There was a young ghost from the moon who said, “Too late is too soon!” On a spectral mandolin because he can’t sing he strums a phantasmic tune.
The skeleton sat down to dinner forgetting he had been a sinner in his former life when he berated his wife for not being fitter and slimmer.
The headless phantom was right to complain about electric light. Because of the glare on the highest stair his scares lack sufficient fright.
The werewolf was rarely hairy and this meant he wasn’t scary enough for the toughs in collars and cuffs he met on the moonlit prairie.
There was a zombie technician who lurched on one final mission to invent a reactor to power a tractor that relied on fusion, not fission.
The vampire was feeling quite batty because his cloak had grown tatty. So he remained at home at ease on his own wheezing the Gymnopédies of Satie.
A demon who newly adored tiramisu composed an ardent billet-doux to the pudding in question without any digression on his previous love for Vindaloo.
From Public Domain
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
Night in Karnataka. And the chapatti-flat pointy faced chap taking a nap on the lap of the cool breeze, spearlike chin piercing the caps of his hard knees, finally wakes...
My nap was nipped in the bed… I mean bud, he said.
And he yawns in an hour long before dawn. Soon she will return and he will sing:
Yours were the tamarind tipped mammaries from which I sipped with my lips without pause.
Already he can hear her footsteps as she walks along the path next to the river. O! night in balmy Karnataka! Mango fandango and guava palaver. She croons the following:
I will strip you down and kiss you all over. And tickle you with my sweet tongue on the sides of your ribs. Then I’ll pluck one of your ribs and make a woman. A rib-cage ready-made maid.
HE: She can cook for us? SHE: Yes, but you must pay her well. HE: With what? I am penniless and feckless, a freckle-cheeked pointy faced chap, brow-beaten and lacking grace, who clearly hasn’t eaten for several days. SHE: I have brought you a coconut. We will eat it together inside the hut. A rhyme will fill us up until then, will it not?
(She dances alluringly)
Coconut husk or husky voice. We have no choice but to enjoy the coconut milk of human kindness.
HE: There is no tool to open it. SHE: Crack it with your chin, O pointy faced chap! Thwack it once or twice or even thrice and don’t be such a fool. HE: I know that a man in love is like a glove without a hand. I am that glove and I need a hand with the gift that you bring. To crack a nut as big as that requires more than a simple chin. It would damage my heavenly head and to be well fed I am not inclined to sin. I am feckless but clearly not reckless. That shell would be hell for my infernal chin.
And then she says:
Wary of shells you are. I wear tinkling bells on my ankles. Can you hear them from afar? O! pointy faced chap you should clap your hands and tap your heels to keep the fine timing of this rhyme, to keep the sublime rhythm of this auspicious, meretricious, quite delicious song.
HE: I will clap and tap as I am bid.
(An hour or two goes by)
From his rib she makes a maid but he is afraid something will go wrong. And it does. The maid has no desire to work like a slave. She plucks one of his other ribs and makes a man before they can stop her. The maid and the new man sing an amorous duet before eloping:
Robbed of ribs he rubs his chest. We must confess that we would take any part of his body that was required for us to achieve our desire. A ready made maid and her bony beau. Off we go to set up house together…
(No matter the weather, they flee.)
HE: They are eloping on a horse. There are no horses here. I don’t understand! SHE: O! pointy faced chap. The coconut halves are hooves and this proves that nothing but nothing is an obstacle to true love. He: Nothing but nothing? Now then. What is this second nothing of which you speak? Tell me quickly and kiss my cheek. SHE: Pay attention then! Pay it with any amount of rupees you please. Pay with the coin-like reflections of stars on your knees.
O! That is the nothing of the void that we must avoid for as long as we can. We squeak when we contemplate it, for it’s a void that sits on the chair of our souls. Be bold! Forget the ways of the old, we have each other. Closer than sister and brother, you and I. Never before in history has a pointy faced chap quite as daft been so truly adored….
And they embrace each other and she sinks more deeply into his chest than usual, for he is missing two ribs. Dawn has broken but love has been mended. And there will be other nights when they will sing the simple refrain:
O! night in Karnataka! O! night in Karnataka!
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
Naramsetti Umamaheswararao makes up a new fable. Click here to read.
Feature
A review of Jaladhar Sen’s The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal, and an online interview with the translator. Click here to read.
Autumn Garden by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). From Public Domain
September heralds the start of year-end festivities around the world. It’s autumn in one part and spring in another – both seasons that herald change. While our planet celebrates changes, dichotomies, opposites and inclusively gazes with wonder at the endless universe in all its splendour, do we? Festivals are times of good cheer and fun with our loved ones. And yet, a large part of the world seems to be in disarray with manmade disasters wrought by our own species on its own home planet. Despite the sufferings experienced by victims of climate and war-related calamities, the majority will continue to observe rituals out of habit while subscribing to exclusivity and shun change in any form. Occasionally, there are those who break all rules to create a new norm.
One such group of people are the bauls or mendicants from Bengal. Aruna Chakravarti has shared an essay about these people who have created a syncretic lore with music and nature, defying the borders that divide humanity into exclusive groups. As if to complement this syncretic flow, we have Professor Fakrul Alam’s piece on a human construct, literary clubs spanning different cultures spread over centuries – no less an area in which we find norms redefined for, the literary, often, are the harbingers of change.
Mandal, herself, has a brilliant translation featured in this issue. We have a review of her book, an interview with her, and an excerpt from the translation of Jaladhar Sen’s The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas. Written and first published in the Tagore family journal, Bharati, the narrative is an outstanding cultural bridge which even translates Bengali humour for an Anglophone readership. That Sen had a strictly secular perspective in the nineteenth century when blind devotion was often a norm is showcased in Mandal’s translation as well as the stupendous descriptions of the Himalayas that haunt with elegant simplicity.
Our fiction this month seems largely focussed on women’s stories from around the world. While Fiona Sinclair and Erin Jamieson reflect on mother-daughter relationships, Anandita Dey looks into a woman’s dilemma as she tries to adjust to the accepted norm of an ‘arranged’ marriage. Rashida Murphy explores deep rooted social biases that create issues faced by a woman with a light touch. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao brings in variety with a fable – a story that reflects human traits transcending gender disparity.
The September issue would not have been possible without contributions of words and photographs by many of you. Huge thanks to all of you, to the fabulous team and to Sohana Manzoor, whose art has become synonymous with our journal. And our heartfelt thanks to our wonderful readers, without who the effort of putting together this journal would be pointless. Thank you all.
I had too much to drink: I was drunk. Too much to think: I was thunk.
My pet mink went missing, he’s no longer present, so he must be a monk and the idea is unpleasant.
If I search the monasteries I may be reunited with him. Let’s give it a try! When I peer through a hole in the abbey wall in order to spy on the mink all alone, the hole is a chink in a stone, but in the past tense it turns into a chunk of rock that falls on my head.
I blink, did I blunk? I clink, did I clunk? I feel like a fink in a funk, lips to lick and out of luck, in the pink with a punk.
Skating on a rink with a shrink I feel that I have shrunk. Washing my face in a sink I think that my nose has sunk.
From Public Domain
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
The Fall of Icarus by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). From Public Domain
ICARUS
Your wings soared to foolish heights once only; the wax slipped away from an angry sun, sealing your fate on the waters below with your own mortal stamp.
Few feathers remained to fall in your wake; most, caught by currents of air, circle the globe and fall over our cities even now. I found one in my gutter.
COUNTY HALL VISTA
The fountains are silent the fishermen hunch in the rain After lunch, the workers greet the day again mayonnaise on their lips stretching weary limbs while the aged heron skims low with ponderous dignity across the bay beak soured in oil.
Senile Pagoda lonely as the fishermen who line the wharf stuffed full with intentions pending never ending bureaucratic mockeries of a system At lunchtime the workers feed; I watch them through the canteen window.
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
Nazrul’s Jonomo, Jonomo Gelo(Generations passed) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read and listen to a rendition by the famed Feroza Begum.
Ajit Cour‘s short story, Nandu, has been translated from Punjabi by C Christine Fair. Click here to read.
The Scarecrowby Anwar Sahib Khan has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Naramsetti Umamaheswararao moulds children’s perspectives. Click here to read.
Notes from Japan
In American Wife,Suzanne Kamata gives a short story set set in the Obon festival in Japan. Click here to read.
Conversation
Neeman Sobhan, author of Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome, discusses shuttling between multiple cultures and finding her identity in words. Click here to road.
Storm in purple by Arina Tcherem. From Public Domain
If we take a look at our civilisation, there are multiple kinds of storms that threaten to annihilate our way of life and our own existence as we know it. The Earth and the human world face twin threats presented by climate change and wars. While on screen, we watch Gaza and Ukraine being sharded out of life by human-made conflicts over constructs made by our own ‘civilisations’, we also see many of the cities and humankind ravaged by floods, fires, rising sea levels and global warming. Along with that come divides created by economics and technology. Many of these themes reverberate in this month’s issue.
From South Australia, Meredith Stephens writes of marine life dying due to algal growth caused by rising water temperatures in the oceans — impact of global warming. She has even seen a dead dolphin and a variety of fishes swept up on the beach, victims of the toxins that make the ocean unfriendly for current marine life. One wonders how much we will be impacted by such changes! And then there is technology and the chatbot taking over normal human interactions as described by Farouk Gulsara. Is that good for us? If we perhaps stop letting technology take over lives as Gulsara and Jun A. Alindogan have contended, it might help us interact to find indigenous solutions, which could impact the larger framework of our planet. Alindogan has also pointed out the technological divide in Philippines, where some areas get intermittent or no electricity. And that is a truth worldwide — lack of basic resources and this technological divide.
On the affluent side of such divides are moving to a new planet, discussions on immortality — Amortals[1] by Harari’s definition, life and death by euthanasia. Ratnottama Sengupta brings to us a discussion on death by choice — a privilege of the wealthy who pay to die painlessly. The discussion on whether people can afford to live or die by choice lies on the side of the divide where basic needs are not an issue, where homes have not been destroyed by bombs and where starvation is a myth, where climate change is not wrecking villages with cloudbursts. In Kashmir, we can find a world where many issues exist and violences are a way of life. In the midst of such darkness, a bit of kindness and more human interactions as described by Gower Bhat in ‘The Man from Pulwama’ goes some way in alleviating suffering. Perhaps, we can take a page of the life of such a man. In the middle of all the raging storms, Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in a bit of humour or rather irony with his strange piece on his penchant for syrups, a little island removed from conflicts which seem to rage through this edition though it does raise concerns that affect our well-being.
Parichha has also reviewed a book by another contemporary Odia woman author, Snehaprava Das. The collection of short stories is called Keep it Secret. Madhuri Kankipati has discussed O Jungio’s The Kite of Farewells: Stories from Nagaland and Somdatta Mandal has written about Chhimi Tenduf-La’s A Hiding to Nothing, a novel by a global Tibetan living in Sri Lanka with the narrative between various countries. We have an interview with a global nomad too, Neeman Sobhan, who finds words help her override borders. In her musing on Ostia Antica, a historic seaside outside Rome, Sobhan mentions how the town was abandoned because of the onset of anopheles mosquitos. Will our cities also get impacted in similar ways because of the onset of global ravages induced by climate change? This musing can be found as a book excerpt from Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome, her book on her life as a global nomad. The other book excerpt is by a well-known writer who has also lived far from where he was born, MA Aldrich. His book,From Rasa to Lhasa: The Sacred Center of the Mandala is said to be “A sweeping, magnificent biography—which combines historical research, travel-writing and discussion of religion and everyday culture—Old Lhasa is the most comprehensive account of the fabled city ever written in English.”
With that, we come to our fiction section. This time we truly have stories from around the globe with Suzanne Kamata sending a story set in the Bon festival that’s being celebrated in Japan this week for her column. From there, we move to Taiwan with C. J. Anderson-Wu’s narrative reflecting disappearances during the White Terror (1947-1987), a frightening period for people stretched across almost four decades. Gigi Gosnell writes of the horrific abuse faced by a young Filipino girl as the mother works as a domestic helper in Dubai. Paul Mirabile gives us a cross-cultural narrative about a British who opts to become a dervish. While Hema R touches on women’s issues from within India, Sahitya Akademi Award Winner, Naramsetti Umamaheshwararao, writes a story about children.
With such hope growing out of a neolithic burial chamber, maybe there is hope for life to survive despite all the bleakness we see around us. Maybe, with a touch of magic and a sprinkle of realism – our sense of hope, faith and our ability to adapt to changes, we will survive for yet another millennia.
We wind up our content for the August issue with the eternal bait for our species — hope. Huge thanks to the fantastic team at Borderless and to all our wonderful writers. Truly grateful to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork and many thanks to all our wonderful readers for their time…
Tinkinswood Burial Chamber from Neolithic times. From Public Domain
TINKINSWOOD BURIAL CHAMBER
Frost shells the pitted stone glittering like winter stars. The early sun warms knees of rock, the slabs that hold the past in place. In spring warm rain will crack the seeds of life: tangled roots will grow free again. The dying echo of long ago alone will stay the same. But when the year is middle-aged balding on top and tired below though the leaves wither and die this echo will remain.
VALE OF GLAMORGAN
On the coast of the Vale it avails us not to think a lot about passing time.
The towering cliffs are gracious hosts to the fossils of species that never failed to endure in stone.
Ammonite spirals no longer turn like bicycle wheels: the past is real. Chains of Time were frozen when ancient brakes applied.
The tone of eternity is a broken drone: our minutes, our hours are petrified flowers in the littoral garden of prehistory.
They die: we harden, embedded for certain in mineral infinity.
Vale of Glamorgan where Rhys Hughes grew up. From Public Domain
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
Ratnottama Sengupta muses on her encounter with the writings of eminent artist and writer, Dhruba Esh, and translates one his many stories, Amiyashankar Go Back Home from Bengali. Click here to read.
Borderless 