Tag: Somdatta Mandal

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Editorial

Storms that Rage

Storm in purple by Arina Tcherem. From Public Domain

If we take a look at our civilisation, there are multiple kinds of storms that threaten to annihilate our way of life and our own existence as we know it. The Earth and the human world face twin threats presented by climate change and wars. While on screen, we watch Gaza and Ukraine being sharded out of life by human-made conflicts over constructs made by our own ‘civilisations’, we also see many of the cities and humankind ravaged by floods, fires, rising sea levels and global warming. Along with that come divides created by economics and technology. Many of these themes reverberate in this month’s issue.

From South Australia, Meredith Stephens writes of marine life dying due to algal growth caused by rising water temperatures in the oceans — impact of global warming. She has even seen a dead dolphin and a variety of fishes swept up on the beach, victims of the toxins that make the ocean unfriendly for current marine life. One wonders how much we will be impacted by such changes! And then there is technology and the chatbot taking over normal human interactions as described by Farouk Gulsara. Is that good for us? If we perhaps stop letting technology take over lives as Gulsara and Jun A. Alindogan have contended, it might help us interact to find indigenous solutions, which could impact the larger framework of our planet. Alindogan has also pointed out the technological divide in Philippines, where some areas get intermittent or no electricity. And that is a truth worldwide — lack of basic resources and this technological divide.

On the affluent side of such divides are moving to a new planet, discussions on immortality — Amortals[1] by Harari’s definition, life and death by euthanasia. Ratnottama Sengupta brings to us a discussion on death by choice — a privilege of the wealthy who pay to die painlessly. The discussion on whether people can afford to live or die by choice lies on the side of the divide where basic needs are not an issue, where homes have not been destroyed by bombs and where starvation is a myth, where climate change is not wrecking villages with cloudbursts.  In Kashmir, we can find a world where many issues exist and violences are a way of life. In the midst of such darkness, a bit of kindness and more human interactions as described by Gower Bhat in ‘The Man from Pulwama’ goes some way in alleviating suffering. Perhaps, we can take a page of the life of such a man. In the middle of all the raging storms, Devraj Singh Kalsi brings in a bit of humour or rather irony with his strange piece on his penchant for syrups, a little island removed from conflicts which seem to rage through this edition though it does raise concerns that affect our well-being.

The focus of our essays pause on women writers too. Meenakshi Malhotra ponders on Manottama (1868), the first woman-authored novel in Bengali translated by Somdatta Mandal whereas Bhaskar Parichha writes on the first feminist Odia poet, Bidyut Prabha Devi.

Parichha has also reviewed a book by another contemporary Odia woman author, Snehaprava Das. The collection of short stories is called Keep it Secret. Madhuri Kankipati has discussed O Jungio’s The Kite of Farewells: Stories from Nagaland and Somdatta Mandal has written about Chhimi Tenduf-La’s A Hiding to Nothing, a novel by a global Tibetan living in Sri Lanka with the narrative between various countries. We have an interview with a global nomad too, Neeman Sobhan, who finds words help her override borders. In her musing on Ostia Antica, a historic seaside outside Rome, Sobhan mentions how the town was abandoned because of the onset of anopheles mosquitos. Will our cities also get impacted in similar ways because of the onset of global ravages induced by climate change? This musing can be found as a book excerpt from Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome, her book on her life as a global nomad. The other book excerpt is by a well-known writer who has also lived far from where he was born, MA Aldrich. His book, From Rasa to Lhasa: The Sacred Center of the Mandala is said to be “A sweeping, magnificent biography—which combines historical research, travel-writing and discussion of religion and everyday culture—Old Lhasa is the most comprehensive account of the fabled city ever written in English.”

With that, we come to our fiction section. This time we truly have stories from around the globe with Suzanne Kamata sending a story set in the Bon festival that’s being celebrated in Japan this week for her column. From there, we move to Taiwan with C. J. Anderson-Wu’s narrative reflecting disappearances during the White Terror (1947-1987), a frightening period for people stretched across almost four decades.  Gigi Gosnell writes of the horrific abuse faced by a young Filipino girl as the mother works as a domestic helper in Dubai. Paul Mirabile gives us a cross-cultural narrative about a British who opts to become a dervish. While Hema R touches on women’s issues from within India, Sahitya Akademi Award Winner, Naramsetti Umamaheshwararao, writes a story about children.

We have a powerful Punjabi story by Ajit Cour translated by C.Christine Fair. Our translations host two contemporary poets who have rendered their own poems to English: Angshuman Kar, from Bengali and Ihlwha Choi, from Korean. Snehaprava Das has brought to us poetry from Odia by Aparna Mohanty. Fazal Baloch has translated ‘The Scarecrow’, a powerful Balochi poem by Anwar Sahib Khan. While Tagore’s Shaishabshandha (Childhood’s Dusk) has been rendered to English, Nazrul’s song questing for hope across ages has been brought to us by Professor Fakrul Alam.

Professor Alam has surprised us with his own poem too this time. In August’s poetry selection, Ron Pickett again addresses issues around climate change as does Meetu Mishra about rising temperatures. We have variety and colour brought in by George Freek, Heath Brougher, Laila Brahmbhatt, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Snigdha Agrawal, William Miller, Ashok Suri, Scott Thomas Outlar, Dustin P Brown, and Ryan Quinn Flanagan. Rajorshi Patranabis weaves Wiccan lore of light and dark, death and life into his delicately poised poetry. Rhys Hughes has also dwelt on life and death in this issue. He has shared poems on Wales, where he grew up— beautiful gentle lines.

 In spring warm rain will crack
the seeds of life: tangled
roots will grow free again. 

('Tinkinswood Burial Chamber' by Rhys Hughes)

With such hope growing out of a neolithic burial chamber, maybe there is hope for life to survive despite all the bleakness we see around us. Maybe, with a touch of magic and a sprinkle of realism – our sense of hope, faith and our ability to adapt to changes, we will survive for yet another millennia.

We wind up our content for the August issue with the eternal bait for our species — hope. Huge thanks to the fantastic team at Borderless and to all our wonderful writers. Truly grateful to Sohana Manzoor for her artwork and many thanks to all our wonderful readers for their time…

We wish you all a wonderful reading experience!

Gratefully,

Mitali Chakravarty.

borderlessjournal.com

[1] Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2015) by Yuval Noah Harari

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Click  here to access the contents for the August 2025 Issue

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Review

A Hiding to Nothing

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: A Hiding to Nothing

Author: Chhimi Tenduf-La

Publisher: Hachette India

Let me be honest enough. When I received this book for review penned by a Sri Lankan author, I expected it to be a debut novel written by a person who is one of the many new voices that keep on emerging in sub-continental English fiction every other day. But the unusual name of the author made me enquire a little further to find out that he was half Tibetan and half English, educated at Eton and Durham in England, and has been managing an international school in Sri Lanka for thirty years. All these issues account for and contribute to the background of the novel’s setting. More surprise was in store when I found that Chhimi Tenduf-La has been writing fiction for the past ten years and his first novel, The Amazing Racist, was published way back in 2015. Since then, he has penned two more books and now his fourth book, A Hiding to Nothing, is what he himself defines as his “first domestic thriller.”

Such background information therefore definitely helps the reader to understand the nature of this present novel, which is set in Colombo’s manicured gardens owned by rich, elite and sometimes dicey people, and simultaneously moves to the activities set in England in Durham’s cobblestone streets.

The central issue of the story revolves around the miscarriage of Neja Pinto after she marries Ramesh in England and her subsequent inability to conceive which results in taking recourse to surrogacy. Believing in the stigma of South Asian sensibilities when a woman is looked down upon if she cannot give birth to her own off-spring, they want to keep the entire matter as secretive as possible so that they can come back from England to Sri Lanka and claim the child, Devin, as their own biologically born offspring till a point when the child is kidnapped by unknown people. From this point begins a lot of questions like who would dare take Devin – and why? As the incidents of the story march forward at electronic speed, creating the right atmosphere of a well-devised whodunit, the novel is crowded with innumerable characters, some unique, others quite stereotypical, but none out of suspicion. Is it the swimming coach Neja gets too close to? Could it be the ghosts of their past – the ruthless creditors Ramesh deceived in a Ponzi scheme, now back for blood? Or is it the enigmatic Dr Haksar who helped them have a child? And what of the mysterious woman from the British High Commission, whose probing questions hint at knowledge she shouldn’t possess? As the whispers grow louder, one name resurfaces with terrifying weight: Satya Basu, who actually bears the child in lieu of money. Is she back to settle an old score?

As mentioned earlier, at the centre of the story are the protagonists Neja and Ramesh Pinto, who are now husband and wife, but are also portrayed in their pre-marital days in England. Then there is Ramesh’s mother Loku Madam who is a stern and powerful woman with complete control over her son, which results in a sort of mother fixation. Loku Madam is planning a fourth marriage with a rich tea garden owner.

There is a swimming pool trainer called Johnny Dias with whom Neja has a fling resulting in several complications in the plot; the child Devin who disappears after he is kidnapped and from where many more eventful activities take place in the story; then there is Mercy Mbangwa who works at the British High Commission but also takes too much of an interest in the affairs of Neja and Ramesh Pinto. The Pintos take on names as Nita and Ravi Ponniah when they live in Durham because they want to remain incognito and take possession of a surrogate child in the making by another character called Satya Basu ( I am surprised because though ending with an ‘a’, in Bengali Satya is usually a male name and not a female one), Dr. Haksar and several other characters, all of whom are illegal immigrants in England. There are bartenders, hustlers and many other minor characters that crowd the scene too.

Chhimi Tenduf-La unravels a suspenseful tale where the truth is elusive – and the cost of uncovering it may be too high to bear. He brings in all possible locations and situations with very intense visual details which makes us feel it to be the right ambience for a Netflix movie. The novel is architecturally very carefully set through fifty-six chapters (some as short as one and a half pages) to others slightly longer, and the chapters are very carefully juxtaposed by alternating between Sri Lanka, 2024 and London/England 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. In fact, the last chapter brings us to the present Sri Lanka in 2025 where finally all the mysteries are unravelled and the author hints at a positive and optimistic note where all the sound and fury is resolved to a quiet ending.

The racy speed at which the author takes the readers through this 310 page-turner mystery at times makes one confused and it seems that since he is attempting a new sub-genre of what he calls a first attempt at a ‘domestic thriller’, he has attempted to put in as many things as possible. Some of that could probably have been avoided. But his innovative style and deft handling of the English language needs special mention, and this reviewer strongly recommends everyone to read and appreciate the novel.

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Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.

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Essay

Does the First Woman-authored Novel in Bengali Seek Reforms?

By Meenakshi Malhotra

The translation published by Shambhabi The Third Eye in 2022

Published in 1868, Manottoma: Dukkhini Sati Charit (Manottama: Narrative of a Sorrowful Wife) the first novel written by an unnamed Bengali woman identifying herself as ‘A Woman belonging to the Hindu Lineage’, which is technically not a pseudonym, has been translated by Professor Somdatta Mandal and published recently in 2022. Somehow evading the attention of literary historians, the text, or any detailed information about it was unavailable for a long time till it was unearthed by a researcher in London only in 2010. In the foreword to the translated novel, Prof Rosinka Chaudhuri points out that the year 1868 was only a decade after the introduction of the main genres of modern Bengali literature: the modern novel, poetry and drama. This was a time of revision and reinvention, of recasting selves and literary forms and genres.   

Manottama narrates the sufferings of a educated and long-suffering wife who labours under the petty punishments meted out to her by her uneducated husband, depicting the conflict between patriarchal expectations and prescriptions and women’s education and presumably, agency. The eponymous novel depicts a situation where Manottama, an educated woman, is married to an uneducated husband. Because of the latter’s profligate ways, she is subjected to penury and untold hardships, which she seems to accept without demur.

The narrator of Manottama claims it’s a ‘history’. Cast in a dialogic format as a conversation between two friends, Jadhav and Madhav, (a common format in its time) the novel, in one interpretation, tells us about the pitfalls of female education in the nineteenth century, a period that also saw the emancipation of Bengali women through education in a significant way. Written in the traditional Indian Puranic style of narration, with plenty of sub-plots and digressions and without conforming to the western dictates of unity of time, place, and action, it provides a domestic picture where an educated wife has to compromise with the activities and worldview of an uneducated husband. At one level of interpretation, it seems to be an attack on patriarchy. As an early narrative by an anonymous woman, the  work needs — and in a way, demands — greater attention now after more than a century of neglect in order to reinterpret and reconfigure its didacticism and question its meek acceptance of status quo.

Can we accord this work the status of a novel? Also is there a way in which we can unpack the didacticism of the text and pave the way to a  subversive reading of patriarchies?

In showcasing a woman who seems to meekly accept her lot in life without complaint, the intention purportedly was to show the benefits of education and how an educated woman navigates her destiny.  There are many instances of rampant social injustices in the text. The husband’s profligacy, his marrying a second time and frittering away family fortunes — all these are accepted by the protagonist, Manottama, in a spirit of apparent equanimity. She seems to accept the social injustices meted out to her meekly, without demur or protest. She obeys and serves her father during his visit and continues to perform her conjugal and domestic duties vis-a-vis her undeserving  husband. If anything, she continues in her endeavour to instruct her children and the children of the quarrelsome second wife. No complaint against marital injustices pass her lips, even when her father expresses concern over the indigent condition of the household. Her behaviour is ideal in every respect and she is upheld as a paragon.  

“Manottama” in Bangla can be translated into someone with a superior mind or soul and the protagonist named as such fits the bill. She keeps quiet about her individual woes while trying to ensure the well-being of the whole family.

The novel shows the impact of the many instruction manuals and advice/conduct books  that were plentifully available at the time and herein lies part of the problem of the book as a novel. For one, there is no attempt to depict the inner thoughts of the protagonist. She at times seems like a cardboard cutout, a compendium of all the virtues extolled by patriarchs and paternalists in 19th century Bengal and India. She is a stereotype and seems almost a parodic version of the ’good woman’ who sacrifices self-interest at all times. Whether this narrative qualifies/succeeds as a novel is something which has to be decided by the reader .She embodies the ‘patibrata’ or the devoted wife, a kind of woman who helps in the salvation of the husband and nation. To quote a writer at the end of the 19th century:

The Patibrata wife is the road to liberty and mobility of man. If the women of India follow the footsteps of Sita and Savitri, then this fallen country will be the blessed land  again. (Chandranath Basu, Bagchi 85)

The discovery of this text forms a story by itself and is a precious nugget as it was located in the British library relatively recently, in 2010. The significance of this text  is also that it is a woman’s voice addressing other women, advising them with a strong didactic intent. As readers, we can only speculate that the writer intends this homily as a form of advocacy to women that they should not abandon their traditions and customs, but use their education in order to better themselves, and devote themselves  to serving their husbands.  

The narrative in a dialogic style seems like an extended conversation or debate between a proponent of tradition and a spokesperson and modernity. Some of the conversation between Nilabrata, the irresponsible husband, and Manottama, echo aspects of this debate. According to Nilabrata, who is rendered somewhat insecure by his educated wife and voices the biases against women’s education, only foolish men will send their daughters to school in order to train their daughters as prostitutes. “Educating women and showing them the path to go astray are similar,” he asserts.

One is reminded of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s (1838-1894) essay on Prachina o Nobina or “The Traditional Woman and the New Woman”(Woman Old and New, 1879). The debate on whether to educate women were along the contours of conservatism versus progressivism, albeit with shades and finer nuances.We can suppose that the author is in conversation with a conservative perspective which argues against women’s education and where she attempts to demonstrate that tradition and women’s education are not mutually opposed or divergent.

Bengali literature offers many examples of women who were poised on the brink of the  paradoxical conundrum of modernity, which made them embrace education and reform without abandoning traditional values. This attempt to recast and position the ‘new’ Indian woman was a pre-emptive gesture  to counter the accusation of Westernization and deracination levelled against the reformist attempts to redefine gender roles and relations in late 19th century India.

While one can grasp the discursive aspect of the text, the lack of what we understand or perceive as a natural human response on Manottama’s part to any of her husband’s actions — misdemeanours, follies or vices —  leave us feeling deeply dissatisfied. If the novel as a form shows the interactions of the individual with other individuals or with society, the lack of any credible response from Manottama casts her in the mould of a ‘patibrata’   woman but stifles the text as a novel.

However, if we keep in mind that many great writers  novelists from Bengal and elsewhere — Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhayay— have often used the novel as vehicles of ideas, which generate debate both within the world of the novel and in a larger socio-historical context, this  novel can surely be counted as a precursor and a prototype of the discursive/social discussion novel in Bengali. As for the other question raised earlier about the possibility of a subversive reading, Manottama by showing  the evils  besetting patriarchal systems, manages to show the untenable nature of the same and the fact that men like Nilabrata, for all their bravado, are liable to collapse, unless rescued and sustained by sensible wives. In that sense, it hold a lesson for men to marry wisely and recognise the true worth of educated wives, without getting lured either by false friends or duplicitous women.   

The book has received a fresh lease of life in the hands of a competent translator and commentator. The foreword similarly draws out the significance of the narrative, placing it in the context of its times and the larger context of Bengali literature. An exploration of its discursive trajectories and varying cartographies adds to the joys of discovering and reading the narrative.

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Meenakshi Malhotra is a Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition  to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory.       

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Contents

Borderless, July 2025

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

‘…I write from my heart of the raging tempest…’.Click here to read.

Translations

Jibanananda Das’s poem, Given the Boon of Eternity, has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Karim Dashti’s short poems have been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Five poems by Sangram Jena have been translated from Odia by Snehprava Das. Click here to read.

Surya Dhananjay’s story, Mastan Anna, has been translated from Telugu by Rahimanuddin Shaik. Click here to read.

The Last Letter, a poem by Ihlwha Choi  has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Probhatey (In the Morning) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Snehaprava Das, David R Mellor, Snigdha Agrawal, George Freek, Laila Brahmbhatt, Tracy Lee Duffy, John Swain, Amarthya Chandar, Craig Kirchner, Shamim Akhtar, Jason Ryberg, Momina Raza, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Shahriyer Hossain Shetu, Rhys Hughes

Musings/ Slices from Life

What is Great Anyway?

Farouk Gulsara explores the idea of ‘greatness’ as reflected in history. Click here to read.

From Cape Canaveral to Carnarvon

Merdith Stephens writes of her museum experiences with photographs from Alan Nobel. Click here to read.

A Journey through Pages

Odbayar Dorj writes of library culture in Japan and during her childhood, in Mongolia. Click here to read.

By the Banks of the Beautiful Gomti

Prithvijeet Sinha strolls through the park by the riverfront and muses. Click here to read.

Dhruba Esh & Amiyashankar

Ratnottama Sengupta muses on her encounter with the writings of eminent artist and writer, Dhruba Esh, and translates one his many stories, Amiyashankar Go Back Home from Bengali. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Gastronomy & Inspiration? Sherbets and More…, Devraj Singh Kalsi looks at vintage flavours. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Summer Vacation in Japan: Beetle Keeping and Idea Banks, Suzanne Kamata narrates her experience of school holidays in Japan. Click here to read.

Essays


It doesn’t Rain in Phnom Penh

Mohul Bhowmick writes of his trip to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Click here to read.

Haunted by Resemblances: Hunted by Chance

Aparajita De introspects with focus on serendipity. Click here to read.

Stories

Blue Futures, Drowned Pasts

Md Mujib Ullah writes a short cli-fi based on real life events. Click here to read.

Unspoken

Spandan Upadhyay gives a story around relationships. Click here to read.

Misjudged

Vidya Hariharan gives a glimpse of life. Click here to read.

Nico Returns to Burgaz

Paul Mirabile writes about growing up and reclaiming from heritage. Click here to read.

Feature

A review of Anuradha Kumar’s Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India and an interview with the author. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Eleventh Commandment And Other Very Short Fictions. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Snehprava Das’s Keep It Secret. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Dilip K Das’s Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Rajat Chjaudhuri’s Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet. Click here to read.

Gower Bhat has reviewed Neha Bansal’s Six of Cups. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Jagadish Shukla’s A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory. Click here to read.

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

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Editorial

‘…I write from my heart of the raging tempest…’

New buildings almost growing out of old in Rome 
I can see the heartbreak, 
    Hear the wailing, the awakening, 
          I write from my heart
          Of the raging tempest. 

— Translation of Probhatey or ‘In the Morning’ by Rabindranath Tagore (1906)

All around us, we hear of disasters. Often, we try to write of these as Tagore seems to do in the above lines. However, these lines follow after he says he draws solace and inspiration from a ‘serene lotus’, pristine and shining with vibrancy. He gazes at it while looking for that still point which helps him create an impact with words. That is perhaps what we can hope to do too — wait for a morning where clarity will show us the path to express not just what we see, but to find a way to heal and help. Finding parallels in great writings of yore to our own attempts at recreating the present makes us realise that perhaps history is cyclical. In Rome, new structures rear up against thousand-year walls, reflecting how the past congeals into the present.

Congealing the past into our present in this July’s issue are stories of American migrants — like Tom Alter’s family who made India their home — by Anuradha Kumar in her new non-fiction Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India. We feature this book with a review and an interview with the author where she tells us how and why she chose to write on these people. We have more people writing of their own wanderings. Mohul Bhowmick wanders into Cambodia and makes friends over a local sport while Prithvijeet Sinha strolls by the banks of the River Gomti in Lucknow. Meredith Stephens not only takes us to the Prime Meridien in Greenwich but also to Carnarvon which houses a science and technology centre in Australia. Devraj Singh Kalsi wanders with humour to discover gastronomical inspiration and hopes for sweeter recompense.

The dialogue started by Professor Fakrul Alam on libraries earlier with his essay and by Kalsi (with a pinch of humour) has been continued by Odbayar Dorj. She talks of the fading culture of libraries in Mongolia, her home country, and the vibrant culture that has blossomed in Japan. Suzanne Kamata writes of the rituals of summer holidays in Japan… including looking after a pet dung beetles.

Farouk Gulsara muses on ‘greatness’ as a concept with irony. Aparajita De muses on the word serendipity, applying it to her own situation while Ratnottama Sengupta muses on her encounter with the writings of eminent cover artist and writer who is not only a recipient of the Bangla Academy literary award but also immensely popular with children, Dhruba Esh, and translates one his many stories from Bengali.

In translations, Professor Alam has brought to us a beautiful poem by Jibanananda Das. Karim Drashti’s Balochi short poems have been rendered in English by Fazal Baloch and Snehaprava Das has found for us Odia poems of Sangram Jena in translation. Ihlwha Choi has rendered his own Korean poem to English while Tagore’s poem, ‘Probhatey (In the Morning)’ winds up the poetry in this section. We have more in prose — Surya Dhananjay’s story, Mastan Anna, translated from Telugu by Rahimanuddin Shaik.

In fiction, we have stories from around the world. Paul Mirabile sets his story in Burgaz. Spandan Upadhyay gives a mysterious narrative set in a world outside our waking consciousness and Vidya Hariharan gives us a glimpse of life in modern day India. From Bangladesh, Md Mujib Ullah writes a short cli-fi based on real life events.

Taking up the theme of cli-fi, Rajat Chaudhuri’s Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet seems to bring hope by suggesting adapting to changing climes. Rakhi Dalal tells us in her review: “It dares to approach the climate crisis through the lens of empathy and imagination rather than panic or guilt. In doing so, Rajat Chaudhuri gives us what many adult climate narratives fail to deliver—a reason to believe that another world is not only possible but already being imagined by the young. All we need to do is listen.” Bhaskar Parichha has discussed the autobiography of a meteorologist and Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University, Jagadish Shukla. In A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory, he claims Shukla has “revolutionised monsoon forecasting.” Somdatta Mandal has written about Dilip K Das’s Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India. And Gower Bhat reviews Neha Bansal’s best-selling poetry collection, Six of Cups.

Poetry awakens myriad of hues in Borderless with verses from across the world. We have poems from Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Ryan Quinn Flangan, Snehprava Das, George Freek, Laila Brahmbhatt, Tracy Lee Duffy, Amarthya Chandar, Jason Ryberg, Momina Raza, Shahriyer Hossain Shetu and more. Snigdha Agrawal gives a fun-filled poem about a duck and Rhys Hughes has given us a collection of verses like puzzles where we need to guess the animals! We also have an excerpt from Hughes’ The Eleventh Commandment And Other Very Short Fictions and Das’s short stories, Keep It Secret.

With that, we wind up the contents of this month’s issue. Do pause by our content’s page to check it out in more details.

This month’s edition would not have been possible without all our contributors, our fabulous team and especially Sohana Manzoor’s artwork. Huge thanks to all of them and to our wonderful readers who make it worthwhile for us to write and publish. Do write in to us if you have any feedback. Five years ago, we chose to become a monthly from a daily… We have come a long way from then and grown to host writers from more than forty countries and readers from almost all over the world. For this, we owe you all – for being with us and encouraging us to find fresh pastures.

Enjoy the reads!

Wishing you peace and happiness,

Mitali Chakravarty,

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents for the July 2025 Issue

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

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Review

Epidemic Narratives

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Epidemic Narratives: The Cultural Construction of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India

Author: Dilip K. Das

Publisher: Orient BlackSwan

After the major outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there has been a plethora of studies about epidemic narratives in different kinds of literary and visual forms. Not that the issue had not been dealt with earlier, but somehow it increased manifold times and contends with a reality that is now increasingly becoming our way of life as new infectious diseases break out and older ones resurface almost every year. Drawing from the humanities, medicine and social sciences, and using the approach of interdisciplinary studies, this non-fiction examines stories of epidemic outbreaks in India, from the late-nineteenth century to the present, in the form of fiction, film, memoir, blogs, media reports and epidemiological accounts, to show how epidemics have been represented in social understanding.

Epidemics signify a crisis in society on multiple levels. The author, who specialises in medical humanities and has been meticulously studying and teaching courses in this area for several years, realised that very little is readily available in the nature of theoretical and analytical scholarship of epidemic narratives in general and on Indian narratives in particular and so he decided to write this book.

Divided into ten chapters, the study attempts a close textual analysis and focuses on the subjective experience of people affected by the outbreak. This ranges from the emotional impact of the suffering it causes to socio-political conflicts that it brings to the fore as a collective crisis. It poses two questions: what kind of plot do they employ, and what significances do they attribute to outbreaks as complex human events?  

In the first chapter, the author discusses the social understanding of epidemics using a theoretical framework drawing on Charles Rosenberg and several other theorists to show how this understanding both derives from and adds to the biomedical view of disease. It examines how, in pluralistic societies, epidemic reality is constructed through both biomedical and cosmological paradigms, leading to contrary ways of responding to it. Thus, worshipping goddesses like Sitala Mata or Corona Devi and ritualising the event in shows of solidarity exists along with scientific perspectives.

The second chapter is about the impact of pandemic on the nation as a community that imagines itself as healthy yet is vulnerable to the threat posed by pathogens and pathogenic outsiders. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that the future of public health in a rapidly globalizing context depends on how nationalism and internationalism balance mutual interests. Chapters three to ten deal with specific outbreaks. The third chapter discusses two intertextual narratives of the plague outbreak Pune in 1897 which culminated in the assassination of the Plague Commissioner Walter Charles Rand. The first is the autobiography of Damodar Hari Chapekar, who was convicted and hanged for the assassination. It shows how the outbreak was constructed and framed as a political event, marking the emergence of militant nationalism and anticipating the freedom struggle. The second narrative is 22 July 1897, a film made on the same incident by Nachiket and Jayoo Patwardhan.

U. R. Ananthamurthy’s novel Samskara1 is usually studied as a text that deals with the themes of caste and religious orthodoxy, the role of tradition in a modernising society, and the tension between allegory and realism. In the next chapter, Das argues that plague not only provides the inspiration for the novel and its point of departure but also serves the function of a focaliser. Samskara is about the question of social order, how a particular code of conduct becomes rigid. In this context the plague outbreak serves as a metaphor for larger social and ethical crises.

Chapter five is about Spanish flu, which broke out in Bombay in June 1918 and was rapidly carried to the rest of the country by soldiers returning from the First World War. It begins with two official reports on the flu by the assistant health officer of Bombay municipality and the sanitary commissioner of India. The author examines newspaper accounts of the outbreak and two literary narratives to show how the outbreak was variously framed as a lapse of colonial public health, a personal tragedy and a cosmological crisis. The final section of the chapter discusses the memory of the Spanish flu a hundred years later with the outbreak of COVID-19.

Chapter six deals with an outbreak of viral hepatitis, a disease that is largely endemic but has occurred intermittently in epidemic form in India in the last hundred years. The author analyses Satyajit Ray’s 1990 film Ganashatru, an adaptation of Henrick Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, which is about an outbreak of infectious hepatitis in a pilgrimage town in West Bengal. Taking the main theme of asserting commitment to ethics as against manipulation of truth for personal gain, Ray changes the plot, characterisation and context of Ibsen’s story to criticise religious dogma which contradicts rationality and places at risk the health of people.

The next chapter analyses narratives of the HIV/AIDS epidemic which broke out in India in 1986. It examines a range of media articles, literary and cinematic texts and an AIDS awareness video to track changes in the social understanding of the disease and those affected by it. From the stigmatising accounts of risk groups and HIV-positive individuals that was characteristic of the early decades of the epidemic in India, the focus shifted at the turn of the century to empathy for them. The author discusses in details the first commercially released Hindi film on AIDS, Naya Zaher (New Poison,1991) directed by Jyoti Sarup, mentions two human interest stories like Ritu Sarin’s ‘The Outcast’ (1990) and Subhash Mishra’s ‘Damned to Death’ (2000), analyzes a film like Ek Alag Mausam ( A Different Season, 2003) directed by K. P. Sasi, Negar Akhavi’s anthology AIDS Sutra (2008), and Kalpana Jain’s Positive Lives (2002) where the author journeys more than 15,000 kilometers in four months in order to get an idea of the epidemic’ s scale. He also analyses movies like Phir Milenge ( We’ll meet again, 2004) directed by Revathy and Onir’s My Brother…Nikhil(2005) and examines the dialectical relation between social understanding and narrative in bringing about this change.

Aashique Abu’s Malayalam film, Virus, is a fictional reconstruction of the outbreak of the Nipah virus disease in Kerala in the summer of 2018 and deals with biomedical explanations as well as accounts of personal suffering. The eighth chapter therefore shows how the film constructs the event as the disintegration and renewal of community and as a sign of the vulnerability of human life. It also shows how the ending denies any assurance that the crisis is over and will not recur.

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 in India that resulted in a nationwide lockdown in 2020 forms the subject of the next chapter. It discusses stories of the pandemic and the lockdown in terms of the suffering they caused, the loneliness, disruption of everyday life, time-space disorientation, loss of life and livelihood, the lack of institutional support, and the precariousness that resulted from all of these. It focuses on two kinds of stories, those of personal suffering like the video Infected 2030 and the Times of India blog ‘My Covid Story’, and those of collective suffering like Vinod Kapri’s documentary 1232 KMS and the book that followed from it, 1232 km: The Long Journey Home. The lockdown following the COVID outbreak in India disproportionately affected migrant workers who lost livelihoods and were prevented by the police and the local administration from returning to the safety of their villages. The author clearly analyses how the governments were unable to deal effectively with so complex a crisis.

The last chapter attempts to explain why narrative is the genre best suited to represent the experience of epidemic, and why epidemic in turn calls forth narrative as its most suitable mode of representation. We make sense of an outbreak in two ways, as an objective event and as subjective human experience. Narratives bring out both these dimensions, by emphasising emotional responses to disease, death and suffering as well as making cognitive sense of it. The book also contains an interesting epilogue by S. Mukundan who examines a narrative poem Plague Sindhu (1924) by Anthony Pillai recording the outbreak of plague in his home district of Theni in Madras Presidency. The poem is an apt example of how an outbreak of infectious disease comes to be socially constructed in terms of both modern scientific ideas of disease-causation and traditional ideas of disease as divine punishment for wrongdoing.

As mentioned earlier Epidemic Narratives takes as its main theme Charles Rosenberg’s argument that the social reality of disease is constituted in the frames of explanation provided by biomedical, political, cultural and social ideals and practices. Das mentions that the book is about “human suffering and compassion” and it will be of interest to researchers and students of literature, cultural studies, the history of medicine and public health policy.

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  1. Translates to ‘A Rite for a Dead Man’, a Kannada novel written in 1965 ↩︎

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.

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

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

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Categories
Editorial

‘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.

Categories
Review

Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy

Author: Madhurima Vidyarthi

Publisher: Niyogi Books

The nomenclature ‘historical fiction’ is sometimes quite confusing for the reader who keeps on wondering how much of the novel is real history and how much of it is the figment of the author’s imagination. Beginning in 1686, and set in the later part of Aurangzeb’s reign, this work of historical fiction named Job Charnock and the Potter’s Boy charts the turbulent history of an insignificant hutment in the inhospitable swamps of Sutanati in Bengal that becomes one man’s unyielding obsession. This man is no other than Job Charnock whom we all claim to be the original founder of the city of Calcutta.

Bengal during that period was the richest subah of the Mughal Empire and the centre of trade. The English were granted a toehold in Hugli when Shah Jahan ousted the Portuguese in 1632 and made it a royal port. Since then, they had been worrying Shaista Khan, the current nawab at Dhaka, to give them permission to erect a fort at the mouth of the river but the wily old nawab did not agree and dismissed their petitions repeatedly. This was a period of extreme flux when the European powers like the Dutch, the Danes, the French and the English were all playing out age-old rivalries in new battlefields, aided and abetted by individual interests and local conflicts. This is when Sir Joshua Child was at the helm of East India Company’s affairs in London throughout the 1680s and his plans were brought to fruition in faraway Bengal by William Hedges and then Job Charnock.

Of the earliest champions of the British Empire, none was as fanatic or single-minded as Job Charnock. He evinced no wish for private trade or personal gain, and unlike many of his contemporaries who returned to England as wealthy ‘nabobs’, he lived and died here as a man of modest means. His life’s work was only to identify the most strategic location on the river and secure it for his masters.

Sutanati, with its natural defences and proximity to the sea, appealed to his native shrewdness and he applied himself in relentless pursuit.  The story of this novel begins in Hugli in 1686, on the first day of the monsoon, when a poor potter, Gobardhan, and his wife, Indu, find it difficult to make ends meet and their life is centred around their young son Jadu. In the guise of Gobardhan relating bedtime stories to his son, the novelist very tactfully gives us the earlier historical background of the place. He tells us how during his great-great-grandfather’s time, two hundred years ago, Saptagram was the greatest city in the country, the greatest port in the Mughal Empire where ships and boats came from all over the world. Later the Portuguese bought land and built a fort at Golghat, but the Mughals grew jealous of them and finally attacked Hugli and ousted them from there.

Coming down to the present time, Jadu is twelve years old when his parents are burnt to death in front of his eyes as they were innocent bystanders in the struggle for power between the East India Company and the Nawab of Bengal. By a quirk of fate, Jadu is rescued by his father’s Mussalman friend, Ilyas, who is really protective of the boy and acts as a substitute father figure. But soon Ilyas leaves for Dhaka on a diplomatic mission and thrusts the young boy in the hands of a trusted Portuguese sailor and captain called D’ Mello. Since then, Jadu is drawn into the whirlwind of events that follow. He spends a lot of time on the river, and from December 1686 to February 1687, stays at Sutanati. Then, he moves from Sutanati to Hijli, and back to Sutanati up to March 1689, till at last he stands face to face with the architect of his misfortune — Job Charnock himself.

The rest of the tale hovers around how Jadu becomes one of his most trusted aides and though Charnock’s grand dreams did not come to fruition during his lifetime. When he died in 1693, the place was still a clutch of mud and timber dwellings still awaiting the nawab’s parwana[1] to build and fortify the new settlement. The English finally managed to acquire the zamindari rights to Sutanati, Kolkata and Gobindopur in November 1698, when the area had become quite lucrative by then.

In exploring the how, but more importantly the reason for this coming into being, the story then speaks of the motivations of the great and good and the helplessness of the not so great, all of whom in their own way contributed little nuggets of history to the city’s birth.  The novel is also filled with common folk, both local natives as well as foreigners, who watch unheeded while destinies are shaped by the whims of rulers. Interwoven with verifiable historical events and many notable characters from history, the novel therefore is above all primarily the story of an innocent boy Jadu who navigates the different circumstances he is thrust in and emerges victorious and hopeful in the end. As the narrative continues, he also moves from innocence to maturity. Through his eyes we are given to read about a wide range of characters who form the general backdrop of the story.

In the ‘Author’s Note’ at the end of the novel, Madhurima Vidyarthi categorically states that this is not a history book, but she has strung together imaginary events over a skeleton of fact, based on the sum of information available. She states, “While trying to adhere to accepted chronology, the temptation to exercise creative license is often too great to be overcome”. The most significant character in this perspective is Job Charnock’s wife, who has been the subject of much research and her treatment in the Company records is typical of the time. But though a lot of information is available about Charnock’s daughters repeatedly in letters, Company documents, baptismal registers, and headstones, their mother is conspicuous by her absence. This is where the author applies her ‘creative license’ and makes Mrs. Charnock’s interactions with Jadu reveal his coming of age, and with her death, he symbolically reaches manhood. Vidyarthi also clarifies that several characters in the novel like Jadu, his parents, Ilyas, Manuel, Madhu kaka and Thomas Woods are also imaginary, and they represent the nameless, faceless masses during that period and therefore provide a ‘slice of life’ that make up history. All in all, this deft mingling of fact and fiction makes this almost 400-page novel a page-turner, ready to be devoured as fast as possible.

[1] Written permission

Somdatta Mandal is a critic, translator and a former Professor of English, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.

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

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

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Categories
World Environment Day

This is Our Home…

Our home is our planet with it’s unique combinations which have made life possible. These evolve and mutate with human intervention and the passage of time. The changes affect the flora and the fauna — of which we are a part — of this beautiful green planet. The World Environment Day is a UN initiative to protect the environment and to create an awareness about the changes wrought on it and how it could impact us as a species. Writers from yore have written of the beauty and the inspiration invoked by nature as have the moderns. Today, we share with you vintage writings as well as modern writing in prose on the world around us, showcasing the concerns of a century ago and the reality today.

Vintage Prose

One Small Ancient Tale: Rabindranath Tagore’s Ekti Khudro Puraton Golpo (One Small Ancient Tale) has been translated by Nishat Atiya. Click here to read.

 Bolai: Story of nature and a child translated by Chaitali Sengupta. Click here to read.

Baraf Pora (Snowfall) : This narrative gives a glimpse of Tagore’s first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated by Somdatta Mandal . Click here to read.

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.

Modern Prose

The Gift : Rebecca Klassen shares a sensitive fiction about a child and an oak tree. Click here to read.

A Penguin’s Story: Sreelekha Chatterjee writes a fiction from a penguin’s perspective. Click here to read.

Navigational Error: Luke P.G. Draper explores the impact of pollution with a short compelling narrative. Click here to read.

Pigeons & People : In his fiction, Srinivasan R explores human nature and imagines impact on our fauna. Click here to read

The Theft of a River: Koushiki Dasgupta Chaudhuri reveals a poignant truth about how a river is moving towards disappearance due to human intervention. Click here to read.

Better Relations Through Weed-pulling: Suzanne Kamata introduces us to an annual custom in Japan. Click here to read.

The Toughness of Kangaroo Island : Vela Noble draws solace and lessons from nature around her with her art and narrative. Click here to read.

Potable Water Crisis & the Sunderbans: Camellia Biswas, a visitor to Sunderbans during the cyclone Alia, turns environmentalist and writes about the potable water issue faced by locals. Click here to read.

The Malodorous Mountain: A Contemporary Folklore: Sayantan Sur looks into environmental hazards due to shoddy garbage disposal. Click here to read.

Four Seasons and an Indian Summer: Keith Lyons talks of his experiences of seasons in different places, including Antarctica. Click here to read.

Tsunami 2004: After 18 years: Sarpreet Kaur travels back to take a relook at the tsunami in 2004 from Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Click here to read.

A discussion on managing cyclones, managing the aftermath and resilience with Bhaksar Parichha, author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage, and Resilience. Click here to read.

Categories
Editorial

“Imagine all the people/Living life in peace”

God of War by Paul Klee (1879-1940)
The sky weeps blood, the earth cannot contain
The sorrow of the young ones we've slain.
How now do dead kids laugh while stricken by red rain?

— from Stricken by Red Rain: Poems by Jim Bellamy

When there is war
And peace is gone
Where is their home?
Where do they belong?

— from Poems on Migrants by Kajoli Krishnan

Poetry, prose — all art forms — gather our emotions into concentrates that distil perhaps the finest in human emotions. They touch hearts across borders and gather us all with the commonality of feelings. We no longer care for borders drawn by divisive human constructs but find ourselves connecting despite distances. Strangers or enemies can feel the same emotions. Enemies are mostly created to guard walls made by those who want to keep us in boxes, making it easier to manage the masses. It is from these mass of civilians that soldiers are drawn, and from the same crowds, we can find the victims who die in bomb blasts. And yet, we — the masses — fight. For whom, for what and why? A hundred or more years ago, we had poets writing against wars and violence…they still do. Have we learnt nothing from the past, nothing from history — except to repeat ourselves in cycles? By now, war should have become redundant and deadly weapons out of date artefacts instead of threats that are still used to annihilate cities, humans, homes and ravage the Earth. Our major concerns should have evolved to working on social equity, peace, human welfare and climate change.

One of the people who had expressed deep concern for social equity and peace through his films and writings was Satyajit Ray. This issue has an essay that reflects how he used art to concretise his ideas by Dolly Narang, a gallery owner who brought Ray’s handiworks to limelight. The essay includes the maestro’s note in which he admits he considered himself a filmmaker and a writer but never an artist. But Ray had even invented typefaces! Artist Paritosh Sen’s introduction to Ray’s art has been included to add to the impact of Narang’s essay. Another person who consolidates photography and films to do pathbreaking work and tell stories on compelling issues like climate change and helping the differently-abled is Vijay S Jodha. Ratnottama Sengupta has interviewed this upcoming artiste.

Reflecting the themes of welfare and conflict, Prithvijeet Sinha’s essay takes us to a monument in Lucknow that had been built for love but fell victim to war. Some conflicts are personal like the ones of Odbayar Dorj who finds acceptance not in her hometown in Mongolia but in the city, she calls home now. Jun A. Alindogan from Manila explores social media in action whereas Eshana Sarah Singh takes us to her home in Jakarta to celebrate the Chinese New Year! Farouk Gulsara looks into the likely impact of genetic engineering in a world already ripped by violence and Devraj Singh Kalsi muses on his source of inspiration, his writing desk. Meredith Stephens tells the touching story of a mother’s concern for her child in Australia and Suzanne Kamata exhibits the same concern as she travels to Happy Village in Japan to meet her differently-abled daughter and her friends.

As these real-life narratives weave commonalities of human emotions, so do fictive stories. Some reflect the need for change. Fiona Sinclair writes a layered story set in London on how lived experiences define differences in human perspectives while Parnika Shirwaikar explores the need to learn to accept changes set in her part of the universe. Spandan Upadhyay explores the spirit of the city of Kolkata as a migrant with a focus on social equity. Both Paul Mirabile and Naramsetti Umamaheswararao write stories around childhood, one set in Europe and the other in Asia.

As prose weaves humanity together, so does poetry. We have poems from Jim Bellamy and Kajoli Krishnan both reflecting the impact of war and senseless violence on common humanity. Ryan Quinn Flanagan introduces us to Canadian bears in his poetry while Snigdha Agrawal makes us laugh with her lines about dogs and hatching Easter eggs! We have a wide range of poems from Snehprava Das, George Freek, Niranjan Aditya, Christine Belandres, Ajeeti S, Ron Pickett, Stuart McFarlane, Arthur Neong and Elizabeth Anne Pereira. Rhys Hughes concludes his series of photo poems with the one in this issue — especially showcasing how far a vivid imagination can twist reality with a British postman ‘carrying’ sweets from India! His column, laced with humour too, showcases in verse Lafcadio Hearn, a bridge between the East and West from more than a hundred years ago, a man who was born in Greece, worked in America and moved to Japan to even adopt a Japanese name.

Just as Hearn bridged cultures, translations help us discover how similarly all of us think despite distances in time and space. Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s concerns about climate change and melting icecaps does just that! Professor Fakrul Alam’s translation of Nazrul’s lyrics from Bengali on women and on the commonality of human faith also make us wonder if ideas froze despite time moving on. Tagore’s poem titled Asha (hope) tends to make us introspect on the very idea of hope – just as we do now. At a more personal level, a contemporary poem reflecting on the concept of identity by Munir Momin has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. From Korean, Ihlwah Choi translates his own poem about losing the self in a crowd. We start a new column on translated Odia poetry from this month. The first one features the exquisite poetry of Bipin Nayak translated by Snehprava Das. Huge thanks to Bhaskar Parichha for bringing this whole project to fruition.

Parichha has also drawn bridges in reviews by bringing to us the memoirs of a man of mixed heritage, A Stranger in Three Worlds: The Memoirs of Aubrey Menen. Andreas Giesbert from Germany has reviewed Rhys Hughes’ The Devil’s Halo and Somdatta Mandal has discussed Arundhathi Nath’s translation, The Phantom’s Howl: Classic Tales of Ghosts and Hauntings from Bengal. Our book excerpts this time feature Devabrata Das’s One More Story About Climbing a Hill: Stories from Assam, translated by multiple translators from Assamese and Ryan Quinn Flangan’s new book, Ghosting My Way into the Afterlife, definitely poems worth mulling over with a toss of humour.

Do pause by our contents page for this issue and enjoy the reads. We are ever grateful to our ever-growing evergreen readership some of whom have started sharing their fabulous narratives with us. Thanks to all our readers and contributors. Huge thanks to our wonderful team without whose efforts we could not have curated such valuable content and thanks specially to Sohana Manzoor for her art. Thank you all for making a whiff of an idea a reality!

Let’s hope for peace, love and sanity!

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the contents page for the May 2025 Issue

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