumously awarded India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna.

Maulana Azad – A Life by S. Irfan Habib is “the biography of an independent thinker who fought for an inclusive India”. In this in-depth chronicle, historian Habib takes the reader through some of the most decisive moments in Azad’s life.

 A widely published historian of science and modern political history, Habib was the Maulana Azad Chair at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi. He has authored To Make the Deaf Hear: The Ideology and Programme of Bhagat Singh and His Comrades and is the editor of Indian Nationalism: The Essential Writings.

Says the blurb: “Born into an orthodox family of famed Islamic scholars, Azad was deeply influenced by the pan-Islamic philosophies of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Jamaluddin Afghani. Azad had no formal education, but he was an autodidact who taught himself about culture, philosophy, languages, and literature. As a teenager, he successfully published several magazines and newspapers and went on to publish the immensely popular Urdu weekly Al-Hilal through which he tried to persuade Indian Muslims to shake off the shackles of British rule. He became inspired by Gandhi’s non-violent civil disobedience movement and was extremely critical of the Muslim League’s communal politics.”

Azad’s unusual upbringing, his illustrious family, upheavals in the Islamic world, and the initial inklings of Azad’s freethinking outlook on life. ‘Maulana Azad and Critical Thinking in Islam’ examines the various schools of thought, ethical questions, and pan-Islamic debates that shaped Azad’s religious attitudes and his approach to the idea of nationalism. ‘Azad, Islam, and Nationalism’ looks at Azad’s political career and his unwavering belief in composite nationalism and staunch opposition to the Muslim League’s sectarian politics. ‘Ghubar-i-Khatir Beyond Faith and Politics’ lays bare Azad’s philosophical moorings and personal likes and dislikes through a collection of epistolary essays written during his imprisonment in the Ahmednagar Fort prison in the 1940s. And, finally, ‘Building a New India’ charts Azad’s efforts to strengthen the country’s weak education system through initiatives aimed at primary and adult education, his efforts towards the scientific and cultural advancement of the country, and his contribution to the arts and culture of a newly independent nation.”

As Habib writes, “justice is all the more relevant to education as a process of harmonious nurture. Indeed, social justice commands a pivotal place in Azad’s general perspective, which influenced his educational outlook quite profoundly. He was conscious of the fact that a class or caste-ridden education system needed to be replaced by a more inclusive and just educational order. In 1948, while addressing the educational conference, Azad again reiterated that education, at any rate, must be pushed forward as rapidly as possible. We must not, for a moment, forget that it is the birthright of every individual to receive at least the basic education, without which he cannot discharge his duties as a citizen.”

Writes Habib : “With a view to gearing education towards the cause of democracy, he, in his very first official statement, referred to Disraeli’s verdict: ‘A democracy has no future unless it educates its masters.’” In independent and democratic India, with universal franchise as the key principle, the voter was truly the master of democracy, and Azad wanted this voter to be educated and aware. He was conscious of the sad inheritance of colonial inequalities, where 85 per cent of the country’s population was illiterate on the eve of Independence. Several classes and caste discriminations were discussed for the first time, and it was necessary to eliminate them immediately.

Azad was convinced, according to the biography, that the state had to play a key role in combating such social afflictions and provide everyone with the means to “the acquisition of knowledge and self-betterment”; however, the most disconcerting factor was the lack of necessary funds to carry forward the state’s responsibilities. Azad conceded with a sense of guilt as minister of education that the central government had allotted only 1 per cent of the funds in the budget for education. He therefore urged the Constituent Assembly to raise expenditure to 10 per cent.

Maulana Azad pursued the issue with passion and was able to raise the allocation from Rs 20 million to around Rs 350 million during his tenure as minister of education. On September 30, 1953, Azad addressed the nation on All India Radio, reiterating that “every individual has a right to an education that will enable him to develop his faculties and live a full human life.”

In about three hundred pages of inexorable text, Habib reconstructs the life of the remarkable man while arguing that Azad is more relevant now than ever before. An essential read for understanding India’s pre-independence history and the significance of a dedicated life.   

Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of 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.

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

Categories
Editorial

Will Monalisa Smile Again?

Book display at Om Bookstore
Book display at Midlands

The first month of 2023 has been one of the most exciting! Our first book, Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World, is now in multiple bookstores in India (including Midlands and Om Bookstores). It has also had multiple launches in Delhi and been part of a festival.

Delhi University panellists from left to right: Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Meenakshi Malhotra, Debraj Mookerjee
Panellists at Om Bookstore launch: Aruna Chakravarti, Mitali Chakravarty, Radha Chakravarty

We, Meenakshi Malhotra and I, were privileged to be together at the physical book events. We met the editor in chief of Om Books International, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, the editor of our anthology, Jyotsna Mehta, along with two translators and writers I most admire, Aruna Chakravarti and Radha Chakravarty, who also graced a panel discussion on the anthology during our physical book launch. The earlier e-book launch had been in November 2022. My heartfelt thanks to the two eminent translators and Chaudhuri for being part of the discussions at both these launches. Chaudhuri was also in the panel along with Debraj Mookerjee at a launch organised by Malhotra and the English Literary Society steered by Nabaneeta Choudhury at Hans Raj College, Delhi University. An energising, interactive session with students and faculty where we discussed traditional and online publishing, we are immensely grateful to Malhotra for actively organising the event and to the Pandies’ founder, Sanjay Kumar, for joining us for the discussion. It was wonderful to interact with young minds. On the same day, an online discussion on the poetry in Monalisa No Longer Smiles was released by the Pragati Vichar Literary Festival (PVLF) in Delhi.

At the PVLF session, I met an interesting contemporary diplomat cum poet, Abhay K. He has translated Kalidasa’s Meghaduta and the Ritusamhara from Sanskrit and then written a long poem based on these, called Monsoon. We are hosting a conversation with him and are carrying book excerpts from Monsoon, a poem that is part of the curriculum in Harvard. The other book excerpt is from Sanjay Kumar’s Performing, Teaching and Writing Theatre: Exploring Play, a book that has just been published by the Cambridge University Press.

Perhaps because it is nearing the Republic Day of India, we seem to have a flurry of book reviews that reflect the Sub-continental struggle for Independence from the colonials. Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Priya Hajela’s Ladies Tailor: A novel, a book that takes us back to the trauma of the Partition that killed nearly 200,000 to 2 million people – the counts are uncertain. Bhaskar Parichha has discussed MA Sreenivasan’s Of the Raj, Maharajas and Me, a biography of a long serving official in the Raj era — two different perspectives of the same period. Rakhi Dalal has shared her views on Shrinivas Vaidya’s A Handful of Sesame, translated from Kannada by Maithreyi Karnoor, a book that dwells on an immigrant to the Southern part of India in the same time period. The legendary film writer K.A. Abbas’s Sone Chandi Ke Buth: Writings on Cinema, translated and edited by Syeda Hameed and Sukhpreet Kahlon, has been praised by Gracy Samjetsabam.

We have a piece on mental health in cinema by Chaudhuri, an excellent essay written after interviewing specialists in the field. Ratnottama Sengupta has given us a vibrant piece on Suhas Roy, an artist who overrides the bounds of East and West to create art that touches the heart. Candice Louisa Daquin has written on border controls and migrants in America. High profile immigrants have also been the subject of Farouk Gulsara’s ‘What do Freddy Mercury, Rishi Sunak & Mississipi Masala have in Common?’ Sengupta also writes of her immigrant family, including her father, eminent writer, Nabendu Ghosh, who moved from Bengal during the Partition. There are a number of travel pieces across the world by Ravi Shankar, Meredith Stephens and Mike Smith — each written in distinctively different styles and exploring different areas on our beautiful Earth. Sarpreet Kaur has revisited the devastation of the 2004 tsunami and wonders if it is a backlash from nature. Could it be really that?

Suzanne Kamata gives us a glimpse of the education system in Japan in her column with a humorous overtone. Devraj Singh Kalsi dwells on the need for nostalgia with a tongue-in-cheek approach. Rhys Hughes makes us rollick with laughter when he talks of his trip to Kerala and yet there is no derision, perhaps, even a sense of admiration in the tone. Hughes poetry also revels in humour. We have wonderful poetry from Jared Carter, Ranu Uniyal, Asad Latif, Anaya Sarkar, Michael R Burch, Scott Thomas Outlar, Priyanka Panwar, George Freek and many more.

The flavours of cultures is enhanced by the translation of Nazrul’s inspirational poetry by Professor Fakrul Alam, Korean poetry written and translated by Ihlwha Choi and a transcreation of Tagore’s poem Banshi (or flute) which explores the theme of inspiration and the muse. We have a story by S Ramakrishnan translated from Tamil by R Sathish. The short stories featured at the start of this year startle with their content. Salini Vineeth writes a story set in the future and Paul Mirabile tells the gripping poignant tale of a strange child.

With these and more, we welcome you to savour the January 2023 edition of Borderless, which has been delayed a bit as we were busy with the book events for our first anthology. I am truly grateful to all those who arranged the discussions and hosted us, especially Ruchika Khanna, Om Books International, the English Literary Society of Hans Raj College and to the attendees of the event. My heartfelt thanks to the indefatigable team and our wonderful writers, artists and readers, without who this journey would have remained incomplete. Special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork. Many thanks to the readers of Borderless Journal and Monalisa No Longer Smiles. I hope you will find the book to your liking. We have made a special page for all comments and reviews.

I wish you a wonderful 2023. Let us make a New Year’s wish —

May all wars and conflicts end so that our iconic Monalisa can start smiling again!

Mitali Chakravarty,

borderlessjournal.com

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Photographs of events around Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World. Click here to access the Book.


Left to right: Mitali Chakravarty, Sanjay Kumar, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Meenakshi Malhotra and Debraj Mookerjee

After the event with a few students and teachers
At Delhi University

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Left to right: Radha Chakravarty, Mitali Chakravarty, Aruna Chakravarti, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri
Left to right: Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Aruna Chakravarti, Mitali Chakravarty, Radha Chakravarty, Jyotsna Mehta
At Om Bookstore, Ambiance Mall, Gurgaon
With book reviewer Rakhi Dalal

Insta Link to an excerpt of the launch at Om Bookstore. Click here to view.

E-Launch of the first anthology of Borderless Journal, November 14th 2022. Click here to view.