Tag: Snehaprava Das

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Editorial

‘How do you rebuild a life when all that remains is dust?’

The Great War is over
And yet there is left its vast gloom.
Our skies, light and society’s soul have been overcast…

'The Great War is Over' by Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam.

Jibanananda Das wrote the above lines in the last century and yet great wars rage even now. As the world struggles to breathe looking for a beam of hope to drag itself out of the darkness induced by natural calamities, accidents, terror attacks and wars that seem to rage endlessly, are we moving towards the dystopian scenario created by George Orwell in 1984, which would be around the same time as Jibanananda Das’s ‘The Great War is Over’?

Describing such a scenario, Ahmed Rayees writes a moving piece from the Kashmiri village of Sheeri, the last refuge of the displaced refugees who were bombarded after peace was declared in their refuge during the clash across Indo-Pak borders. He contends: “People walked back not to homes, but to ruins. Entire communities had been reduced to ash and rubble. Crops were destroyed, livestock gone, schools turned into shelters or craters. How do you rebuild a life when all that remains is dust?”

People could be asking the same questions without finding answers in Gaza or Ukraine, where the cities are reduced to rubble. While we look for a ray of sunshine, amidst the rubble, Farouk Gulsara muses on hope that has its roots in eternity. Vela Noble wanders on nostalgic beaches in Adelaide. And Meredith Stephens travels to the Australian outback. Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in lighter notes writing of driving lessons while Suzanne Kamata creeps back to darker recesses musing on likely ‘criminals’ and crimes in her neighbourhood.

Lopamudra Nayak writes on social media and its impact while Bhaskar Parichha writes of trends that could be brought into Odia literature.  What he writes could apply well to all regional literature, where they lose their individual colouring to paint dystopian realities of the present world. Does modernising make us lose our ethnic identity and how important is that? These are questions that sprung to the mind reading his essay. As if in an attempt to hold on to the past ethos, Prithvijeet Sinha wafts around old ruins in Lucknow and sees a cemetery for colonial soldiers and concludes: “Everybody has formidable stakes, and the dead don’t preach the gospel of victory or sombre defeat.”

Taking up a similar theme of death and war is a poem from Saranyan BV. In poetry, we have colours from around the world with poems from Allan Lake, Ron Pickett, Ananya Sarkar, George Freek, Jim Bellamy, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Juairia Hossain, Gautham Pradeep, Jenny Middleton, Mandavi Choudhary and many more. Multiple themes are woven into a variety of perspectives, including nature and environment, with June hosting the World Environment Day. Rhys Hughes gives a funny poem on the Welsh outlaw, Twm Siôn Cati.

We have mainly poetry in translation this time. Snehaprava Das has brought to us Soubhagyabanta Maharana’s poems from Odia and Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. Sangita Swechcha’s poem in Nepali has been rendered to English by Saudamini Chalise. From Bengali, other that Jibanananda Das’s poems translated by Professor Fakrul Alam, we have Tagore’s pensive and beautiful poem, Sonar Tori (the golden boat). Yet another Bengali poet, one who died young and yet left his mark, Sukanta Bhattacharya (1926-1947), has been translated by Kiriti Sengupta. Sengupta has also translated the responses of Bitan Chakravarty in a candid conversation about his dream child — the Hawakal Publishers. We also have a feature on this based on a face-to-face conversation, giving the story of how this publishing house grew out of an idea. Now, they publish poetry traditionally, without costs to the poet. Their range of authors are spread across continents.

Our fiction again returns to the darkness of war. Young Leishilembi Terem has given a story set in conflict-ridden Manipur from where she has emerged safely — a story that reiterates the senselessness of violence and politics. While Jeena R. Papaadi writes of modern human relationships that end without commitment, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a value-based story in a small hamlet of southern India. 

From stories, our book excerpts return to the real world, where a daughter grieves her father in Mohua Chinappa’s Thorns in My Quilt: Letters from a Daughter to Her Father while Wendy Doniger’s The Cave of Echoes: Stories about Gods, Animals and Other Strangers, dwells on demystifying structures that create borders. We have two non-fiction reviews. Parichha writes about David C Engerman’s Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made. And Satya Narayan Misra discusses Bakhtiyar K Dadabhoy’s Honest John – A Life of John Matthai. Somdatta Mandal this time explores a historical fiction based around the founding of Calcutta, Madhurima Vidyarthi’s Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy while Rakhi Dalal looks at fiction born of environmental awareness, Dhruba Hazarika’s The Shoot: Stories.

We have more content. Do pause by our contents page and take a look.

Huge thanks to all our contributors without who this issue would not have materialised. Heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless for their support, especially Sohana Manzoor for her iconic artwork that has almost become a signature statement for Borderless.

Let’s hope that next month brings better news for the whole world.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents for the June 2025 Issue

READ THE LATEST UPDATES ON THE FIRST BORDERLESS ANTHOLOGY, MONALISA NO LONGER SMILES, BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK.

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Poetry

Found in Translation: Soubhagyabanta Maharana’s Poetry

Five Odia poems by Soubhagyabanta Maharana  have been translated by Snehaprava Das

SUNSET: A SYMBOL 

To bridge the agelessly waiting gap
Between an unvoiced luminosity and a vibrant darkness
Sunset is a magic silence, 
An indulging over the wispy interlapping   
Of light and shadow.

It is an ancient oil-painting 
On the old drawing sheet of the sky by a 
Bohemian, invisible artist who fills the earth 
With a spectrum of the melody of 
An unforgettable twilight.  

Sunset is the gentle thump of 
Disembodied dancers’ feet, tripping  
To the rhythm of witch-chanting
On a phantom, ashy-pale stage.

A lifetime that had glowed like a fake sun
In the crimson smile of the earth 
Slowly turns black, 
And on the black canvas of the sky
Painted in scatters are millions of sparkling stars.

Sunset is a Truth, 
A promise of a melodious, bright morning  
That the sun dreams of 
Slumbering in the palanquin of the night.

SILENCE BETWEEN WORDS

Like a lone, saffron-robed monk 
The silence hiding between the words, waits 
Keeping awake in secret, 
Hoping to get free
from the mysterious chains of mystic incantations.

The bewildering crowd of thoughts stuck between
One word and another,
Before even the mystery of the meaning is unraveled
Confuses the interpreting.

And the silence is left alone,
Weeping, elegizing the loss -- 
A dumb witness to the unwarranted death of words.  

Because the silence does not reveal itself
In happiness, 
A sorrow lives permanently in the palpitations
Of the poet’s heart
To bring the un-wilting flowers of poetry
Molded from the poet’s blood into blooming
in their vivid, picturesque charm.

In the unshackled voice of the poet
words and silence seek a nerve center,
in a sensitive, ultimate moment of love
to melt into each other. 

Who else other than a poet could gauge
The depth of the silence hidden 
In the koel’s song 
To bridge the gap between life and death?  

A VILLAGE THAT WAS: SKETCHING NOSTALGIA  

No one was there waiting eagerly 
To meet my shadow, 
No one to lament the loss of a village 
That was there once.
The smell of love in the wet mud
Has faded with the passage of time.
The melody of spring in the soft breeze,
The shadow of a rainbow on the face of water 
Have disappeared too.

The day when I left the village, 
A fleeting cloud played hide and seek
In my book-satchel.
The fragrance of the lotus in the village-pond
That wished to caress fondly
The vibrance of childhood on my face 
Missed me.
The name of that village lives in me. 
A village crowded with forests of Mahula 
And throbbing with the song of Adivasis  
Dancing in the shadows of the Sal -- 
The village where rings the rhythm of my birth-cries 
in a straw-thatched hut --
the name of that village, has melted into my breath.
  
A deep sadness pricks me though
That just as I understood the village
I lost my way to it,
 Before I could trace the lotus-pond
And inhale its fragrance.
The smoke the factories emitted 
Choked me midway,
As I went on narrating the nostalgia 
I was left with just myself.
Alone.
While I searched for dreams 
Painted in rural shades,
I lost my own self in the pale horizon
Of a smoky, grey sky.  

DECLARATION

I gathered the ardour of that missing warmth
From the ashes of a decadent sun 
To charge the cold blood that run in my veins.
I gathered the exotic smell of blinking stars
To add years to my life.

My skeletal frame that resembles
some ancient sculptor has a voice.
It can speak, and it can hide 
from the eyes of the world
the pain it writhes under,
lest someone use its vulnerability
and sign a sworn statement for befriending 
its invisible blood, flesh and sinews.  

In every corner of my body that is caged,  
In the prison of the elements,
Love sojourns.
And the intimate voice of my shadow-self 
Has reached up to the planets and beyond. 
 
The primeval tale of my century-old wait
Has sheltered in the feeble gaze of my eyes
May be, I am designed to stand as 
The enemy of Time.
It was perhaps designed so,   
That my victory march, with the bugle blowing 
Will be declared a glorious success 
Against a different backdrop. 

RELATIONSHIP: ANOTHER HORIZON 

It feels odd at times 
To play the hero in 
The brief interlude between 
Ignorance and innocence.
There are times when a relationship 
Founded on poisoned, defiled trust
Tastes sweet.
In the dark sanctum of bitter animosity,
 A beguiling god assumes a friendly form
 And embraces to overwhelm you
 with his gratifying blessings.

 Only a fake hero would nurture   
 The overpowering urge to 
 Flaunt himself in vain glory on the 
 Dazzling stage of civility.
 It is he who fosters a brazen wish   
To draw a line on the water,
And to wish for the moon  
In a moonless night-sky. 
 True friendship is where 
The sapling of love grows
Its green foliage  
To reach a lofty height 
And brings life to fruition.
It’s like a faint streak of light 
That illumines a blind alley at night. 

A heart bathed in that love
Becomes more sacred than a shrine,
More craved than the potion of immortality. 
It is the comfort an orphan child enjoys,
Sleeping inside a cozy culvert
In the chilly night of the month of the Pausha*. 

*December- January
Soubhagyabanta Maharana

Soubhagyabanta Maharana (b.1951) in the  Bolangir town, Odisha, is a prominent bilingual poet, critic and translator of Odia and English.  He is an awardee of Odisha Sahitya Akademi for poetry in 2010 along with many prestigious literary awards. He has to his credit nineteen poetry collections  and  six essay collections on modern Odia poetry.

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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

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

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

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Contents

Borderless, May 2025

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

“Imagine all the people/ Living life in peace”… Click here to read.

Translations

The Day of Annihilation, an essay on climate change by Kazi Nazrul Islam, has been translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Arise O Woman and Two Flowers on One Leafstalk, lyrics by Nazrul, have been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Five poems by Bipin Nayak have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das. Click here to read.

Identity by Munir Momin has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Among Strangers, a poem by Ihlwha Choi  has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Asha or Hope by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Ryan Quinn Flangan, Jim Bellamy, Snehprava Das, George Freek, Niranjan Aditya, Christine Belandres, Ajeeti S, Ron Pickett, Kajoli Krishnan, Stuart McFarlane, Snigdha Agrawal, Arthur Neong, Elizabeth Anne Pereira, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Did He Ever?, Rhys Hughes gives fun-filled verses on Lafcadio Hearn, a bridge between the East and West from more than a hundred years ago. Click here to read.

Musings/ Slices from Life

Will Dire Wolves Stalk Streets?

Farouk Gulsara writes of genetic engineering. Click here to read.

The Boy at the Albany Bus Stop

Meredith Stephens dwells on the commonality of human emotions. Click here to read.

The Word I Could Never Say

Odbayar Dorj muses on her own life in Mongolia and Japan. Click here to read.

Social Media Repetition

Jun A. Alindogan discusses the relevance of social media. Click here to read.

Shanghai in Jakarta

Eshana Sarah Singh takes us to Chinese New Year celebrations in Djakarta. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In My Writing Desk, Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of the source of his inspiration. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Feeling Anxious in Happy Village, Suzanne Kamata relates a heartwarming story. Click here to read.

Essays

Reminiscences from a Gallery: The Other Ray

Dolly Narang muses on Satyajit Ray’s world beyond films and shares a note by the maestro and an essay on his art by the eminent artist, Paritosh Sen. Click here to read.

This Garden Calls Out to Me: A Flaneur in Lucknow’s Sikandar Bagh

Prithvijeet Sinha takes us back to a historical landmark, made for love but bloodied by war. Click here to read.

Stories

Going to Meet the Hoppers

Fiona Sinclair writes a layered story on human perspectives. Click here to read.

The Ritual of Change

Parnika Shirwaikar explores the acceptance of change. Click here to read.

The Last Metro

Spandan Upadhyay explores the spirit of the city of Kolkata. Click here to read.

Nico Finds His Dream

Paul Mirabile narrates how young Nico uncovers his own yearnings. Click here to read.

The Bequest

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives a story reflecting a child’s lessons from Nature. Click here to read.

Conversation

Ratnottama Sengupta introduces and converses with photographer, Vijay S Jodha. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Devabrata Das’s One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam, translated by multiple translators from Assamese. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Ryan Quinn Flangan’s Ghosting My Way into the Afterlife. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Arundhathi Nath‘s translation, The Phantom’s Howl: Classic Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings from Bengal. Click here to read.

Andreas Giesbert reviews Rhys Hughes’ The Devil’s Halo. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Aubrey Menen’s A Stranger in Three Worlds: The Memoirs of Aubrey Menen. Click here to read.

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

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Categories
Poetry

Found in Translation: Bipin Nayak’s Poetry

 Five Odia poems by Bipin Nayak have been translated by Snehaprava Das

WITHIN 
                           
An equestrian within me 
Mounts an unbridled horse
And plays a violin.
A boatman inside me 
Crosses an imaginary river
Again, and again  
In a non-existent boat.
                             
Within me, there is a wayfarer
That refuses to 
Travel the trodden road
And takes a turn.
                              
A lake ripples in me, 
Waiting futilely
To lose itself in the sea,
And a waterfall  
Leaps noisily from above 
To wet the rocks.                            
                                                       
A cloud floats within me,
All of a sudden,
Flashes a lightning smile
And goes back to sleep.
                            
In me, a cowherd
Returns home in the twilight
Painted in the colours of sunset      
And lights a kerosene lamp.
                       
A camel inside me
Sags under a sack-load of salt,
But trudges across the sands
Dreaming of a lush meadow. 
  
A mother in me conceives words,
Bleeds in labour, 
Nourishes the vulnerable words 
With love and care
And watches them grow…                  
                                                                          
PAPER BIRD
                                                       
My woes pull your neck longer.
My beloved words become the air 
To stuff your insides. 
I forge your wings from  
The crumpled paper of my dreams,                           
And mold your beak with my kisses,
Paint you in the colour 
Of my solitary nights….
Trim you with 
All my fears and frustrations.  
Because I could not 
Make a paper-boat of you
To sail in the muddy puddle,
I lift you up  
To fly across 
The monsoon sky.
When you climb a little higher 
Into the air
And are drenched out of shape,
I, a naked child, 
Stand here in the rain, look up and cry! 

THE MAKING 

I pick a few bones of my hardest grief,
Scoop some blood 
Oozing red to create.
                                                                                    
I fix a face of smoke or a patch of weepy cloud    
Mold a nose from the wafting breeze.  
I fix a pair of eyes, like day and night,
There in the face.
In one of them, I put a tornado, 
A bird in the other.
With flowers of joy and grief,
I shape the lips.
The body I try to make 
Out of a river that hides under it,
A fire and a perpetually vain desire 
To reach the sea or a desolate jungle.                                   
I design the limbs from a  
Lingering surge of green.                                  
All these efforts 
Are but only to replicate 
What has been made before.
I set afloat 
Because it has been set to drift
Much before…
And because it has sprinkled  
A cosmic fervour across 
A secret sanctum inside me,
To bring a god to life, 
I worship it! 
I keep trying to create and re-create inside me
Because it has made me much before that!  

            
A SKY AS I AM

I have set out to paint a sky of my own --
A sky that is exactly as I am! 
And for that I have picked up
Some nomadic dreams, a sunset, 
I have collected the blood of flowers,
The tune of a stream that has flown away,
The chirping of orphan birds,
The layers of moss spread over
A decrepit piece of rock-writing.
I have scooped up 
A handful of ash from the debris of
Perished time,
And a wild storm that had retreated 
After having blown me away.
I took out the wet melody from a violin and
the primeval music of the insect,
throbbing inside the grass.
From the reminisces stuck in the sinews 
I have gathered a few scattered sighs,
 And from the darkness, the mysteries of nights,
 I have got warmth from dreams,
 Sin from pollen grains.
 With these elements beside me
 And a canvas in shreds, 
 I sit down to paint a sky of mine
A sky that is exactly as I am!      

LET THEM SING  

Let them sing a song.
I do not mind
If my wound heals them,
Or my tears make them glow,
And my blood paints them crimson.

My quick breathing flits about, but
I do not mind if someone plays a flute
Blowing into the holes of my bones 
And sings through the lips 
Borrowed from me.
 
Let them sing, why must I mind it?
The lips are not mine. Nor is the song!

 

Bipin Nayak

Bipin Nayak (1950), a bold and engaging voice in the literary scenario of modern Odisha, is a trend setter who explored new possibilities for Odia poetry. One of the most significant postmodernist and minimalist poet in Odia, Nayak is a believer in the artefact of words than the meaning and medium. For him poetry is an aesthetic exploration through the fragile, fluid words which could be liberated from its conventional canons and connotations. There is a distinct undertone of metaphysical too in his poetry that hovers over the slim divide between the real and the surreal. Bipin Nayak is a pioneer in Odia auto-fiction writing. His ‘Jatra ra Ketoti Pada’[1], an unprecedented experimental work, that challenges the conventional style through a blending of prose and poetry and does not conform to any traditional literary genre. Besides being the recipient of the prestigious Odisha Sahitya Akademi award the poet has received several accolades for his contribution to Odia literature. Significant amongst them are the Bishuba Jhankar Purashkar, Akhila Mohan Kabita Sammana, Sachivalaya Lekhaka Parishada Sammana and Sammana from Kalinga Sahitya Samaja. He has been widely published in Hindi, Bengali and also in English and has adorned the pages of Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati and other prestigious journals. His major works include Swarachitra (The Painted voice) that fetched him the Odisha Sahitya Akademi award, Nija Nija Barnabodha Apustaka, Sadaja, Bidagdha Bichara, Band Ghara ra Basna.         

[1] Translates to ‘how many steps are there in a journey’

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit. 

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

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

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

Categories
Poetry

Moment by Snehaprava Das

From Public Domain 
MOMENT 

I could be that moment
When life seems to begin
And end,
I hold in me the immortal woe
Of the human race,
A canvas carrying sketches  
Of man’s undying wishes;        
I might be one moment of mystery 
That secrets mankind’s dark history;
I am a moment molten
And a moment frozen,
One of chaos and creation,
I could be a speck of dust
Holding inside me a world gained
And a world lost;
I could be holding the whole cosmos 
I could be the stasis, the rush; 
I could be one endless moment of ecstasy,
Or of eternal pain,
I could be that moment when life ends
And begins again!

Snehaprava Das is an academic, translator and writer. She has multiple translations, three collections of stories and five anthologies of poetry to her credit. She has been published in Indian Literature, Oxford University Press, Speaking Tiger, Penguin and Black Eagle Books.

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

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

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

Categories
Contents

Borderless, March 2025

Happy Birthday Borderless… Click here to read.
Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Celebrating a Borderless World… Five Years and Counting… Click here to read.

Translations

Jibanananda Das’ poems on war and for the common masses have been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

A Scene with an Aged Queen, a poem by Ihlwha Choi  has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Esho Bosonto, Esho Aj Tumi (Come Spring, Come Today) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Pandies’ Corner

For Sanjay Kumar: To Sir — with Love has been written for the founder of pandies’ theatre by Tanvir, a youngster from the Nithari village where pandies’ worked with traumatised victims. Over time, these kids have transcended the trauma to lead fulfilling lives. The late Sanjay Kumar passed on this January. This is a tribute to him by one of his students. It has been translated from the Hindustani original by Lourdes M Surpiya. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Kiriti Sengupta, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Snehaprava Das, Stuart McFarlane, Arshi Mortuza, George Freek, Jyotish Chalil Gopinathan, Ahmad Al-Khatat, Michael Burch, Bibhuti Narayan Biswal, Mark Wyatt, Owais Farooq, Adriana Rocha, Rakhi Dalal, Rhys Hughes

Musings/Slices from Life

Nobody Knows…

Farouk Gulsara muses on the dichotomies in life exploring beliefs that shape our world. Click here to read.

Beachcombing on the Abrolhos Islands

Meredith Stephens goes beachcombing in a thinly inhabited island. Click here to read.

As Flows the Gomti: A Monument of Tranquility 

Prithvijeet Sinha takes us to the past of Lucknow. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In All Creatures Great and Small, Devraj Singh Kalsi talks of living in harmony with nature… is it tongue in cheek? To find out, click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Haiku for Rwandan Girls, Suzanne Kamata writes of her trip to Africa where she teaches and learns from youngsters. Click here to read.

Essays

Take One

Ratnottama Sengupta takes stock of women in Bengali cinema over the last fifty years. Click here to read.

Drinking the Forbidden Milk of Paradise…

Meenakshi Malhotra explores the past of poetry and women writers. Click here to read.

Where have all the Libraries Gone?

Professor Fakrul Alam writes of the loss of libraries as we knew them. Click here to read.

Stories

In the Realm of Childhood

Paul Mirabile gives us a story set in Scotland. Click here to read.

The Appropriate Punishments

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives a fable set in a forest. Click here to read.

Eyes of Inti

Swati Basu Das shares a lighthearted flash fiction. Click here to read.

‘Solitude is a Kind of Freedom…’

Munaj Gul gives an introspective story set in Balochistan. Click here to read.

Why I Stopped Patronising that Cheese Maker’s Shop…

Zoé Mahfouz shares a humorous vignette of Parisian life. Click here to read.

Conversations

Ratnottama Sengupta discusses the famous actor, Soumitra Chatterjee, with his daughter, Poulami Bose Chatterjee. Click here to read.

Keith Lyons interviews Malaysian author and editor, Daphne Lee. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Frank S Smyth’s The Great Himalayan Ascents. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Devil’s Halo. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Tsering Namgyal Khortsa’s non-fiction, Little Lhasa: Reflections in Exiled Tibet and fiction, Tibetan Suitcase, together. Click here to read.

Malashri Lal reviews Rachna Singh’s Raghu Rai: Waiting for the Divine. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Sandeep Khanna’s Tempest on River Silent: A Story of Last 50 Years of India. Click here to read.

Vignettes from a Borderless World… Click here to read a special fifth anniversary issue.
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Editorial

Celebrating Borderless… Five Years and Counting…

Emerging by Sybil Pretious

Drops of water gather to make a wave. The waves make oceans that reshape land masses over time…

Five years ago, on March 14th, in the middle of the pandemic, five or six of us got together to start an online forum called Borderless Journal. The idea was to have a space that revelled with the commonality of felt emotions. Borderless was an attempt to override divisive human constructs and bring together writers and ideators from all over the Earth to have a forum open to all people — a forum which would be inclusive, tolerant, would see every individual as a part of the fauna of this beautiful planet. We would be up in the clouds — afloat in an unbordered stratosphere— to meet and greet with thoughts that are common to all humans, to dream of a world we can have if we choose to explore our home planet with imagination, kindness and love. It has grown to encompass contributors from more than forty countries, and readers from all over the world — people who have the same need to reach out to others with felt emotions and common concerns.

Borderless not only celebrates the human spirit but also hopes to create over time a vibrant section with writings on the environment and climate change. We launch the new section today on our fifth anniversary.

Adding to the wealth of our newly minted climate and environment section are poems by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal on the LA fires, Green by Mark Wyatt and Ecopoetry by Adriana Rocha in our March issue. We also have poetry on life in multiple hues from Kiriti Sengupta, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Snehaprava Das, Stuart McFarlane, Arshi Mortuza, George Freek, Ahmad Al-Khatat, Jyotish Chalil Gopinathan, Michael Burch, Bibhuti Narayan Biswal, Owais Farooq and Rakhi Dalal. Tongue-in-cheek humour in poetry is Rhys Hughes forte and he brings us just that in his sign poem.

 Devraj Singh Kalsi with a soupçon of ironic amusement muses on humans’ attitude to the fauna around him and Farouk Gulsara lays on a coating of sarcasm while addressing societal norms. Meredith Stephens brings us concerns for a green Earth when she beachcombs in a remote Australian island. Prithvijeet Sinha continues to familiarise us with his city, Lucknow. Suzanne Kamata, on the other hand travels to Rwanda to teach youngsters how to write a haiku!

Professor Fakrul Alam takes us to libraries in Dhaka with the hope that more will start writing about the waning of such paradises for book lovers. Other than being the month that hosts World Environment Day, March also homes, International Women’s Day. Commemorating the occasion, we have essays from Meenakshi Malhotra on the past poetry of women and from Ratnottama Sengupta on women in Bengali Cinema. Sengupta has also interviewed Poulami Bose Chatterjee, the daughter of the iconic actor Soumitra Chatterjee to share with us less-known vignettes from the actor’s life. Keith Lyons has interviewed Malaysian writer-editor Daphne Lee to bring to us writerly advice and local lores on ghosts and hauntings. 

Our fiction truly take us around the world with Paul Mirabile giving us a story set Scotland and Naramsetti Umamaheswararao giving us a fable set in a Southern Indian forest. Swati Basu Das takes us on an adventure with Peruvian food while sitting by the Arabian Sea. Munaj Gul gives a heart-rending flash fiction from Balochistan. And Zoé Mahfouz shares a humorous vignette of Parisian life, reflecting the commonality of felt emotions.

Celebrating the wonders of the nature, is a book excerpt from Frank S Smyth’s The Great Himalayan Ascents. While the other excerpt is from Hughes’ latest novel, The Devil’s Halo, described as: ‘A light comedy, a picaresque journey – like a warped subterranean Pilgrim’s Progress.’ We have reviews that celebrate the vibrancy of humanity. Bhaskar Parichha writes of Sandeep Khanna’s Tempest on River Silent: A Story of Last 50 Years of India, a novel that spans the diversity that was India. Malashri Lal reviews Rachna Singh’s Raghu Rai: Waiting for the Divine, a non-fiction on the life and works of the famous photographer. Somdatta Mandal discusses two book by Tsering Namgyal Khortsa reflecting the plight of Tibetan refugees, a non-fiction, Little Lhasa: Reflections in Exiled Tibet and a fiction, Tibetan Suitcase.

One of features that we love in Borderless is that language draws no barriers — that is why we have translations by Professor Alam of Jibananada’s short poems on the impact of war on the common masses. We have a small vignette of Korea from Ihlwha Choi’s self-translated poem. And we have a translation of Tagore’s verses invoking the healing power of spring… something that we much need.

We also have a translation by Lourdes M Supriya from Hindustani of a student’s heartrending cry to heal from grief for a teacher who faced an untimely end — a small dirge from Tanvir, a youngster with his roots in Nithari violence who transcended his trauma to teach like his idol and tutor, the late Sanjay Kumar. With this, we hope to continue with the pandies corner, with support from Lourdes and Anuradha Marwah, Kumar’s partner.

Borderless has grown in readership by leaps and bounds. There have been requests for books with writings from our site. On our fifth anniversary, we plan to start bringing out the creative writing housed in Borderless Journal in different volumes. We had brought out an anthology in 2022. It was well received with many reviews. But we have many gems, and each writer is valued here. Therefore, Rhys Hughes, one of our editorial board members, has kindly consented to create a new imprint to bring out books from the Borderless Journal. We are very grateful to him.

We are grateful to the whole team, our contributors and readers for being with us through our journey. We would not have made it this far without each one of you. Special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork too, something that has almost become synonymous with the cover page of our journal.  Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Wish you all happy reading! Do pause by our content’s page and take a look at all the wonderful writers.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents page for the March 2025 issue

Happy Birthday Borderless… Click here to read.

Vignettes from a Borderless World… Click here to read a special fifth anniversary issue.
Categories
Poetry

The Door I Never Opened

By Snehaprava Das

THE DOOR I NEVER OPENED                   

A nonchalant mist settles calmly
Over the pensive trees.
Dull and scarred leaves spread below in thick scatters
Like languishing memories…

A decaying door at an obscure bend 
From the ruins of Time
Raises its grey, obstinate head.
What lay behind that discreet door
Did I ever want to know?
A wonderland of many rainbows 
Or a sick valley of snow?    
Had I cared to see if there lay behind that door
A terrain of spring delight
Or a tunnel of an endless night,
To see if the warm moment of love 
Was gained or lost?
I clung instead to a world 
Full of winter and frost.

The door, desiccated in time
Stands locked there still
May be if I had tried but a little
And stepped beyond, 
I might have entered a rose garden
But I was never that discreet.

Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit.

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

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

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