Rinku Dutta – Borderless

Borderless, June 2024

Editorial

Fly High…Like Birds in the Sky… Click here to read.

Translations

Nazrul’s Nur Jahan, the Mughal empress, has been translated from Bengali to English by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Eight Short Poems by Munir Momin have been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

An Age-old Struggle by Ihlwha Choi has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Okale or Out of Sync by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Kumar Sawan, LaVern Spencer McCarthy, Shamik Banerjee, Prithvijeet Sinha, Gregg Norman, Rinku Dutta, Alex S. Johnson, Anushka Chaudhury, Wayne Russell, Nusrat Jahan Esa, Ahmad Rayees, Ivan Ling, Swetarani Tripathy, R.L.Peterson, Ayesha Binte Islam, Rhys Hughes

Musings/ Slices from Life

In the Grip of Violence

Ratnottama Sengupta muses on acts of terror and translates a Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat which had come as a reaction to an act of terror. Click here to read.

Meeting the Artists

Kiriti Sengupta talks of his encounter with Jatin Das, a legendary artist from Bengal. Click here to read.

A Musical Soiree

Snigdha Agrawal recalls how their family celebrated Tagore’s birth anniversary. Click here to read.

A Cover Letter

Uday Deshwal muses on writing a cover letter for employment. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Berth of a Politician, Devraj Singh Kalsi muses on an encounter with a politician. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In A Day with Dinosaurs, Suzanne Kamata visits the ancient dino bones found in Fukui Prefecture. Click here to read.

Essays

From Place to Place

Renee Melchert Thorpe recounts her mother’s migration story, hopping multiple countries, starting with colonial Calcutta and Darjeeling. Click here to read.

My Love Affair with (Printed) Books

Ravi Shankar writes of his passion for print media. Click here to read.

A Story Carved in Wood, Snow and Stone

Urmi Chakravorty travels with her camera and narrative to a scenic village in the Indo China border. Click here to read.

Stories

Spunky Dory and the Wheel of Fortune

Ronald V. Micci takes the readers on a fantastical adventure. Click here to read.

Rani Pink

Swatee Miittal sheds light on societal attitudes. Click here to read.

The Ghosts of Hogshead

Paul Mirabile wanders into the realm of the supernatural dating back to the Potato Famine of Ireland in the 1800s. Click here to read.

Conversations

In conversation with eminent Singaporean poet and academic, Kirpal Singh, about how his family migrated to Malaya and subsequently Singapore more than 120 years ago. Click here to read.

In conversation with Jessica Muddit, author of Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet, and a review of her book. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Suzanne Kamata’s Cinnamon Beach. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Ryan Quinn Flanagann’s These Many Cold Winters of the Heart. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Maya Nagari: Bombay-Mumbai A City in Stories, edited by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto. Click here to read.

Basudhara Roy reviews Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali, translated by Sucheta Dasgupta. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Damodar Mauzo’s Boy, Unloved, translated from Konkani by Jerry Pinto. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal by Gurcharan Das. Click here to read.

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

In Exile

“In exile, you are an uprooted tree. Naked.

Leafless.
Bloomless.
Barren.”

She drops words, like tears,
Into the urn of our silence.

“Look!” she thrusts forward a tattooed wrist,
“In exile, you are a ghost tree:
No cicadas mating on your bark. No birds nesting,
No birdlings vying to fly. No squirrels scurrying.

No soil.

Hugging your roots, no solacing
Moisture.”

“In exile, you are a fish flung from water,”
She rolls up her sleeve and reveals
A tattoo of a fish, its skeleton.

“In exile, you have been picked to the bone
By Grief --
Grief has gouged out your pink flesh.
You have no skin.
You are left with spare spine
And bones;
Bones, hanging from your backbone.”

Turning, she pulls up her shirt: “But see!
Here’s my real secret.”

Nestling in the curve of her back,
Another tattooed fish;
A whole fish this one, shimmering silver.
“See! She’s alive! She’s swimming up the river.”
Says Hanan (whose name means the warm-hearted one)
“Like salmon,
She’s battling upstream.
She’ll return one day to her spawning ground.
Trust me. She will.
Never doubt that. Ever.”