We have started feeling the impact of climate change with a bevy of natural disasters this August. Glacial ice melts, peat fires, haze, rising seas, more storms, warmer climes and fires wiping out greenery are just a few that come to the mind. But, long ago, our ancestors — without the support of technology — survived climate events. Göbekli Tepe (Turkey), an ancient human settlement, more than 11,000 years ago was lush and green. People moved as it turned arid. Humankind was nomadic then. They moved with shifting riverbeds. In Europe, humans survived the last glacial age, about 20,000 years ago. Then, now when we are faced with the reality of climate change, why is it we tremble with trepidation? We even have technology in hand. Ideators and writers like Asimov found solutions. In Caves of Steel (1954), Isaac Asimov had humanity move underground to survive unfriendly surface conditions. He created a huge city underground for humanity while some moved into other planets. Perhaps, the time has come for us to think out of the box. And that is what we hope all of you will join to do in Borderless.
September has thrown up varied content. We have non-fiction which reflects on how changes are a part of human lore and how diverse cultures can co-exist to enrich each other. Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri dwells on this idea while talking of Nazrul’s approach to the Persian Ghazal. He writes, the poet through his adaptation of this form “showed how a culture can absorb another culture without losing itself, and how, in the process, both cultures can become something larger than they were before.” And perhaps from that largeness of thought will emerge a one-world community — that Yatish Kumar S espouses. Maybe from people who think beyond borders, we will find the solution to tackling and adapting to climate change. We have an essay from Charudutta Panigrahi where he attempts to arouse the survival instinct in humans. Young Shruti Keskar writes of how she finds a new lease to life by accepting and adapting to changes while Farouk Guslara philosophises on living and possessions. We have Meredith Stephens adding to the vivacity of non-fiction with a recount of her sailing adventures with wonderful photographs by Alan Noble. And Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in sardonic humour with his piece on art and artists.
A story-poem by Tagore, Swopno (Dream), has also been brought to us in English. An interesting memoir by Kallol Lahiri centring around his childhood in Bengal has been translated by V Ramaswamy. Translations offer fiction from Isa Kamari. He has transcribed in English the second chapter of his Malay novel, The Throne. The novel focussing on psychological torment is being serialised in Borderless.
Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed a rare book-centric memoir by Shanta Gokhale. He tells us, “Of Ancestors and Friends: A Life with Booksis an unusual kind of literary memoir. It is neither a conventional autobiography nor a conventional work of criticism. Instead, it occupies an intimate space between the two, tracing a life’s intellectual and emotional history through books.” Meenakshi Malhotra has discussed the renowned historian Romila Thapar’s memoir, Just Being, a book that reflects not only her own journey but the freedom and outreach that privilege and capability can bestow on women in South Asia. On the other hand, Mudassar Javed Baryar refers to the plight of birongonas, war time widows during the 1971 conflict that birthed Bangladesh, while discussing Saima Begum’s The First Jasmines. He reflects: “Begum’s profound innovation is to turn the narrative back not just to these women’s trauma but to their ‘humanity, resilience and heart’, depicting them as ‘architects of family and community’.” Somdatta Mandal has praised Omair Ahmad’s novel, Homecoming.
We have also featured Kanuprya Dhingra, who has written a book on a unique book bazaar. In a candid exchange, she tells us her non-fiction, The Sunday Book Bazaar: Delhi’s Book Street and the Making of a Reading Public, “is for the reader in Singapore, or Mumbai, or London, or Lahore who has their own version of this informal, unruly, necessary space and sees it reflected here. It is a book about books, the people who read them, and the people who make that possible…the book is for everyone.” It’s an interesting read almost inviting you to stroll into the serendipitous democratic reading space full of local colour and stories.
We would like to thank not only Dhingra but all our contributors for their wonderful work. Huge thanks to the fabulous Borderless team for their input and to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork. Thank you all — without all of you and our wonderful readers, it would be difficult to have a journal. In the spirit of ubuntu, heartfelt thanks.
Do pause by our September content’s page. And let’s look forward to the hope for happier climes and times.
An conversation with Kanupriya Dhingra with a brief introduction to her book, TheSunday Book Bazaar: Delhi’s Book Street and the Making of a Reading Public, published by Speaking Tiger Books.
“Most Sundays, I found myself walking alongside hundreds of others for whom Daryaganj was, and continues to be, the primary site of book buying. It was democratic, messy, inclusive, sometimes illegal, often chaotic, but always alive.”
-- Kanupriya Dhingra, Sunday Book Bazaar: Delhi’s Book Street and the Making of a Reading Public
Perhaps, Kanupriya Dhingra’s Sunday Book Bazaar: Delhi’s Book Street and the Making of a Reading Public, could be seen as a democratisation of the process of reading. In an ethnographic study of a book bazaar that springs up every Sunday, Dhingra familiarises us with the historicity of the culture of a bazaar, of reading and even locates its roots in the Mughal Faiz Bazaar from the time of Shahjahan (1592-1666).
In an earlier article dated 2020, she had written about the bazaar: “Historian Sohail Hashmi says that Akbarabadi Begum, one of Shahjahan’s wives, built this market in its earliest form. Several historical maps of Delhi show the existence of ‘Faiz Bazaar’ in this area. The name, Daryaganj, itself means ‘a market across a river’, where ‘Darya’ refers to a river (here, the river Yamuna) and ‘Ganj’ refers to a site where trade is conducted. It was not always the same product that was traded here; Daryaganj only became synonymous with the sale of used, rare, pirated books in the 1960s. According to locals, Daryaganj started as a consumer goods market, set up adjacent to the walls between Subhash Park and Kasturba Gandhi Hospital. There were vinyl records and hand-mounted record players, radios, transistors, mechanical goods, medical goods and used clothes; books too found their place. After a few minor relocations not significantly far away from the lanes of Daryaganj, a few booksellers moved to the now absent ‘Lohe ka Pul‘ (Iron Bridge), near Golcha Cinema, from where the street market began to expand. Before its recent relocation to a nearby site by the name of Mahila Haat, the bazaar extended till Delite Cinema Hall. The structure of the market appeared like a long ‘L’, with books stacked on the sidewalks of Netaji Subhash Marg and Asaf Ali Road, and more than 250 vendors.”
Dhingra continued spellbound by the ‘magic’ of this bazaar when she visited it as a child and then, as a university student. Coming from a small town, where bookshops that stocked more than textbooks were a rarity, she supported the booksellers when they protested the ‘legalisation’ and the relocation of the bazaar to a newer site in 2019 and wrote of it in Himal Southasian in an article titled, ‘The death of a book bazaar’.
The book gives fascinating glimpses of booksellers and book buyers, of connoisseurs and of students striving for upward economic mobility in the job market. It houses parents, children, old people and young, book lovers, browsers, students, teachers and more. Dhingra asserts: “A republic, in its original sense, is a res publica—a public thing, a commons, something that belongs to everyone who participates in it. Not owned, not curated, not gatekept. The Patri Kitab Bazaar[1] is exactly this: a space where a rickshaw puller and an IAS officer, a first-generation student and a shauqeen[2] collector, a vendor from Uttar Pradesh and a buyer from Assam all have equal claim to the same pile of books.”
One of the most fascinating stories that emerges is of the Om Bookstore — that can be found in major malls across Delhi and many major cities of India — and Om Books International. Dhingra met the founder Om Mago and this is what she wrote: “Om Mago told me that when he first came to Daryaganj, there was no bazaar to speak of—just a few men who had found this way of living. Books that did not belong anywhere, that had potential afterlives, had been discovered as a sellable commodity. ‘There was need in Delhi, and there were books.’ From that simple equation, he learnt the trade, built connections across Delhi and Mumbai, and gradually transformed a pavement enterprise into what Om Books International is today.”
Dhingra has gathered details from booksellers and connoisseurs. Connoisseurs like Sohail Hashmi and Abdul Sattar gave her historic antecedents while bloggers like, Mayank Austen Soofi, who runs the highly coveted The Delhi Walla blog, and claims to idolise Arundhati Roy and have met her in the bazaar, shared more recent perspectives. Soofi “has been passing in and out of the same neighbourhoods for more than a decade, documenting the minutest social and cultural changes” as the New Yorker noted, giving almost a ‘Proustian quality’ to his posts on Delhi.
Dhingra has noticed that selling books is largely confined to men though women buyers are visible. She sees a difference in approach among the genders, which is an interesting observation, given the fact that Delhi is known for its discriminatory attitude towards women.
What I found most fascinating about the book was the capture of local colours, though the focus was more centred on discussions around North Indian languages. It has interesting snippets like a man who operates pirated books out of the dickey of his car, lodging his ware near an ATM. Dhingra tells us: “At the Patri Kitab Bazaar, pirated books are called D ki kitab—where D refers to duplicate and/or digital.” She mentions too, a publisher that brings out ‘Guru Chela’ ( Master- Disciple) booklets. “There were some 100 colourful booklets with miscellaneous titles of useful literature in Hindi, English, and Hinglish.” These were a mix of write- ups on ‘useful’ tips as well as popular jokes and light literature. Along with these, the vendor sold things like “pocketknives, razors, scissors, tiny notebooks, used fountain pens, old wristwatches and their band.” She also found stalls selling old film posters, lyrics and even ancient coins! A copy of the Lolita (1955, written by Vladimir Nabokov in English) translated to Hindi finds mention. “I found a copy of Lolita in the bazaar once—in Hindi. The title only mentioned Lolita in Hindi, and there was nothing else on the cover except a woman’s portrait. There were no copyright claims inside the paratextual pages—no author, no publisher. For a reader or buyer who is not familiar with Nabokov and his works, it is just another novel in Hindi.”
She makes one feel it’s a must to visit the bazaar, perhaps, with a copy of her book in hand! Her style is smooth, evocative and flows well. Dhingra has a passion which translated to a whole book reflecting a community that is unique in the very fact of its existence, tied loosely by the love of books – not necessarily reading. We interviewed her to discuss her journey and here’s how she responded:
Kanupriya Dhingra
“As an ethnographer of the city streets, I am constantly reminded of the transformative power of walking. It allows us to uncover hidden stories, forge unexpected connections, and shape the world around us.” Can you please elaborate on this “transformative power” and how the bazaar forms and unforms every Sunday?
Until 2019, since the 1970s, Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar was set up between two landmark cinema halls in Old Delhi — Golcha Cinema on Netaji Subhash Road and Delite Cinema on Asaf Ali Road. On any other day, this L-shaped part of the street carried the ordinary rhythms of a working city: government offices, shops and traders, food outlets, traffic on the road. On Sundays, those rhythms would change. Iron and cardboard boxes, tarpaulin sheets, and books spread across the footpath, using the closed shutters of offices as their display backdrop. The bazaar did not occupy the street so much as it temporarily rewrote it. What ethnography taught me to pay attention to is precisely this rewriting of the space that is overdetermined during the week, claimed by traffic and routine and competing uses, is briefly re-scripted by the arrival of booksellers and readers. And then, by evening, unscripted again. Books would go back in their boxes, the tarpaulins were folded, and the footpath was simply itself — flat and indifferent. The street would forget entirely what stood on it. But the people remembered.
Can you tell our readers what is ethnography? Why did you feel the need to do an ethnographic study on the Sunday book bazaar? What would be the target readership of your very well researched book?
Ethnography, at its simplest, is the method of sustained and repeated presence in a place and trying to understand a world on its own terms. What it is not is a survey, an archive search, or a one-time interview. It is slow and embodied. It is, also, deeply dependent on the trust of the people who agree to let you into their working lives.
Because the bazaar exists outside the formal structures that usually produce archives, there are no official records of this market. The only way to know it is to go there, repeatedly, over years, and listen. The book is built from those years of fieldnotes, interviews, and observations. While the formal fieldwork for my doctoral thesis happened in 2019, I had been a regular for a while. I continued spending Sundays at the bazaar across seasons, displacements, and a pandemic. With the support of the booksellers, I documented the 2019 protests in urgent media reports as well, to produce an immediate archive of what happened to the bazaar, instead of waiting to revisit my notes only while writing my thesis.
As for who the book is for — I resisted writing a book that only scholars could read. The Sunday Book Bazaar is for the student who recognises Usha with her handwritten list of textbooks — one that has scope for a few other ‘finds’ because her pocket money allows for it, here, at the bazaar. It is for the shauqeen who recognises their own Sunday morning in these pages. It is for the Delhi reader who has been going to the bazaar for years without quite knowing why. It is for the reader in Singapore, or Mumbai, or London, or Lahore who has their own version of this informal, unruly, necessary space and sees it reflected here. It is a book about books, the people who read them, and the people who make that possible. The research is rigorous, I hope. But the book is for everyone.
You have mentioned the absence of women among the sellers. The few that are there do not even see themselves as sellers but as temporary fixtures in lieu of their husbands. Can you tell us why in the twenty-first century women are still being segregated in the bazaar? Is it justified?
The question of women at the bazaar is more nuanced than it first appears. Women vendors are not absent. Quite a few have been running stalls at Daryaganj for years, some for decades, even if it means supporting their brother or husband or son. What is more important, and what my fieldwork revealed, is that many of them do not claim the identity of bookseller. When I asked directly, the answers were careful, deflective, or simply negative. One vendor, who had been managing her late husband’s stall with evident expertise for decades, told me that this work belongs to men because women cannot “lift heavy books”. Another, who had joined the bazaar more recently, had also lost her husband. She was selling the stock he had gathered over the years, keeping the stall going until her son was old enough to take over. But it was more than that, she said, “He passed away on a Sunday, after selling books at the bazaar. That has to mean something.”
Cities give women this kind of ironic independence. The bazaar is one of its more interesting examples. Anonymity in the crowd, the freedom to occupy public space on their own terms, the economic agency that comes from handling money and stock and customers without anyone particularly watching. And yet the identity, the word bookseller, with its history and its community and its authority, remains something many women at the bazaar do not claim for themselves. The crowd hides them, and that hiding is simultaneously a form of freedom and a form of erasure.
You have also noticed that women buyers are different from men. How and why? Please elaborate. Is this a reflection of the culture/ accepted norm of the city/ the sellers and visitors?
Women’s time in public spaces, especially in Delhi, is measured differently. They negotiate with surveillance and scrutiny. Their purposefulness is driven by necessity. They arrive with clearer lists and are less likely to linger without a specific destination in mind. A woman spending two hours browsing a pavement book market on a Sunday morning is doing something that requires more social permission than the equivalent activity does for a man.
And yet the bazaar’s openness, its visibility from the street, and the absence of walls and thresholds made it more accessible to women than many other public spaces in the city. Even Mahila Haat[3] tends to offer an interior that might feel safer, allowing a new scope for purposeless wandering. Moreover, on a public footpath or inside a gated haat, among other people, that openness is precisely what makes the bazaar feel usable for many women readers. What they do with that openness reflects the social conditions they navigate to get there, not their relationship to books, which is as varied and as shauqeen as anyone else’s.
One of the things that your book makes me wonder is — is book piracy justified? What do you think?
I want to be clear first: I do not support piracy, and it is illegal. That is not a complicated position for me. What is complicated is the context in which piracy at Daryaganj exists and the questions that context raises.
After the March 2026 raid by the Crime Branch in Rohini, in which over twenty thousand books were seized — titles by Arundhati Roy, Yuval Noah Harari, Haruki Murakami, James Clear, among others — Penguin India posted about it on social media. The comments were quite instructive. Readers responded not with sympathy for the publisher but with a straightforward observation: books are not affordable. The original editions of the seized titles cost several hundred rupees each. The pirated edition costs a fraction of that.
I am not using this to justify piracy. I am using it to point to the structural failure that makes piracy legible to so many people as a reasonable response. The formal publishing market has not solved the affordability problem. The bazaar, in its informal and sometimes illegal way, tends to fill that gap, albeit partially. The more interesting question is not whether piracy is right or wrong but what its persistence tells us about the gaps the formal book economy has created and, at the moment, cannot fulfil. A reading public that cannot afford books is not served by enforcement alone.
You have written of “a densely competitive educational ecosystem shaped by chronic state underfunding, unequal infrastructure, and the relentless neoliberal promise of upward mobility through credentialism. In this context, the bazaar does more than sell books: it acts as an unofficial welfare infrastructure, absorbing and responding to gaps produced by shrinking public support and rising private costs.” Please elaborate how the bazaar supports aspirants of upward mobility. Does it help close the gaping gaps we notice among different socio-economic, ethnic groups that exist within the given polity?
The phrase unofficial welfare infrastructure came out of a specific observation: that the buyers I met at Daryaganj were not, in the main, casual browsers. They were people for whom the price of a book at a formal bookshop was a genuine obstacle. Students preparing for competitive examinations. First-generation readers with no family library to draw on. Aspirants using books as tools for a different life.
The state has not solved the problem of access to books. School libraries are underfunded. Public libraries are underused and often inaccessible. The formal book market serves readers who can afford it. The bazaar, entirely without subsidy or policy support, has for six decades been doing what the state has not: putting books within reach of people who need them.
Does it close socio-economic gaps? Partially, and imperfectly. It reduces the cost of access. It creates a space where the student with fifty rupees and the collector with five hundred rupees stand at the same stall. But it does not solve the structural problems that create those gaps — underfunding, unequal infrastructure, the credentialism that makes books feel like necessities rather than pleasures. What it does is something more modest and more important: it refuses to accept that books should only be available to those who can afford them at full price.
What has been your most interesting experience in this bazaar? Please share it with us.
There is one moment I return to often. It was 28 July 2019, a Sunday, a few weeks into my formal fieldwork. I was walking from Delhi Gate Metro Station toward the bazaar, headphones on, no music, mentally preparing for the day’s interviews. My phone rang. It was Qamar Saeed, the vendor I had come to know as the ‘King of Daryaganj’, “Madamji, bazaar uth gaya hai. Aap jaldi aaiye.” Madamji, the bazaar has been lifted. Come quickly.
I walked faster. My mind had gone quiet. No fieldwork instincts, no questions forming. Just the turn onto Netaji Subhash Marg, and then the footpath. It looked the same. That was the first thing I noticed: how completely the same it looked. The shutters were where they always were. The traffic moved. A guard sat outside the closed bank, reading his phone. And then I looked at the footpath, and it was just a footpath. No iron boxes. No tarpaulin sheets. No one crouching. No one haggling. Just concrete, flat and indifferent, as though six decades of a particular kind of Sunday morning had been lifted along with the stalls and taken somewhere I could not see.
I understood something that morning that I had known intellectually but not yet felt, that how fragile and contingent this world was. How much it depended on permissions and invisibilities, on the stubbornness and resilience of people who showed up every Sunday and arranged their books and waited. That day shaped this book more than any other.
Do you think this bazaar will continue to thrive/survive given the online market of books? Please elaborate.
The bazaar has already survived things more threatening than the online market. It has survived displacement orders, pandemic lockdowns, municipal raids, and sixty years of operating without official sanction. The online market is a pressure, but it is not a new kind of pressure.
What the online market cannot replicate is serendipity. You cannot search for a book you do not know exists. You cannot stumble upon a 1978 Penguin edition with someone else’s marginalia on an algorithm. You cannot haggle, or sit on the vendor’s side of the stall and hear a story that changes how you read. The shauqeen will keep coming for precisely these reasons. The students will keep coming because the price point remains unbeatable. The families will keep coming because it is still, on a Sunday morning in Old Delhi, one of the most alive places in the city.
The question is not whether the bazaar will survive but what form it will take. It has always been good at taking new forms — from the footpaths of Jama Masjid to the stretch between Golcha and Delite to Mahila Haat. Each relocation changes something and preserves something. That capacity for reinvention, for showing up in a new place with the same iron boxes and the same stubbornness, is what I mean when I call this a story of resilience. The bazaar has never needed the formal economy’s permission to exist. It is unlikely to start now.
Thank you for your fabulous book and wonderful answers.
Earth jasmine, sky jasmine String of jasmine encircles the heart Jasmine poured with water from the hills Jasmine sprinkled by a pinch of compost Seven rivers, seven clouds Rain pelts onto forlorn petals Beauty is to the form, beauty to the eyes Beauty is the hand that tends to the soil Beauty is the fingers that caress the leaves Beauty is the cut on the arms of the gardener The scorching sun, the shade from the foliage Bountiful is the soul of the tree that delivers Witness to a life devoted to hard work With laws of nature as the axis Strong roots clench the earth Shoots look up high to the sky Feet stand firmly, the soul sings Blossoms waft fragrant dreams Earth jasmine, sky jasmine Jasmine blooms in the early morning Say your prayers, introduce yourself
“Can you relate your brother’s childhood?”
“What do you want to know, doctor?”
“Everything. Just tell me earnestly.”
I looked at the doctor’s face cynically. I knew his intentions. He was trying to trace my brother’s past to detect the crucial point at which he changed to what he has become at present.
The doctor smiled. Perhaps he can read what is in my heart. He nodded gently, his eyes were clear. He held my arm gently:
We lived in a barrack. There were ten doors at the front and ten more at the back. Each house had a living room and bedroom. The walls were of wooden planks. At the top of the wall a wire mesh was affixed to enable air to flow between the houses. It was not only air that was exchanged. All gossips and secrets of each family were also heard by neighbours. The ceiling was of asbestos sheets nailed to a wooden frame. The roof sheets were also of corrugated asbestos.
Just imagine there were eight of us living in a house that was only about thirty-five metres square. He was the fifth child of six children.
A row of small kitchens was located at the side of the barrack, with the common bath-house next to it. The common latrine was located near the municipal drain behind a grove of succulent banana shrubs. There were several poultry coops at the fringe of the barrack.
I still remembered the days when Mother took him and my other siblings to a plant nursery at Malcolm Road. I did not follow them as I was in the morning session at school. The plot of land was leased by the government to a Chinese towkay[1]. They went there very early in the morning to earn some money by picking jasmine blossoms. For each plastic packet of jasmine blossoms, they would receive ten cents. These packets were sold by the towkay to hawkers at Tekka Market for the consumption by mainly Indians, who seemed to have a penchant for it.
At about ten in the morning they walked home for about one kilometre. Altogether they would earn about two dollars. They would go there almost every day except over the weekends or when it rained heavilu. They feared lightning strikes. My siblings would then go to school in the afternoon. I know they were rather bored with the routine. I felt they were disappointed because they could not play with their kampong[2] friends in the morning.
But I knew that it was one of the many ways that Mother employed to earn additional income to support the family. Upon returning home, Mother would prepare meals for her children. From the money earned picking jasmine blossoms, all of us had some pocket money for school.
Father worked as a gardener in a condominium at Pandan Gardens. He cycled to work and returned home after dusk. It was only at night that we gathered as a family. Most of us were rather exhausted by then.
But everything changed when our family moved to a flat at Ang Mo Kio. From his own savings Father paid seventeen thousand dollars in cash for the flat. We were delightfully surprised. All along he had been very frugal and saved money for the well-being of the family. We moved to a more comfortable home. However, it posed challenges which were just as grave and testing to our souls.
(An earlier version was published in 2021 by Kitaab International)
About the Novel: The Throne is an unflinching exploration of schizophrenia set against the backdrop of modern Singapore. At once realistic and allegorical, it charts a man’s descent into alienation from his turbulent youth to his fractured adulthood. Blurring the boundaries between poetry and prose, the narrative becomes both intimate confession and universal parable.
More than a story of illness, The Throne meditates on the fragile yet fertile nexus of madness, creativity, and spirituality. Within this tension lies the possibility of healing—a reconciliation born of suffering, sacrifice, and an enduring search for meaning.
Isa Kamari has written 12 novels, 3 collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, a book of essays on Singapore Malay poetry, a collection of theatre scripts and lyrics of 3 music albums, all in Malay. His novels have been translated into English, Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, Indonesian, Jawi, Russian, French, Spanish, Korean, Azerbaijan and Mandarin. Several of his essays and selected poems have been translated into English. Isa was conferred the S.E.A Write Award from Thailand (2006), the Singapore Cultural Medallion (2007), the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang (2009) from the Singapore Malay Language Council, and the Mastera Literary Award (2018) from Brunei Darussalam.
He obtained a BArch (Hons) from the National University of Singapore in 1989, an MPhil (Malay Letters) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 2008 and is currently pursuing a PhD programme at the Academy of Islamic Studies, Univeristi Malaya. His area of research is on the problem of alienation and the practice of firasat (spiritual intuition) in selected Singapore Malay novels.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
“A journey is not so much a place, but a new way of seeing.” — Pico Iyer
Travel has always been my passion. From childhood, the love for exploring new places was instilled in me by my parents. They believed travel was not just recreation, but education.
Every school vacation, my father would plan a month-long trip, taking us across cities, temples, forests, and historic landmarks.
By the time I stepped into adulthood, the entire stretch of Gujarat and Saurashtra was familiar terrain — Dwarka, Porbandar, Jamnagar, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Rajkot.
We traveled across the country too, exploring Calcutta in the east and venturing north to Kashmir, Amritsar, Agra, Delhi and Jaipur, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer in the Northwestern part.
Along the way, each place offered its own unforgettable charm — the serenity of the Golden Temple, the fragrant rose gardens of Jodhpur, the majestic palaces of Jaipur, the golden deserts of Jaisalmer, and the shimmering beauty of Dal Lake in Srinagar.
Each journey painted my childhood with stories, sights, and memories that would stay with me forever.
Perhaps that is why, when I was finally given the opportunity to travel abroad on a business trip to Singapore, my excitement was indescribable.
But beneath that excitement was a quiet nervousness — it was my first international trip, a solo journey, and I had to navigate visas, documentation, and the unfamiliarity of foreign travel.
I still remember the night before my flight — the quiet hum of anticipation, the open suitcase neatly arranged with formal wear and presentation notes, and the flutter in my heart that felt both brave and uncertain. This wasn’t just another professional assignment — it felt like a rite of passage.
Singapore was my first glimpse of a world beyond India — an island nation I had only encountered in business magazines and travel columns.
As the aircraft lifted off the runway, I felt something shift inside me. Beneath the official purpose of the trip lay something more personal: the realization that I was crossing a threshold that would reshape the way I saw work, people, and myself.
The first few days were busy with meetings and deliverables, yet my Singapore-based colleagues made sure I didn’t miss the beauty of their city.
Over weekends, they took me to Gardens by the Bay, Sentosa Island, Universal Studios, Little India, and shopping districts filled with light and energy. Their warmth made the newness less intimidating.
I experienced my first metro journey abroad — taking the MRT from Ang Mo Kio to Raffles Place — and was amazed at the punctuality, efficiency, and discipline that seemed to pulse through the city’s transport system.
Gardens by the Bay left me mesmerized; Sentosa offered calm and peace, while Universal Studios was a burst of color, joy, and laughter.
Singapore’s friendliness, cleanliness, and multicultural harmony made a deep impression on me.
It was a place where professionalism coexisted effortlessly with warmth, where discipline didn’t suppress diversity but strengthened it.
When I returned home, friends and colleagues asked about the presentations, the meetings, and the outcomes.
But what stayed with me long after the trip was not just the work accomplished — it was the inner shift.
Singapore taught me that stepping outside our comfort zone widens our world in ways we never expect.
That first flight did more than carry me across countries — it carried me into a broader way of thinking, observing, and belonging.
It showed me that growth often begins at the edge of comfort, and that the world is much larger and more welcoming than our fears allow us to believe.
“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” — Miriam Beard
What Singapore Taught Me
Every first step into the unknown teaches us something essential about ourselves.
Singapore showed me that courage doesn’t always roar; often, it’s the quiet decision to board a plane alone and trust that you will find your way.
In every MRT ride, every unfamiliar street, and every new conversation, I discovered the subtle power of openness — the willingness to learn, adapt, and embrace difference.
When we travel with curiosity instead of fear, the world responds with generosity.
And sometimes, one journey becomes the beginning of a much larger unfolding — a reminder that confidence grows one step, one city, and one experience at a time.
Reflection: The First Flight Within
We often believe that courage lies in grand actions — but sometimes, it lies in handing your passport to an immigration officer with shaky hands.
My first flight taught me that courage is a journey too.
That every time we step out into the unknown, we return home a little braver.
A little wiser.
A little more ourselves.
About the Book:
When the Road Becomes the Teacher: A Reflective Memoir of Wisdom Gained Around the World is a memoir about how travel can transform the way we see the world and ourselves. Drawing on four decades of journeys across India and beyond, Shubha Apte reflects on the experiences, encounters, cultures, and unexpected moments that shaped her understanding of resilience, confidence, leadership, cultural intelligence, and personal growth. From her first international business trip to Singapore to later journeys across Japan, Norway, Malaysia, Europe, and the United States, each destination became more than a place to visit—it became an opportunity to learn. Part travel memoir and part reflection on personal transformation, the book invites readers to look beyond destinations and discover the lessons that every journey can offer.
About the Author:
Shubha Apte is an author, executive coach, and leadership consultant with over 35 years of corporate experience. She is the author of multiple books including the Amazon Bestseller, When the Road Becomes the Teacher. Her writing blends real-life insight with storytelling, exploring themes of resilience, purpose and human connections.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844, Painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner
Perhaps, the only constant that makes a difference in this ever-transforming world is how we react to changes around us. How do we interact with not just humans but our whole planet with its climate, contours, its plethora of flora and fauna? Will that impact our survival in the long run? And yet with our focus on legacies, traditions, beliefs, we tend to ignore the call to adapt to the new that might help us move towards an unpredictable future. We forget perhaps that these systems had all been made by our ancestors to ensure survival. Somewhere along the way, these have become like fences caging us into small subsets. The strange thing is we continue to allow that to happen and create enclosures which we fight to maintain. The future that we face now seems even more tumultuous with climate change, rising sea levels and global warming taking a front seat while influx of refugees from war and natural disasters have already started making themselves felt. Add to that the shortages of resources that we have taken for granted for centuries. How would we survive these?
Is it by redefining the constructs we have created or just meeting in corners and finding commonalities as suggested by Ryan Quinn Flanagan in his poem ‘Corners’?
Corners are a meeting place, they hold a room together
Our poetry section often reflects what we experience, feel or see around us. We have poems on how nature overrides human constructs by Khayelihle Benghu. In ‘Passport for the Rain‘, she writes:
If rain possessed a passport, it would read: Citizen of every place that drinks.
We also have poetry in our translations with Ihlwha Choi giving us a glimpse of Korean life. Professor Fakrul Alam has brought to us in English a Bengali poem by Nazrul written on the death of Tagore, a poem that was read out in Calcutta radio by the poet himself in 1941. Tagore’s poem, Storm, has been translated in keeping with the heavy downpours in Asia this season. Fazal Baloch has shared an excerpt in English, which reads like a short story, from Aslam Dostain’s Balochi novel, Sótkál, giving us a flavour of the hard life in their region, where self-reliance is a felt need for survival. We have mental heath issues woven into this section with Isa Kamari’s translation of his own Malay novel into English, The Throne. We will be running a chapter every month from this novel.
Book excerpts also has a translation this time with Ramananda Bharati’s Bengali travelogue, The Forest of Snow, brought to us in English by Somdatta Mandal. Aruna Chakravarti has reviewed this non-fiction for us. The other excerpt is from Hughes’ The Biscuit Thief, a book that reflects his distinct brand of absurd humour. Keith Lyons’ interview this time features an excerpt from interviewee Jayanthi Sankar’s short story set in Singapore. Mandal has written on yet another translation from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas of Arupa Patangia Kalita’s The Moonlight Saga. Bhaskar Parichha has discussed Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, co-authored by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson. He claims that this book is “is indispensable reading for anyone interested in literature, intellectual history, cultural modernity, or the life of a man whose vision of humanity continues to speak powerfully to an increasingly interconnected world.”
This month’s non-fiction section has trotted around the globe. We have Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan’s essay discussing how to redefine norms. His take is a bit different from Flanagan’s. He tells us, using Huck Finn, Terminator and Sangam Literature, people need to ask not, “What is right?” but “How did I come to believe this is right?” Rengin Uçkan’s writes on the need for framing rules that are compassionate for refugees. And Farouk Gulsara with his inevitable gruff humour talks of climate change while stating things as it is: “Climate change not only shrinks our summer beachwear but also makes outdoor living impossible. Additionally, it’s proving to be more expensive to consume anything…” Jun A. Alindogan narrates how typhoons have increased in number in Philippines and how it affects them while Jeena R. Papaadi reflects on her literary journey. Meredith Stephens shares her sailing adventures in Australia with stunning photographs by Alan Noble. And Suzanne Kamata has brought us a flavour of the unique Zine Fest in Kobe, where both groceries and books find a place!
Devraj Singh Kalsi hovers between fact and fiction. He has a musing which seems like a hash of dark fiction but based on his experiences. He has also shared a story that is purely fictional. Yi-jung Chen brings to us a quirky love story set in Taiwan across time and space while Brindley Hallam Dennis tells a tale about a dog who sits at a table and sips drinks with a straw! Jay Samanta gives a narrative about a modern relationship based on social media output. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao has shared a fable that talks of freeing nature. The issue is, can we really?
In Borderless Journal, we hope to create a space which will help reflect not just the times but also look forward to ideas that can move us towards surviving in a happier world, built on the basis of accepting differences, filled with love, kindness and compassion. While this may sound clichéd and repetitive, given the current climes, these values cannot be emphasised often enough and perhaps our content to an extent does reflect that, sometimes with a soupçon of humour. Do pause by our contents page for this August and tell us what you think.
Winding up this issue, we would like to thank our all contributors for their wonderful writings and photographs. Huge thanks to the Borderless team without who this issue would not have been as vibrant. Special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Thank you all. All of you together make this journal come alive.
I bear the torment of your sadness In the embrace of my sleep May it transform into Glad tidings For the days of your people This exploration is To find your throne Which has disappeared From our hearts
For my love to you King
It was undeniable that he acted like a king. All his commands were to be obeyed, although he never asked for it directly, he hurt others and disrupted the peace in our family. He knew how to toy around with the opinions and feelings of others. He was not stupid, but smart and cunning.
And here I was bowing to him again. This was not the first time. I had come to pay homage to him on numerous occasions. That day was no different.
I waited for the van at Hougang interchange. It would be sent by the government to take guests to the ‘palace’, just as in the past horse carriages were sent to welcome dignitaries. But I was not of any importance — just an ordinary person with a little heart.
The van arrived at 1pm. Several commuters alighted. Almost all of them look depressed. A few smiled or smirked and waved their hands without any perceptible reason. I realised they resided at the ‘palace’ and had been given permission to return home or wander for a prescribed period. Clothed in dark blue shorts and T-shirts, they could take care of themselves but were still under close supervision.
I boarded the van and sat in the back row. Others, including two maids in the ‘palace’ uniform, boarded it too. All the passengers looked pensive. I began to think that the ‘palace’ had the ability to spread an air of melancholy as had been rumoured. I shivered and began to feel restless and out of sorts.
The van moved and turned right at the traffic junction, then turned right again and passed by a polyclinic and stadium next to a large canal. During the journey through the housing estate, I chanced upon the realisation that moderation in hopes and actions could be the key to a stable and peaceful life. Perhaps.
From far, I saw the ‘palace’ complex situated on a knoll covered in greenery. There was no ornamental gate at the entrance, but the complex looked neat and tidy — surely as a result of efficient operation and maintenance.
The van climbed the slope, turned left and then right twice before arriving at the main lobby of the institute of mental health with the corporate name of Buangkok Green Medical Park, which is the ‘palace’ for patients with mental disorder. It was called the infamous Woodbridge hospital before.
I stood still for a moment after I got off from the van. My eyes scanned the surroundings. Several inhabitants and visitors roamed freely in the concourse. I saw a brown marble statue with yellow spots beside a spiral staircase. It depicted a bent figure that supported another firmly and earnestly.
I was uncertain whether I could be like the statue for I felt really tired attending to his endless whims and fancies. I do not know when he could take care of himself sufficiently and with ease. There were always problems that emerged in his life. If these were limited to him, perhaps it would not matter. But it was not uncommon that the predicaments he faced dragged the entire family into turmoil. Undoubtedly, he acted like a cruel king who tortured us although he may not have realised it himself.
There were several stalls at the side of the lobby selling handicrafts of the residents of this ‘palace’. The institution attempted to paint a picture that there is still hope for them to return to normal life. I smiled cynically. What could be sold to reach that state, I wondered?
I was almost certain that it’s just an empty wish, specifically for the king who I am seeking audience with. Honestly, I was beginning to lose hope. I was there to fulfil a moral duty towards a person who shares our parents’ blood. Blood is thicker than water, they say. But if it is sullied blood or water keeps on flowing, I would have to divert it so as not to destroy the peace and harmony of our lives. But it has not reached that critical state yet. We are still praying.
I reached the lobby of block 4 after walking through several meandering walkways. I took the lift to the third storey of the palace. I was not allowed to enter the visiting hall after I registered myself with the palace guard at the counter. They were no gongs, drums and flutes to welcome me. There were no performances. I was shocked by the new experience.
I was confused and nervous haunted by the wild cries, wailing and chanting from a group of inhabitants in the adjoining room. They were prancing and swaying their bodies without care. Were they zombies, clowns or buskers who are having fun?
God forgive me. My chest palpitated heavily. I took a deep breath. I did not know what to expect next. I left it to the one and only King.
(An earlier version was published in 2021 by Kitaab International)
Isa Kamari has written 12 novels, 3 collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, a book of essays on Singapore Malay poetry, a collection of theatre scripts and lyrics of 3 music albums, all in Malay. His novels have been translated into English, Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, Indonesian, Jawi, Russian, French, Spanish, Korean, Azerbaijan and Mandarin. Several of his essays and selected poems have been translated into English. Isa was conferred the S.E.A Write Award from Thailand (2006), the Singapore Cultural Medallion (2007), the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang (2009) from the Singapore Malay Language Council, and the Mastera Literary Award (2018) from Brunei Darussalam.
He obtained a BArch (Hons) from the National University of Singapore in 1989, an MPhil (Malay Letters) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 2008 and is currently pursuing a PhD programme at the Academy of Islamic Studies, Univeristi Malaya. His area of research is on the problem of alienation and the practice of firasat (spiritual intuition) in selected Singapore Malay novels.
About the Novel: The Throne is an unflinching exploration of schizophrenia set against the backdrop of modern Singapore. At once realistic and allegorical, it charts a man’s descent into alienation from his turbulent youth to his fractured adulthood. Blurring the boundaries between poetry and prose, the narrative becomes both intimate confession and universal parable.
More than a story of illness, The Throne meditates on the fragile yet fertile nexus of madness, creativity, and spirituality. Within this tension lies the possibility of healing—a reconciliation born of suffering, sacrifice, and an enduring search for meaning.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Keith Lyon converses with Jayanthi Sankar, a fiction writerwho shares an excerpt from her story, Beyond Borders at the end of the interview.
Jananthi Sankar
Jayanthi Sankar is an author who explores history, identity and the human psyche through fiction shaped by her life across cultures. Her work reflects on writing, cultural difference, mentorship and the importance of creating space for emerging literary voices.
Keith Lyons (KL): Every writer has a unique starting point. When did you first realise that writing was more than just an interest for you, and how has that initial spark developed?
Jayanthi Sankar (JS): Years of passionate, continuous reading for pleasure led to an emerging voice of a critic deep within me, and I didn’t realise it. When I was debating with her over what I’d read, I ended up experimenting to experience how difficult it really is to write. They published the short fiction. And I didn’t know that would eventually give me the motivation to attempt a few more. It took me a few more years to write a dozen more before I started believing I should pursue writing.
KL: How do different cultural landscapes influence the themes you repeatedly explore in your work?
JS: I grew up in 15-16 places all over India owing to my father’s central government civil engineering job, until my mid-twenties when I migrated to Singapore. The exposure to diverse cultures during my formative years had organically shaped me to admire and adapt to cultural differences like a fish to water. Harmony lies more naturally on the edges of those differences, and I realised that only after I read seriously and began writing. Cultural landscapes weave naturally into my fictional world.
KL: What is your process for creating characters so they resonate with readers across different nationalities and backgrounds?
JS: I have noticed since my teens, I interacted with people not as me but as the other in front of me, and that perhaps innately equipped me with the ability to create credible characters. As I matured, I came to know that it has got to do not only with human psychology but also with empathy. While my characters unfold, those very close to me have observed I often think and talk like them because I live their lives.
KL: Your day job as an interpreter, how does that affect your ear for dialogue and understanding of how others view the world?
JS: The past three to four years of my current job have brought me the most profound understanding of migrant workers. Knowing their lives, challenges, and views often repeatedly makes me realise what a privileged life I have. Since listening is an integral part of my job, the dialogues become contextually crucial.
KL: How do you determine the ‘size of the canvas’ for a new idea, and do you find that different languages or cultures demand different narrative structures?
JS: The canvas mostly widens as the chapters unfold, and while rewriting, we could always chisel as required, as I did in my short fiction ‘Punkah Wallah’ in my collection Dangling Gandhi. The story’s seed sprouted within me when I was merely 13 or 14 years old.
I remember hearing one of my dad’s friends share, “a young lad born a deaf and dumb from our village in remote Punjab was taken to far away Malaya to be a fan man.” I showed no signs of becoming a writer in the future. It had stayed deep in me to surface nearly 30-odd years later. I set my character driven story in the colonial Singapore of the early twentieth century that had ample scope for depicting cultural, political climate. The time period of the setting brought about language variations in character building as well as the narrative structures that could bring in novelty and engagement.
KL: What insights have you gained about narrative structures from different cultures and traditions, and how can you use them to tell a story better?
JS: Several of my reader friends have said that by reading my fiction, they knew Singapore as if they’d already visited the place. When blended with the cultural nuances and slang of the land, any local issue becomes more convincingly relatable, and the stories reach readers better. As for readers from other lands, not only is the cultural flavour introduced to them, but it invites them to experience the land just as we, as readers, know Moscow from Russian literature, as if we’ve lived there.
KL: What was the primary motivation behind establishing the Jay Yes Foundation, and what specific gaps in the literary world were you hoping to fill?
JS: I have mentored, formally and informally, several aspiring young writers, including Liu Fang from Hong Kong, whose story travelled to the northeastern parts of India, and another, Sascha Wynn from Boston, who had a character of Indian ethnicity. And I experienced an incomparable sense of fulfilment. Helping them with their developmental editing and cultural checks also widened my perspectives, decades ago, and that was the beginning. I felt joyous watching their manuscripts evolve. And now the foundation has entered the next stage of giving a name and identity to the initiatives.
KL: Supporting unpublished writers is a core pillar of your work. In your experience, what are the biggest challenges these writers face today, and how does the foundation help them navigate those obstacles?
JS: As an emerging writer myself, decades ago, I stopped reading details as soon as I saw the submission guidelines mentioned. I’ve observed many of my mentees retreat when the call has fees to read. Not because they can’t afford but they naturally feel their stories are worth the read, and it feels discouraging to pay to be read. Any emerging writer would feel respected if a jury read their writing. So, the foundation continues to create opportunities like this year’s international contest.
KL: The foundation’s mission mentions building ‘sustainable literary communities’. What does a truly sustainable community look like to you in modern publishing?
JS: A writing community can sustain longer only with continuity in reading and writing at an individual level. Continuity is the key. Just one submission and the aspirant write only after two years for another doesn’t bring the needed traction. That’s why the Foundation does not stop at contests and podcasts; it continues to bring other opportunities as well without submission fees to the pool of writers it has already created.
KL: Many literary initiatives rely on entry fees for sustainability, but your foundation has chosen a different path. Can you share the philosophy behind this commitment to free entry for emerging writers?
JS: This year’s jurors have believed me when I said that the foundation aspires to set an example of how dedicated investment of time and expertise can encourage emerging writers. But for the support of Zero-Degree Publishing, such philosophies are bound to remain as dreams. Monetary investment might bring in transactional elements like charging an entry fee, or another fee for publishing the anthology that might reduce focus on the creative side of the initiative. There are so many out there calling to submit first without even telling the writer what’s coming next. I had my experience many years ago; one of my submissions was long-listed, they discussed payment to move the story forward.
KL: The International Jay Yes Short Story Contest 2026 is a significant undertaking. What led you to choose “Seeking Refuge: Stories of Displacement” as the central theme for the contest?
JS: Displacements have been part of my growing up, although I didn’t even know the impact it would have later on in my thoughts process and also writing. Forced or chosen, displacements have all the scope for exploring human lives, whether to seek refuge or to survive. After a brief discussion, the jury unanimously agreed on the theme. The theme also suited the contest, planned to go global.
KL: You’ve expressed a desire for stories that are bold and moving. When you are reviewing submissions, what is that elusive quality that makes a piece of writing truly stand out for you?
JS: If the ending leaves me pondering longer, stays long with me, I’d call it that. A loose ending does that better than a conclusive one. A genuine human voice in the AI era would touch my heart and most certainly the storytelling. Stories often begin fairly well, I’ve noticed, but aspirants get lost in the ending. Dramatic, cinematic, preachy endings are so common, and that’s where resting and rewriting might help. The jury assessed entries fabulously this time.
KL: From anthologies to podcasts, you use various platforms to share stories. How do you see the relationship between traditional publishing and these newer digital formats developing for emerging writers?
JS: E-Books and audiobooks are trending, and like physical books, they can be self-published or traditionally published. Creativity through natural intelligence deserves celebration and preservation regardless of the format it gets published. Using tools to display originality is better than using tools for the creative process itself. Digital or physical, as humans, let’s tell stories of humanity with relatable humaneness.
KL: How does the foundation’s work help create a world where literary voices reach audiences regardless of nationality or financial standing?
JS: Since my childhood, I’ve observed people of different cultures, cuisines, and languages across regions and countries, yet the values, ethics, hunger, anger, pain, and pleasure remain the same for every human. The success of this year’s contest has shown beautifully how creativity has no such restrictions, such borders. Nurturing natural intelligence has always been the core of the initiatives by the Jay Yes Foundation.
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless Journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
An Excerpt from ‘Beyond Borders’ by Jayanthi Sankar
With moist, dismayed eyes a foreign worker in clothes mildly smeared with grease and paint stood first in the growing queue. Pusillanimously lost in thought he looked like a Bangladeshi, Anu guessed.
Just behind the Bangladeshi, a middle-aged rotund Chinese man was leaning on the side rails with two sizeable red plastic red shopping bags placed near his feet. Oblivious to the surrounding, he was busy talking on his mobile, thanking and laughing with exaggerated courtesy, “Háiméiyǒu, xièxiè.”
The moment Anu saw her son’s eyes sparkling brighter, she knew the reason, and she’d guessed it right. Crawling on one of the large plastic bags carried by a Chinese man was a huge fly that caught the keen attention of ten-year-old Kani. He couldn’t take his eyes off.
As always, Anu was fascinated by his interest displayed even before he’d turned one. From as early as seven months he used to look for tiny ants and insects in the corners of the marble floor and follow them crawling on fours. Though rare, they never failed to catch his attention. Flying insects thrilled him all the more. Long before he could say the word, “Amma,” to call her, he’d learned to say ‘Poochchi[1]’ in Tamil, which made history becoming the first word he learned to speak.
Eager to continue where they’d left their conversation just before leaving home, Anu asked her husband, “And Somu, what did that Pinoy colleague of yours exactly say to anger you that much? Somu, you didn’t tell me the details.”
Excited, wide-eyed Somu said, “He had the cheek to say right on my face without them our country will cease to function. Can you believe that, Anu?”
Although the haze due to the conflagration in the Sumatran forests seemed to have reduced to healthy levels, about six or seven out of the ten migrant faces wore the N9 masks.
“He means, without the Filipinos?”
“I am sure he must have meant all foreign workers in general. I couldn’t stand his temerity, you know. Seething through, I was intensely searing inside.” She just nodded looking at his face.
Somu’s cute chubby face was becoming more and more rounded with his receding hairline, she thought. His black curls highlighted his already fair complexion.
As if muttering to herself Anu looked around, “Humans seem to push the days of the week just for their weekend, when they live their lives.” The queues were suddenly getting longer, she observed.
The bus interchange was filling with an erratic mixture of children shrieking, loud laughter of young people in groups, buses maneuvering and halting, bus doors opening and closing.
Mandarin, Tamil, Malay, Tagalog, Hokkien, and Bangla heard here and there were certainly not mellifluous, but an intriguing babel. The aroma of the satay from the nearby hawker wafted along with the breeze.
The breeze bore the message of the approaching showers. The slowly gathering dark clouds not just dimmed the sunlight but suddenly increased the humidity.
Being the first few in the line waiting for route number 960, getting seats of their choice was not difficult.
The Bangladeshi worker walked straight to the back and took the left window seat of the long row of last seats.
Keeping his sight on the fly, Kani walked ahead but slowly.
“He went on saying things like they are a cheerful and contented bunch even with lower wages.”
“Lower?” Anu asked with an intrigued expression.
“Yeah lah! Their wages are somewhat lower than ours.”
“True,” she agreed.
The stout Chinese man placed the bags purposely on the adjacent seat so that the foreign workers boarding behind wouldn’t be able to occupy the seat near him.
Watching the fly, Kani stood there blocking the way for the other passengers. Anu hurriedly pulled him along. “Isn’t it just a common house fly, maybe just larger?” Somu hushed. They moved to the rear. Kani’s focus remained on the fly as he reluctantly walked turning his head backward. “No.”
As the bus exited at the Woodlands interchange, Somu continued, “You know Anu, I couldn’t help telling him, why don’t you go back since you get paid low here. But he left the place abruptly without saying much although he did tell I must learn to be happy.”
“You?”
“He meant us, Singaporeans,” Somu said lowering his voice. “I think.”
Near the exit, seated at the center of the bus the three domestic workers dressed in their weekend best, dolled up in all accessories, started watching videos happily, ready to enjoy their off day. One of them answered a call, “One angparaan, sanaymaging late,” assuring their punctuality to the friends on the other side.
Seated right behind his parents, next to the Bangladeshi worker, Kani kept getting up restlessly from his seat to look at the fly.
When a plump middle-aged Malay woman boarded at the Marsiling station, one of the foreign workers seated behind the driver spontaneously got up to give her the seat. The lady hesitated for a second and was about to lumber her way to the back when the other guy at the window seat followed suit. Happily, she sat on the aisle seat keeping all her bags and belonging on the window seat before she started looking out of the window.
Taking a look around within the bus, Anu said, “It’s fine, Somu. Not like you’d feared. I can even see a few empty seats.”
“You don’t know, darling. This bus really gets crowded on Sundays. We could have gone Diwali shopping next weekend after our car is back from servicing,” he sulked.
“Oh come on. Look at him! Kani seems to be enjoying the bus ride.”
“If not for the parking woes in Little India area, I wouldn’t choose to travel in this bus,” he sulked for the third time. “especially during the weekend.”
When the fly flew to the rear, it landed on the tab the domestic worker was holding. She jumped and shooed it off with a loud giggle. Her two friends joined in the amusement.
Kani got excited and shrieked, “Pa, look he is flying this way!” Suddenly feeling shy for having expressed loudly, he sat on his seat quietly observing.
The insect had comfortably settled on the glass window near the exit. Fixing his gaze on the fly, Kani sat calmly, glancing at other things once in a while. He shared his discovery, “Musca domestica,” tugging at his mother’s shoulder from the back of her seat. He pointed to the fly when Anu turned from the front seat to smile at him.
After the first few stops, at the Kranji station, foreign workers boarded in groups.
Somu gave her a, “I told you!” kind of a look.
“Kani needs to see some real world, at least, once in a while,” Anu smiled gathering the locks of hair and tugging them behind her ears with her right hand.
There was an empty seat after the exit. A tall and slender looking Chinese woman who’d boarded looked around, extended her hand with a pointed finger, “Go and sit there, lah.” The construction worker appeared to be a Tamil guy got up like an obedient student and moved to the back. With a haughty expression, “Thank you,” she said curtly, almost half-heartedly.
“What do you mean Anu?” Somu chided with a laugh. “Don’t tell me that only crowded bus rides are real life.”
“Not exactly,” Anu beamed. “But in a way yes.”
Many were startled when the Malay woman, in her attempt to alight at the Bukit Panjang CC advanced to the back saying, “Cannot taahan this anymore. Why are these people so smelly?” Right after getting off the bus, she threw an angry expression at the bus from where she stood.
“Ma, why is that old lady rankling for no apparent reason?”
“Hush, hush, no. Are you bored? Want my mobile?”
“No,” he said and went back to watch the big fly.
As the bus entered the BKE, most of them got busy texting. Most of them dozed off in their seats. The bus suddenly quietened.
The two high housing board blocks of flats followed by a few private condominiums beyond the green wilds, on the right disappeared within minutes.
The long terrain ride with the lush natural habitat on either side of the expressway, as always brought a serene feeling, Anu thought.
“Oh my God! I took the wrong set of shopping bags! I didn’t buy these live crabs,” the Chinese man suddenly jolted. He held up the tied bag with a large partially visible creepy crab within.
He stood up to go near the driver. “You have to get off at the Tanglin CC and cross the road via the overhead bridge and board a bus back to Bukit Panjang,” the driver said calmly, smartly kept his eyes on the road.
Kani was eager to have a look at the crab from near, but Somu said, “No need to go all the way there. We are speeding in the expressway, Kani. It’s enough to look from here. I thought you were scared of crabs,” he chuckled.
“Of course, I wouldn’t dare touch it, pa. Thought of talking a closer look. The crab looks unique,” Kani said but sat back in his seat.
The Bangladeshi worker was sincerely trying hard to look away from the young Anglo Chinese couple in secret and mild canoodle at the right end of the long back seat. He’d been talking seriously to someone for more than ten minutes. Sensing the network was bound to go erratic in the PIE, he winded up his conversation smartly, “Jaanish. Achchaa, thaarpor kotha bolbo, han?”
The road widening works near the exit to Eng Neo Avenue and Adams Road suddenly reminded the passengers of the city life.
“You look ravishing in this sari,” Somu whispered in Anu’s ear.
“And you’ve said that umpteen times, Somu. I still can’t forget the day you stood at the shop dead against me choosing this one.” Reminiscing, they laughed together and turned to look behind, at Kani.
Much familiar with the expressway, traffic, the downtown line works along the Bukit Timah Road, Kani was observed all that he could, mostly within the bus as if he might never a get another chance to travel by bus.
Once along Whitley Road, the louring urban face of the city showed. “This comes under the suborder Cyclorrhapha,” Kani bent down to whisper into Somu’s ears. The father forced a smile and looked at the fly.
The Chinese man holding the large shopping bags alighted, grumbling.
With not many passengers boarding or alighting, the bus streamlined through the Bukit Timah Road.
When the bus reached Little India bus stop, most of the commuters alighted. “Bus ride was damn interesting, Pa,” Kani mused as he got down. Though sunny, the roads glittered wet. The rains had just stopped.
Not losing sight of the Bangladeshi worker who’d also alighted, Kani told his parents to wait for a few minutes. When Anu pulled him, he said, “Ma, please wait just for a few minutes.”
“Can I have a few dollars, Pa?” he said hurriedly keeping an eye on the foreign worker.
Taking out his wallet from his pant pocket, Somu asked impatiently, “But what do you need money so urgently for?” Kani pulled out a ten dollar note.
He pointed at the Bangladeshi standing with a lost expression on his face. “He needs to top up his EZ link, Pa. I heard him cry over the phone. He is broke and in a dire state.”
“Don’t tell me you can understand his language.”
“Oh, I’ve been picking their language for more than a year,” he said. Always observing, he would smile and wave at the Bangladeshi workers who cleared the garbage chute and cleaned the common areas. But Anu never expected him to have learnt their language.
Kani swiftly went near the foreign worker and asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“Paya Lebar,” said the foreign worker, looking at Kani a little hesitantly.
With all kindness, Kani said softly and slowly, “You take the train to Bugis from here. And, from there you board the green line towards Pasir Ris, you understand?” The Bangladeshi just nodded shyly.
Gently, Kani thrust the ten dollar note into his hand and hopped back to join his parents. As if trying to prevent them from looking at the Bangladeshi, he pulled them both by his hands. Curiously, he turned to look and was titillated to see the housefly riding on the tattered backpack of the Bangladeshi worker. “Eureka! Single pair of wings! Comes under the higher classification of Diptera,” Kani squealed
[1]Poochchi – A generic term to refer to any kind of insect.
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Art by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). From Public Domain
Floods, heatwave, hurricanes and storms — wild weather rips parts of the earth. While experts attribute these to El Niño and climate change, one wonders if peace and lifestyle choices could have any impact to reverse the changes on our home planet. Do wars add to our deep distress? We lose people, homes, what we nurtured and loved, the beautiful cities and structures we built, even forests, fields and rivers. The nuclear holocausts, the killing fields of the World Wars, the mined fields of Cambodia and Vietnam which continue to maim farmers… all these should have taught us to avoid wars but now when the television throws up images of war-torn zones, one wonders if those are worse than climate disasters?
In climate disasters we lose lives, homes and cities too — but people can step in to help and rebuild after the disaster. In a war setting, rescue workers are at a risk as bombs mow down terrain and destroys the tenor of daily lives. The disasters born of climate change too can be irreversible — especially with rising water levels, depleting shorelines and warmer climes ripped by storms. Which is worse — wars or climate disasters? What do you think? Could we go back to a pollution free world and reverse the darker impacts of climate change?
Just as history accepted wars and moved on, perhaps the time has come when climate change has to be accepted as a part of the new reality, and we have to find new ways of life. Exploring such stories is a book by Rajat Chaudhuri,The Climate Crossroads: Literature’s Encounter with a Planet on Fire. It has been reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha who tells us: “It reminds us that the climate crisis is not solely a scientific or political problem but also a crisis of imagination. Rajat Chaudhuri demonstrates with remarkable insight that stories are among humanity’s most powerful tools for understanding uncertainty, confronting ecological loss, and envisioning more just futures.” Somdatta Mandal, on the other hand, has brought in more on environment with her discussion of Siddharth Kak’s A Fire over Mount Everest. Andreas Geisbert adds colour to this section with his exploration of Angel Ramon’s Requiem of a Lost Nation. Satya Narayan Misra has reflected on Bhaskar Parichha’s Icons of Odisha – Lives that Shaped a State, a non-fiction whose excerpt tells us much about the journey of the author to bring to us community builders in various streams of life. We also have a bit from Kanupriya Dhingra’s non-fiction about a book bazaar that flourishes despite bookshops finding it hard to survive, The Sunday Book Bazaar: Daryaganj and the Making of a Reading Public in Delhi.
Our interviews this month touch upon environmental issues with Keith Lyons conversing with Helen Townsend, environmental entrepreneur and plant enthusiast who is high on sustainability and earth friendly solutions while Suzanne Kamata has interviewed Lily West who has travelled to all the countries in the world and has put it all down in her memoir, West goes East. Like Kamata, she teaches in Japan now. Kamata has also given us a humorous piece on remote controls. Humour is a sentiment that has also been wrought into our nonfiction with a flourish byDevraj Singh Kalsi too. He writes of his wedding sherwanialmost with a passion like the Dickensian Ms Havisham[1] exhibited for her crumbling wedding gown, except it has a different tone — that of wry tongue-in-cheek irony. Farouk Gulsara has a similar twinge of sarcasm as he muses on uncertainties in the future. Ian C Smith brings in a bit of the weather as he muses on a rainy day while Subramaniam Cheemalapati muses on the star-studded sky, dwelling on his anecdotal childhood experiences. Gowher Bhat introduces us to an aid worker who helps war victims. Meredith Stephens continues on her sailing adventures in Western Australia with photographs by her husband, Alan Noble. The photograph of the pink jellyfish is awesome. Do check it out!
Translations have brought in a shower of poetry with Tagore’s poem on a rainy-day hinting at shared confidences. Professor Fakrul Alam has translated Bengali lyrics Nazrul wrote for his friend and mentor, Rabindranath Tagore. Ihlwha Choi has brought to us a whiff of the Korean summer with his verses and Fazal Baloch has brought to us soulful poems from Balochi by Mohammad Hussain Anqa. Isa Kamari’s translations carry a flavour of Malay life in Singapore, and this set of verses bring to a close his book, The Lost Mantras. We are very privileged to have his entire book translated solely in our pages. Isa Kamari is an eminent literary voice of the Malay Singaporean community.
We have news about our hardcopy poetry anthology. We have had six media coverages in less than three months. Professor Malashri Lal deems: “For those of us who still believe in principles of care and compassion, humanism and amity, Wild Winds is a lifeline to keep afloat…It is especially commendable for wrapping global concerns in the fine tissue of hope.” And Mandal tells us: “Reading through these one hundred poems is indeed a pleasurable experience even for readers with a more prosaic temperament.” We are delighted that the book has had a warm welcome. Huge thanks to our publishers for giving us a hardcopy platform.
Thanks to all our contributors, readers and the fabulous team that make borderlessjournal.com come alive each month with a vibrant soul. Huge thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Do pause by our contents page for the July 2026 issue.
Fresh with the caress of dew, Fragrant with the scent of rose, Joyous with the chirping of birds, Invigorating with a hearty breakfast, Captivating with a painted sunrise,
Cheery with a calm soul, Solid with a clear mind, Clear with the demands of responsibility, Firm with steps to work, Blessed with the dedication to make a living, Earnest with the utterance of In the Name of God, Dependent on the destiny of efforts, Submitted in consistent devotion, Echoed with His Beautiful Names,
God is Beauty and loves the beautiful, Reveals the face of His Benevolence, Expresses the layers of His Majesty, So, everything returns as beautiful things, To His Beneficence and Mercy.
Alone
Life is lonesome In cold nights like this, when family could not understand, I no longer cry while reading the Qur'an. The Original Mantra
The original mantra came down from heaven, Following the sin of having a will, Bestowed with freedom of choice, Taught the Word and Names of everything. The ordained natural mould Does not change.
We are Adam, venerated, To whom the angels bow. We are Adam, vile, Befriended by the Devil till the end of Time, Who destroys the earth With hands that have wants, With souls that are free to act, Betray and rebel, Self-sufficient and disobedient.
The original and revered Word and Names We sully with despicable acts, We taint with wild thoughts. The natural mould handed down from prophets We smash in arrogance.
Alas, the original mantra from Adam Is conditioned by political and social norms To suit its locale, The abode of each people, That is perfected and purified by The Mercy of the Worlds.
The spring that flows from heaven, Has freedom to worship as its undercurrent, Envied by the angels. The ultimate pleasure is to Return the freedom to The Owner of the Eternal Mantra.
O Believers! Do not die Except in a state of total submission.
Prostration
Dirtied hands feel the heat, Palms on the earth Next to the forehead. My heart is grounded, Asking for mercy. The cool pouring of Love and forgiveness.
Intimacy
I pick up grains of sand On my journey home, No longer unfamiliar, Though dirtied and bitter. I wash with prayer and zikr, The last accompaniment To brighten the impending grave-pit. Descending from the peak, Wishing for a clear spring At the foot of the hill, To submerge My entire soul in You.
*zikr—remembrance
Gift
I realise: The palpitations in my chest Are not the flow of my breath, But a gust of Your mercy. The stirrings of love Do not arise from my soul, But from Your grace. My complete surrender is Just Your Embrace.
Mirror of Revelation
O my soul breeze, I want to gaze at Your face By the mirror of revelation.
Your whispers Stir the base of my heart in tenderness. Longing for the original song— Without rhythm and melody, Only silent whispers,
One in ecstasy, Longing sustains existence: Existence in perpetual longing. The self is broken to pieces by doubt.
O my soul breezes To return to One, Obliterate in Light.
Isa Kamari has written 12 novels, 3 collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, a book of essays on Singapore Malay poetry, a collection of theatre scripts and lyrics of 3 music albums, all in Malay. His novels have been translated into English, Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, Indonesian, Jawi, Russian, French, Spanish, Korean, Azerbaijan and Mandarin. Several of his essays and selected poems have been translated into English. Isa was conferred the S.E.A Write Award from Thailand (2006), the Singapore Cultural Medallion (2007), the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang (2009) from the Singapore Malay Language Council, and the Mastera Literary Award (2018) from Brunei Darussalam.
He obtained a BArch (Hons) from the National University of Singapore in 1989, an MPhil (Malay Letters) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 2008 and is currently pursuing a PhD programme at the Academy of Islamic Studies, Univeristi Malaya. His area of research is on the problem of alienation and the practice of firasat (spiritual intuition) in selected Singapore Malay novels.
The Lost Mantras is a collection that blends spirituality, Malay cultural heritage, and universal human experience. First published as part of Menyap Cinta (Love Greetings, 2022, Nuha Books KL), these poems are like a bridge between mysticism and everyday life, where traditional images (betel, jasmine, kris[1], oil lamps, setanjak[2]) are woven with Qur’anic echoes, prayers, and existential questioning. The collection carries a Sufi resonance—always circling back to longing, humility, surrender, and beauty as signs of God. The poems are not only lyrical but also function as cultural memory: they preserve Malay traditions, communal practices, and village life, while situating them in a cosmic framework of faith, sin, and redemption. The use of Malay customs, rituals, and objects is powerful: it asserts that spirituality is not abstract but embedded in heritage. This makes the collection uniquely Southeast Asian despite its universal in appeal.
Think about a time when you felt stuck or stifled with the options that your professional path presented. Do you remember your general thoughts and emotions at the time? What expectations did you have when you started on that path? Do you wish you could go back and change some choices you made along the way?
I’ve felt this “stuckness” many times through the various stages of my career as a generalist, evaluating different paths, most recently when I secured permanent residency in the US after a 14-month hiatus of being unable to work in America. I was faced with the choice of taking my career in a different direction or trying to rejoin the corporate path where I left off.
During such ponderings, I’ve usually been able to break my feelings down into an expectations versus reality equation. While I’m sure that isn’t the most insightful thing you’ve heard, think about why the mismatch between that expectation and reality might have occurred in your own life. It is because the expectations you had of your path in two, five, ten, or twenty years, and the reality of that path, in terms of your own perception of reward and fulfillment, don’t match. Thinking of your life as a predefined path, with milestones and comparisons, makes you constantly ponder over this existential expectation versus reality equation, steeped in arbitrary milestones. The challenge, especially in this modern world obsessed with exceptionalism, is that our paths offer the false promise of infinite possibility and underestimate the reality of finite choices.
The Pressure to be on a Path
Remember that favorite interview question we’ve all asked or been asked: Where do you see yourself in five years?
Now think about yourself, your industry, or the job you did five years ago. Has all of that changed beyond recognition? The job I did as recently as 2016 is now basically done by a button. Software developers, who commanded the highest-paying jobs till only a few years ago, are being rapidly challenged by AI or scrambling to become AI engineers, reduced to supervisory roles. Subscriptions as a primary business model, for example, was only adopted in the last five years or so. AI wasn’t a word in the public consciousness till 2023, and today, we’re told we should let it run our lives, from making us breakfast to writing our resumes and picking candidates for jobs!
So, if companies themselves do not know their paths, why is there that pressure on individuals? Based on my own experience, that interview question itself is ill-advised. Someone who is extremely sure of their path, despite knowing how rapidly their context may evolve, is already a bit stifled.
This stifling, myopic path, especially if you’re not fulfilled by it, again brings with it a sense of constant jadedness and exhaustion. It is that exhaustion, coupled with a perceived lack of agency over your path, that eventually manifests as full-blown burnout. Being flexible and adaptable, and rebuilding agency over your own skills are key to building long-term careers today, especially in a time when the AI, internet, and gig economy is truly enabling infinite possibilities at an individual level.
While human beings need structure in their lives, society starts laying out that structure for us from the moment we barely attain consciousness, not leaving too much room for exploration. Remember that question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? I’m guilty of asking this question myself to my nine-year-old niece. She insists she wants to be a vet, which is adorable. I think I wanted to be a cricketer back then. Those questions gave me and my niece structure to explore our personalities, but had I stuck to that path, given the context of my life (my state didn’t even have a team back then), I probably wouldn’t have made a career out of it!
As a 16-year-old, I could have never imagined living in four countries, traveling to over 60 countries marrying an American woman, and attaining financial independence, all before or around 30 years of age. And I am so glad I had the openness to explore divergent paths while still committing to a fairly traditional corporate path. Metaphorically speaking, I knew that I wanted to sail west in the Atlantic, but I was open to landing in Brazil, Mexico, the US, or Canada. That openness has enabled me to start afresh, after 11 years at Google, through this book, and through a coaching and workplace culture consultancy, WideWorldView.com, while continuing to positively engage with the corporate world.
While predefined paths are great to give our expeditions structure, we still need to adjust our sails as per the direction of the winds and currents. As a society, we are too eager to forcefit people into paths, generally very early in life. Thinking about your life and identity as one thing or one path stifles you from exploring all other potentially more fulfilling identities. Despite the rapid changes in societal structures and expectations, the corporate ladder is still largely not set up for individuals to be able to adjust their sails to changing winds, without making radical shifts in course. What if these paths that society puts us on and we often unquestionably follow weren’t meant for us at all?
What if we followed those paths because we constantly felt a stifling opportunity cost? What if those paths were designed to stifle innovation and exploration at a personal level? And what if the expectations our paths set for us were never based in reality? Who made us feel that these paths were the only ones we had? The answer is largely rooted in our modern education system, which is designed to prioritize “getting a job” over self-discovery.
ABOUT THE BOOK
You know the feeling: chronic workplace stress along with a nagging sense of ineffectiveness. That’s burnout. Burnout Highway demystifies this increasingly collective suffering by exploring the larger context that runs all our lives—the systems within which we make decisions, the milestones we were taught to desire, and the feelings of fulfillment we thought they would provide.
From pursuing grades and achievements to landing ‘dream jobs,’ the India Shining generation was promised a clear and straightforward path to success. However, this journey can feel exhausting, especially with India ranking among the countries with the longest working hours and the highest rates of burnout.
Anmol examines how societal conditioning, corporate ladder dynamics, and economic pressures influence our work and presents readers with a systematic framework for navigating the challenges of burnout while fostering the development of fulfilling and emotionally sustainable careers. This is an invitation to prioritize work that aligns with your values and addresses your emotional well-being, ultimately helping you break the cycle of burnout.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anmol Diddan is an advocate for emotionally sustainable careers and the founder of World Wide View. Raised Sikh in the complex geopolitics of the Northeast, Anmol spent his early years in Shillong before moving to Mumbai at sixteen to study Economics; an experience that exposed him to both the promise and pressure of ambition in modern India. His thirst for learning through experiences led him to a global career in behavioural and cultural research, working with Google across India, Ireland, Singapore, and the United States. Now based in New York City, he draws on his dynamic background to explore how the intersection of economics, psychology, and culture affects all our lives, with a focus on wellbeing in the modern workplace. He works 1:1 to help professionals tackle burnout and career transitions, all across the world.
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