Tag: Somdatta Mandal

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Editorial

Clinging to Hope

‘I will cling fast to hope.‘

— Suzanne Kamata, ‘Educating for Peace in Rwanda’

Landscape of Change by Jill Pelto, Smithsonian. From Public Domain

Hope is the mantra for all human existence. We hope for a better future, for love, for peace, for good weather, for abundance. When that abundance is an abundance of harsh weather or violence wrought by wars, we hope for calm and peace.

This is the season for cyclones — Dana, Trami, Yixing, Hurricanes Milton and Helene — to name a few that left their imprint with the destruction of both property and human lives as did the floods in Spain while wars continue to annihilate more lives and constructs. That we need peace to work out how to adapt to climate change is an issue that warmongers seem to have overlooked. We have to figure out how we can work around losing landmasses and lives to intermittent floods caused by tidal waves, landslides like the one in Wayanad and rising temperatures due to the loss of ice cover. The loss of the white cover of ice leads to more absorption of heat as the melting water is deeper in colour. Such phenomena could affect the availability of potable water and food, impacted by the changes in flora and fauna as a result of altered temperatures and weather patterns. An influx of climate refugees too is likely in places that continue habitable. Do we need to find ways of accommodating these people? Do we need to redefine our constructs to face the crises?

Echoing concerns for action to adapt to climate change and hoping for peace, our current issue shimmers with vibrancy of shades while weaving in personal narratives of life, living and the process of changing to adapt.

An essay on Bhaskar Parichha’s recent book on climate change highlights the action that is needed in the area where Dana made landfall recently. In terms of preparedness things have improved, as Bijoy K Mishra contends in his essay. But more action is needed. Denying climate change or thinking of going back to pre-climate change era is not an option for humanity anymore. While politics often ignores the need to acknowledge this crises and divides destroying with wars, riots and angst, a narrative for peace is woven by some countries like Japan and Rwanda.

Suzanne Kamata recently visited Rwanda. She writes about how she found by educating people about the genocide of 1994, the locals have found a way to live in peace with people who they addressed as their enemies before… as have the future generations of Japan by remembering the atomic holocausts of 1945.

Writing about an event which wrought danger into the lives of common people in South Asia is Professor Fakrul Alam’s essay on the 1971 conflict between the countries that were carved out of the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent. As if an antithesis to this narrative of divides that destroyed lives, Luke Rimmo Minkeng Lego muses about peace and calm in Shillong which leaves a lingering fragrance of heartfelt friendships. Farouk Gulsara muses on nostalgic friendships and twists of fate that compel one to face mortality. Abdullah Rayhan ponders about happiness and Shobha Sriram, with a pinch of humour, adapts to changes. Devraj Singh Kalsi writes satirically of current norms aiming for a change in outlook.

Humour is brought into poetry by Rhys Hughes who writes about a photograph of a sign that can be interpreted in ways more than one. Michael Burch travels down the path of nostalgia as Ryan Quinn Flanagan shares a poem inspired by Pablo Neruda’s bird poems. Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal writes heart wrenching verses about the harshness of winter for the homeless without shelter. We have more colours in poetry woven by Jahanara Tariq, Stuart MacFarlane, Saranyan BV, George Freek, G Javaid Rasool, Heath Brougher and more.

In translations, we have poetry from varied countries. Ihlwha Choi has self-translated his poem from Korean. Ivan Pozzoni has done the same from Italian. One of Tagore’s lesser-known verses, perhaps influenced by the findings of sensitivity in plants by his contemporary, Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) to who he dedicated the collection which homed this poem, Phool Photano (making flowers bloom), has been translated from Bengali. Professor Alam has translated Nazrul’s popular song, Tumi Shundor Tai Cheye Thaki (Because you are so beautiful, I keep gazing at you).

In reviews, Somdatta Mandal has discussed The Collected Short Stories of Kazi Nazrul Islam, translated by multiple translators from Bengali and edited by Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaustav Chakraborty. Rakhi Dalal has written about The Long Strider in Jehangir’s Hindustan: In the Footsteps of the Englishman Who Walked From England to India in the Year 1613 by Dom Moraes and Sarayu Srivatsa, a book that looks and compares the past with the present. Bhaskar Parichha has written of a memoir which showcases not just the personal but gives a political and economic commentary on tumultuous events that shaped the history of Israel, Palestine, and the modern Middle East prior to the more than a year-old conflict. The book by the late Mohammad Tarbush (1948-2022) is called My Palestine: An Impossible Exile.

Stories travel around the world with Paul Mirabile’s narrative giving a flavour of bohemian Paris in 1974. Anna Moon’s fiction set in Philippines gives a darker perspective of life. Lakshmi Kannan’s narrative hovers around the 2008 bombing in Mumbai, an event that evoked much anger, violence and created hatred in hearts. In contrast, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao brings a sense of warmth into our lives with a story about a child and his love for a dog. Sreelekha Chatterjee weaves a tale of change, showcasing adapting to climate crisis from a penguin’s perspective.

Hoping to change mindsets with education, Mineke Schipper has a collection of essays called Widows: A Global History, which has been introduced along with a discussion with the author on how we can hope for a more equitable world. The other conversation by Ratnottama Sengupta with Veena Raman, wife of the late Vijay Raman, a police officer who authored, Did I Really Do All This: Memoirs of a Gentleman Cop Who Dared to be Different, showcases a life given to serving justice. Raman was an officer who caught dacoits like Paan Singh Tomar and the Indian legendary dacoit queen, Phoolan Devi. An excerpt from his memoir accompanies the conversation. The other book excerpt is from an extremely out of the box book, Rhys Hughes’ Growl at the Moon, a Weird Western.

Trying something new, being out of the box is what helped humans move out from caves, invent wheels and create civilisations. Hopefully, this is what will help us move into the next phase of human development where wars and weapons will become redundant, and we will be able to adapt to changing climes and move towards a kinder, more compassionate existence.

Thank you all for pitching in with your fabulous pieces. There are ones that have not been covered here. Do pause by our content’s page to see all our content. Huge thanks to the fantastic Borderless team and to Sohana Manzoor, for her art too.

Hope you enjoy our fare!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Click here to access the  content’s page for the November 2024 Issue

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

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Review

Short Stories by Nazrul

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: The Collected Short Stories of Kazi Nazrul Islam

Editors: Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaustav Chakraborty

Publisher: Orient Blackswan

He dons many mantles. Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899 – 1976), the national poet of Bangladesh, was a prolific Bengali poet, revolutionary, essayist, journalist, editor, activist and composer of songs. The very mention of his name conjures up the figure of a fiery iconoclast who fought against the structures of oppression and orthodoxy in society to bring about progress and change. In fact, his self-styled image as the volatile bidrohi or ‘rebel poet’ overshadows his other literary achievements and that is how ordinary people still remember him.

This unique volume presents all twenty of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s short stories for the first time in English translation. Done by different hands, they feature rich imagery, evocative landscapes, references to music, classical poetry, folktales and more. The prominent characteristics of these stories are simplicity, vivacity and emotionality. They have been sourced from different anthologies. The first six stories are from the collection Harvest of Sorrow1.  The opening story of the collection titled “Harvest of Sorrow”, is a collage of tales narrated by the three characters: Dara, Bedoura and Saiful Mulk. Dara, located in Iran’s Golestan, narrates his tale of love, separation and devotion to his motherland through a series of reminiscences. After that, we hear the same set of events narrated from Bedoura’s perspective. Then follows the account narrated by Saiful Mulk, portrayed as a sinner who tempted Bedoura into losing her virginity. Overcome by guilt, he joins the freedom struggle where he encounters Dara. What follows is a tale of redemption loss and transcendence of physical love to a more spiritual kind of love. “Hena”, the second story of the collection, is narrated by Sohrab, and its theme is also love and war – both internal and external battle. “In the Relentless Rain” is basically a story of love between strangers. The author doesn’t provide us the names of the lovers – rather both are addressed as dark-skinned. The next story, “Half Asleep”, is divided into two parts: Azhar’s story and Pari’s story. Azhar’s story is mainly about his sacrifices and why he favours detachment from the sensuousness. His renunciation of carnal pleasures towards attaining greater contentment ends his relationship with Pari, whose marriage he arranges with one of his friends. He ensures that Pari remains confined within the household structure. By making Pari assert that she will not betray her role as a loving wife without pretending to erase the love that she has for her former lover, Nazrul offers a critique of the conventional notion of ‘loyalty’ of wives to serve their husbands. The first-person narrator of “Insatiate Desire” soliloquizes on a saga of disunited love where the narrator falls in love with his childhood friend, feigns disinterest in her when her marriage is arranged to another man, and characterises his own actions as stemming from the most noble impulses. The final piece of the volume, “Letter from a Political Prisoner”, is an epistolary story of a political prisoner who has also been diagnosed with fatal tuberculosis. The story is addressed to the lady of his dreams, Manashi, who does not seem to have reciprocated his love.

 The title story of the next section is from an anthology of the same name, The Agony of the Destitute2. The story centres around the glorification of war but in the process, it also raises questions related to war and gender. In sharp contrast to the narrator-protagonist of this narrative who detaches himself from domesticity to join the war, the protagonist of the very next story, “Autobiography of a Vagabond” suffers a tragic end to his domestic life and thereafter joins the army and eventually dies while fighting in Baghdad. “Meher Negar”, the third story of this section, is another tale of war and conflicts in love. Yusuf Khan, the protagonist, is a Pathan from the mountains of Waziristan who meets Meher Negar (whose actual name is Gulshan) after reaching a distant land to learn music. Later he joins the War of Independence for Afghanistan. Unable to forget her, he visits Meher Negar one last time only to discover that she is no more. As an allegorical piece of writing, “Evening Star” is about a man’s love for a distant beloved that is ultimately futile because of the probable demise of the beloved.

“Rakshasi” is written in the language spoken by the Bagdi community of the Birbhum district in West Bengal in which the speaker Bindi is a woman who complains to her friend about how society has stigmatized her as a demoness because she has killed her husband to save him from abandoning her and getting remarried to a notorious girl.“Salek” is a short moral story where, through a series of events, a dervish (later revealed to be Hafiz) shows an arrogant Kazi the path to salvation; the former becomes the latter’s salek or the one who shows the way. In “The Widow”, Begum, the narrator, speaks of her sorrowful youth, her happy married life and the miseries of her widowhood to her friend Salima. The story challenge multiple stereotypes that are often associated with the women of South Asia. The concluding tale of this volume is titled “The Restless Traveller” which is an impressionistic story centered round the urge towards finding freedom by restless youth.

The four stories that comprise the third volume of Nazrul’s stories and the next section, called The Shiuli Mala3, speak about Nazrul’s ecological sensitivity. The opening story “The Lotus-Cobras” is about Zohra and her human and non-human intimacies. As the editors rightly point out, “In the portrayal of Zohra’s attachment with her serpent sons, Nazrul seems to be very close to the essence of posthumanism where radical posthuman subjectivity is understood on the basis of an intersectional ethics of plurality”. “The King of the Djinns” is a tragicomic story about how Alla-Rakha, the protagonist, resorts to a series of tricks to get married to Chan Bhanu, the woman he desires. “The Volcano” deals with the disaster that is caused by the sudden eruption of repressed anger and egotistic pride in Sabur, the humble, helpful and uncomplaining protagonist of the story. It is a study of the anxiety of manliness. “The Shiuli Mala”, the concluding story of this section, is a testimony to Nazrul’s love for the trope of separated lovers or unrequited love. Set in Shillong, it primarily deals with a platonic and disunited love between Azhar, a well-known chess player, and Shiuli, the daughter of another brilliant chess player, Professor Chowdhury. Structured as a flashback, Azhar narrates the story to his friends who are part of a regular chess adda.

Two unanthologised stories end the collection. “Letter from a Lost Boy” is an epistolary account of a boy who writes to his mother about some incidents in his life that have occurred since he had left her until the time of his return. The story is a critique of child marriage and the consequent early widowhood that brings never-ending misery in the life of a woman. “The Hawk-Cuckoo from the Woods” tells the story of a marital discord between Dushasan Mitra and his wife Romola. Their friction widens after Romola becomes too attached to an injured hawk-cuckoo and her husband feels agitated by her gradual disconnect from their conjugal life.  The story ends with Romola flaying her husband for throwing the bird away, finding and hugging the dying bird to her heart and plunging into the waters of the Padma.

All these twenty stories invite the reader to re-evaluate the ‘rebel poet’ as an empathetic humanitarian who also excelled in human relationships. Nazrul is essentially multilingual – he uses Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and Persian words along with Bangla. This book is the outcome of a project sponsored by the Nazrul Centre for Social and Cultural Studies, Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol, West Bengal. The volume is a transnational, collaborative labour of love bringing together the editors and translators from Bangladesh and India. Most of them are academics and have taken up the challenge to translate the stories, which in their infinite variety, is indeed a difficult task. The stories are accompanied by a timeline of Nazrul’s life and a detailed critical introduction that not only provides foundational context for the stories, but also highlights Nazrul’s attempt to counter majoritarianism and various hegemonies by dismantling hierarchies and celebrating intimate pluralities. In fact, at the end of their introduction, the editors Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaustav Chakraborty ask two very pertinent questions. “In which category can we place Nazrul? Is there a need to formulate a different category altogether in order to position him?” The answers of course lie with the readers of the translated stories to decide. All said and done, this volume of short stories is strongly recommended for all classes of readers who are keen to discover the multi-faceted genius of Kazi Nazrul Islam and who could not earlier savour their uniqueness because they were only written in Bangla.

  1. Byathar Daan (Harvest of Sorrows) published in March 1922 ↩︎
  2. Rikter Bedon (Agony of the Destitute) published in January 1925 ↩︎
  3. Shiuli Mala (Garland of Jasmines) published in October 1931 ↩︎

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

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Contents

Borderless, October 2024

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Where Are Those Happy Days? … Click here to read.

Conversations

In conversation with Malashri Lal with focus on her poetry book, Mandalas of Time. Click here to read.

Keith Lyons speaks to novelist Lya Badgley about her life, books and travels. Click here to read.

Translations

Tagore’s poem on Africa has been translated from Bengali by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard. Click here to read.

Nazrul’s Shukno Patar Nupur Paye (With Ankle Bells of dried leaves) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Veena Verma’s story, Galat Aurat or The Wrong Woman, has been translated from Punjabi by C Christine Fair. Click here to read.

Sharaf Shad’s story, The Melting Snow, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Andhokaarer Utso Hote (From the Fount of Darkness) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Rhys Hughes, Afsar Mohammad, Fhen M, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Shamik Banerjee, George Freek, Shahin Hossain, Stuart MacFarlane, Matthew James Friday, Udita Banerjee, Jenny Middleton, Alpa Arora, Stephen Philip Druce, Malashri Lal, Michael Burch

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Two Pizza Fantasies, Rhys Hughes recounts myths around the pizza in prose, fiction and poetry, Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

An Alien on the Altar!

Snigdha Agrawal writes of how a dog and lizard add zest to festivities with a dollop of humour. Click here to read.

To Be or Not to Be…

Farouk Gulsara ponders over the nature of humanity. Click here to read.

Memories of my Grandfather

Alpana writes of her interactions with her late grandfather. Click here to read.

From Diana to ‘Dayaan’

Rajorshi Patronobis talks of Wiccan lore. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Libraries and Me, Devraj Singh Kalsi recalls his experiences in school and University in a lighter vein. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Among Ghosts in the Land of a Thousand Hills, Suzanne Kamata travels with a Japanese colleague and students to Rwanda. Click here to read.

Essays

Memories of Durga Puja

Fakrul Alam recalls the festivities of Durga Puja in Dhaka during his childhood. Click here to read.

A Doctor’s Diary: Syncretic Festivities

Ravi Shankar writes of his early life in Kerala where festivals were largely a syncretic event. Click here to read.

Stories

The Return

Paul Mirabile unravels the homecoming of a British monk. Click here to read.

The Mango Thief

Naramsetti Umamaheswara Rao writes a story about peer pressure among children. Click here to read.

Sunset Memories

Saeed Ibrahim writes from near the Arabian Sea. Click here to read.

A Whiff of the Past…

Tanika Rajeswari V gives a haunting story set in Kerala. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt by Ruskin Bond from Let’s Be Best Friends Forever: Beautiful Stories of Friendship. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Lara Gelya’s Camel from Kyzylkum. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Anjum Katyal’s Safdar Hashmi: Towards Theatre for a Democracy. Click here to read.

Somdatta Mandal reviews Ammar Kalia’s A Person Is a Prayer. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Selected Works of Vyasa Kavi Fakir Mohan Senapati, edited by Monica Das. Click here to read.

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

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Categories
Editorial

Where Are Those Happy Days?

From Public Domain

Festivals are like friends.

They bring hope, solace and love to those who believe in them. But, when the structures holding the fiestas in place start to crumble, what do we do then?

Our lives have moved out of wilderness to cities over centuries. Now, we have covered our world with the gloss of technology which our ancestors living in caves would have probably viewed as magic. And yet we violate the dignity of our own kind, war and kill, destroy what we built in the past. The ideological structures seem ineffective in instilling love, peace, compassion or hope in the hearts of the majority. Suddenly, we seem to be caving in to violence that destroys humanity, our own kind, and not meting out justice to those who mutilate, violate or kill. Will there be an end to this bleak phase? Perhaps, as Tagore says in his lyrics[1], “From the fount of darkness emerges light”. Nazrul has gone a step further and stated clearly[2], “Hair dishevelled and dressed carelessly/ Destruction makes its way gleefully. / Confident it can destroy and then build again …Why fear since destruction and creation are part of the same game?”

And yet, destruction hurts humans. It kills. Maims. Reduces to rubble. Can we get back the people whose lives are lost while destruction holds sway? We have lost lives this year in various wars and conflicts. As a tribute to all the young lives lost in Bangladesh this July, we have a poem by Shahin Hossain. Afsar Mohammad has brought in the theme of festivals into poetry tying it to the current events around the world. In keeping with the times, Michael Burch has a sense of mirthlessness in his poems. Colours of emotions and life have been woven into this section by Malashri Lal, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Fhen M, Shamik Banerjee, George Freek, Matthew James Friday, Jenny Middleton and many more. This section in our journal always homes a variety of flavours. Stuart MacFarlane has poems for Wordsworth… and some of it is funny, like Rhys Hughes’ poem based on photographs of amusing signposts. But then life has both sorrows and laughter, and poetry is but a slice of that as are other genres. We do have non-fiction in a lighter vein with Hughes’ story and poem about pizzas. Devraj Singh Kalsi has given a tongue in cheek narrative about his library experiences.

Suzanne Kamata has written for us about her visit to Rwanda. Farouk Gulsara has pondered over humanity’s natural proclivities.  Wiccan lore has been discussed by Rajorshi Patranabis. And Snigdha Agrawal has tuned into humour with her rendition of animal antics that overran festivities. Ravi Shankar, on the other hand, has written about the syncretic nature of festivals in Kerala. Professor Fakrul Alam has given a nostalgic recap of Durga Puja during his childhood, a festival recognised as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO, and known for its syncretic traditions where people from all backgrounds, religions and cultures celebrate together.

Festivals have also been taken up in fiction by Tanika Rajeswari V with a ghostly presence hovering over the arrangements. Paul Mirabile has taken us around the world with his story while Saeed Ibrahim writes from his armchair by the Arabian sea. Sahitya Akademi winner for his children’s stories, Naramsetti Umamaheswara Rao, has showcased peer pressure among youngsters in his narrative.  

Two stories have also featured in our translations. Christine C Fair has rendered Veena Verma’s Punjabi story about an illegal immigrant into English. Hinting at climate concerns, Sharaf Shad’s fiction, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Tagore’s powerful poem on Africa has been brought to Anglophone readers by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard as well as his inspiring lyrics, Andhokaarer Utso Hote (From the Fount of Darkness), by our team. Nazrul’s vibrant lyrics, Shukno Patar Nupur Paye (With Ankle Bells of Dried Leaves), has been rendered into English from Bengali by Professor Alam.

Our reviews explore immigrant stories in fiction with Somdatta Mandal reviewing Ammar Kalia’s A Person Is a Prayer. Bhaskar Pariccha has written about Selected Works of Vyasa Kavi Fakir Mohan Senapati, edited by Monica Das. Fakir Mohan is a legendary writer from Odisha. Meenakshi Malhotra has discussed a book on another legend, Safdar Hashmi, one of the greatest names in street theatre in India. The book is by Anjum Katyal and called, Safdar Hashmi: Towards Theatre for a Democracy.

Our book excerpts usher good cheer with a narrative by Ruskin Bond from Let’s Be Best Friends Forever: Beautiful Stories of Friendship. And also hope with a refugee’s story from Ukraine, which travels through deserts, Italy and beyond to US and has a seemingly happier outcome than most, Lara Gelya’s Camel from Kyzylkum. This issue’s conversations take us around the world with Keith Lyons interviewing Lya Badgley, who has crossed continents to live and write. Malashri Lal, the other interviewee, is an academic and writer with sixteen books under her belt. She travels through the world with her poetry in Mandalas of Time.

Huge thanks to the Borderless team for putting this issue together – the last-minute ties – and the art from Sohana Manzoor. Without all this, the edition would look different. Heartfelt thanks to our contributors without whose timely submissions, we would not have a journal. And most of all we thank our readers – we are because you are – thank you for reading our journal.  As all our content, despite being indispensable, could not be mentioned here, do pause by our content’s page for this issue.

We wish you a wonderful month!

Cheers,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

[1] Tagore’s Andhokaarer Utso Hote (From the Fount of Darkness)

[2] Nazrul’s Proloyullash translated by Professor Alam as The Frenzy of Destruction

Click here to access the content’s page for the October 2024 Issue.

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

Categories
Review

Weaving Strands of the Past to Create an Imagined Place

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: A Person Is a Prayer

Author: Ammar Kalia

Publisher: Penguin Books

“This novel became a way to collect the strands of the past, to pull these disparate lives together and to give me an imagined place to stand upon.”  Ammar Kalia

Debut novels have a unique quality – the author takes extra care to deliver his best, whether in the form of storyline, or setting or stylistic devices. And though either subconsciously or deliberately borrowing from family history, he always tries to justify that the novel is not autobiographical, but a piece of fiction. A similar thing takes place with Ammar Kalia, the author of this novel under review, who is a writer, musician and journalist living in London. Beginning and ending his narration in March 1955, he tells us the story of the Bedis, a Punjabi family who went through multiple migrations from India to Kenya and then to England. Like all diasporic Indians in search of their roots and still longing for somewhere they can call home, and find ‘something to belong to’, Kalia got the idea to develop this novel when he came to India in 2019, especially to Haridwar, to spread his grandmother’s ashes in the Ganges. As he stood in the dust near the river, several questions popped up in his mind – where did my grandparents grow up? How did they meet? Why did they move multiple continents in a lifetime (from Asia to Africa to Europe)? What were their dreams? Why did I never ask them anything important?

With all these questions lurking in his mind, Kalia opens Part I of the novel in March 1955 with a detailed description of how his grandfather Bedi’s marriage was arranged with a girl called Sushma through a middleman. Coming from far off Nairobi where he was the son of an engine driver and had seven other siblings, he came all the way to India, but Bedi was a tourist and not a prodigal son. We are given the details of the bride-viewing, the discussions of both parties on what they want and what to expect, and finally give the green signal to marry.

Part II of the book jumps straight ahead to February 1994, and it is located in London and Bournemouth where Bedi was spending his time trying to erase the past and not to be engaged in his three grown kids’ lives anymore, wanting to be left alone, to be respected from a distance, to ultimately be ignored. The story of his life in England is like all immigrants who had to make that a new home and go on living with the hope that maybe one day they would be able to go back. After mentioning the generation gap and how the children would not be stuck between continents, there is a sudden catastrophe in the family when Sushma goes out for a last-minute shopping trip for the family get-together and dies after meeting with a street accident. Everything goes haywire in their lives.

The story then moves ahead to September 2019 with three long sections comprising Part III of the novel and is narrated by the three siblings – Selena, Rohan and Tara – who come to India along with their family members on a ‘dreaded pilgrimage’ to scatter their father’s ashes in the Ganges at Haridwar. The heat knocked them out of their daze, and they could feel the looks of the surrounding men bearing down on them. They realsed they didn’t belong here but needed to be here as this was the only place they were meant to say goodbye. It was also a chance to reconnect with their ‘roots.’ By far the most powerful section in the entire novel, we are told how pilgrimage sites in India were dens of corrupt individuals, who tried to fleece the tourist or visitor at every step. After suffering from the heat and dust and a futile attempt to trace their father’s genealogical chart from the family records maintained by different pandits in the long family scrolls, they ultimately decide to scatter the ashes at the end of the day with the help of a new pandit and complete the ceremony for which they had travelled all the way from England.

Tara narrates:“We began to sprinkle him into the bubbling water and after each round we would watch as he dissolved like dropped candy floss in a puddle. … And now all of Dad is in the water and Sel and Rohan bow their heads for a moment of silence amid the strange harmonies of splashing, calling and praying. And I see myself, as if in a painting, unhook from their chain and step into the water, as if in my dreams, and I can feel its cold needles between my toes.”

Divided into several sub-sections and narrated in the first person, we get the detailed background and fill-up of the personal lives and family relationships of each of the three narrators. Kalia does a remarkable job here. We are told how each sibling follows a different profession, gets embroiled in different relationships, and how they ultimately behave with their own children. Incidentally, one is reminded of William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying (1930), which narrates the story of the death of a matriarch in a family and keeping to her last wish, the family members carry her coffin for forty miles to the town of Jefferson to bury her next to her own kith and kin. While they are travelling, Faulkner devotes each chapter to a different family member who narrates the same incident in the first person and from a different point of view. Thus, it gives us his or her background along with the reason for travelling to Jefferson.

In the ‘Author’s Note’ at the end of the novel, Kalia categorically states: “I like to call it an act of remembrance, but it’s all fiction. It’s bringing people back to life – with those we can no longer reach. This is a story of a family like mine, but that isn’t mine; it is a novel about people hoping for a better future, longing for an idealized past and striving to survive in the present. It is about so many families.”

This personalisation and universalisation of the narration at the same time is what makes this novel a unique reading experience. Kalia’s narrative style is appreciable, and one can go through these 284 pages without feeling bored or mired into unnecessary details for long. The observant eye of a foreigner blends subjectivity and objectivity in balanced proportion and so the book is recommended for all classes of readers – serious and casual alike.

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

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Categories
Celebrating Translations

Transmitting across Cultures

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

Translations are like bridges. Three years ago, we decided to start a bridge between Tagore’s ideas and the world that was unfamiliar with his language, Bengali. He has of course written a few pieces in Brajbuli too. We started our journey into the territory of Tagore translations with Aruna Chakravarti’s Songs of Tagore. Now we have expanded hugely this section of our translations with many prose pieces and more translations of his lyrics and poetry by writers like Aruna Chakravarti, Fakrul Alam, Radha Chakravarty, Somdatta Mandal, Himadri Lahiri, Ratnottama Sengupta, Chaitali Sengupta and Nishat Atiya other than our team’s efforts. To all these translators our heartfelt thanks. We share with you their work celebrating one of the greatest ideators of the world.

Prose

Stories

.Aparichita by Tagore :This short story has been translated as The Stranger by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read. 

Musalmanir Galpa (A Muslim Woman’s Story): This short story has been translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

One Small Ancient Tale: Rabindranath Tagore’s Ekti Khudro Puraton Golpo (One Small Ancient Tale) from his collection Golpo Guchcho ( literally, a bunch of stories) 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.

Humorous Skits

(All translated by Somdatta Mandal)

 Playlets by Rabindranath Tagore : Click here to read.

 The Ordeal of Fame: Click here to read.

The Funeral: Click here to read. 

The Welcome: Click here to read.

 The Treatment of an Ailment: Click here to read.

Non-fiction

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.

 Travels & Holidays: Humour from Rabindranath: Translated from the original Bengali by Somdatta Mandal, these are Tagore’s essays and letters laced with humour. Click here to read.

Himalaya Jatra ( A trip to Himalayas) :This narrative about Tagore’s first trip to Himalayas and beyond with his father, has been translated from his Jibon Smriti (1911, Reminiscenses) by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

Raja O Praja or The King and His Subjects, an essay by Tagore, has been translated by Himadri Lahiri. Click here to read.

 Library: A part of Bichitro Probondho (Strange Essays) by Rabindranath Tagore, this essay was written in 1885, translated by Chaitali Sengupta. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

The Parrot’s Tale: Excerpted from Rabindranth Tagore. The Land of Cards: Stories, Poems and Plays for Children, translated by Radha Chakravarty, with a foreword from Mahasweta Devi. Click here to read

Rabindranath Tagore Four Chapters: An excerpt from a brilliant new translation by Radha Chakravarty of Tagore’s controversial last novel Char Adhyay. Click here to read.

Farewell Song :An excerpt from Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Tagore’s  novel. Click here to read.

An excerpt from ‘Kobi’ and ‘Rani’: Memoirs and Correspondences of Nirmalkumari Mahalanobis and Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Somdatta Mandal, showcasing Tagore’s introduction and letters. Click here to read.

 Letters from Japan, Europe & America :An excerpt from letters written by Tagore from Kobi & Rani, translated by Somdatta Mandal. Click hereto read.

Gleanings of the Road: Book excerpt brilliantly translated by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

Songs and Poems

Songs of Seasons: Translated by Fakrul Alam

Bangla Academy literary award winning translator, Dr Fakrul Alam, translates seven seasonal songs of Tagore. Click here to read.

  • Garland of Lightening Gems (Bajromanik Diye Gantha) 
  • In The Thunderous Clouds (Oi Je Jhorer Meghe) 
  • The Tune of the New Clouds (Aaj Nobeen Megher Shoor Legeche)
  • The Sky’s Musings (Aaj Akashe Moner Kotha) 
  • Under the Kadamba Trees (Esho Nipo Bone) 
  • Tear-filled Sorrow (Ashrubhara Bedona)

Endless Love: Tagore Translated by Fakrul Alam

Ananto Prem (Endless Love) by Tagore, translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Giraffe’s Dad by Tagore

Giraffer Baba (Giraffe’s Dad), a short humorous poem by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read. 

Oikotan or Harmonising

Oikotan (Harmonising) has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam and published specially to commemorate Tagore’s Birth Anniversary. Click hereto read.

Monomor Megher O Shongi (or The Cloud, My friend) has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read. 

Professor Fakrul Alam has translated Tomra Ja Bolo Tai Bolo, Hridoy Chheele Jege and Himer Raate — three songs around autumn from Click here to read.

Tagore’s Achhe Dukhu, Achhe Mrityu, (Sorrow Exists, Death Exists) has been translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Colour the World: Translated by Ratnottama Sengupt: Rangiye Diye Jao, a song by Tagore, transcreated by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Bhumika (Introduction) by Tagore has been translated  by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

On behalf of Borderless Journal 

Esho, He Baisakh, Esho Esho (Come Baisakh: A song to welcome the Bengali New Year) Click here to read.

Tagore Songs in Translation. Click here to read the next five.

  • Kothao Amar Hariye Jawa Nei Mana ( Losing myself)
  • Akash Bhora Shurjo Tara (The Star-studded Sky)
  • Krishnokoli ( Inspired by a girl who lives in a village)
  • Phoole Phoole Dhole Dhole (The Swaying Flowers)
  • Shaongagane Ghora Ghanaghata (Against the Monsoon Skies, Brajbuli to English)

Tagore’s Diner Sheshe Ghoomer Deshe (At the close of the day, in the land of sleep).Click here to read the translation.

Tagore’s Amar Shonar Horin Chai (I want the Golden Deer). Click here to read the translation.

Tagore’s long poem, Dushomoy (translated as Journey of Hope though literally the poem means bad times). Click here to read the poem in English and listen to Tagore’s voice recite his poem in Bengali. We also have a sample of the page of his diary where he first wrote the poem as ‘Swarga Pathhe'(On the Path to Heaven).

Deliverance by Tagore: ‘Tran’ by Tagore, a prayer for awakening of the subjugated. Click here to read the translation.

Abhisar by Tagore: A story poem about a Buddhist monk by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali. Click here to read the translation.

Amaar Nayano Bhulano Ele describes early autumn when the festival of Durga Puja is celebrated. Click here to read the translation from Bengali.

Morichika or Mirage by Tagore is an early poem of the maestro that asks the elites to infringe class divides and mingle. Click here to read the translation from Bengali. 

 Purano Sei Diner Kotha or ‘Can old days ever be forgot?’ based on Robert Burn’s poem, Auld Lang Syne. Click here to read the translation.

 Aaji Shubhodine Pitaar Bhabone or On This Auspicious Day, a Brahmo Hymn. Click here to read the translation.

Raatri Eshe Jethay Meshe or Where the Night comes to Mingle , a song written in 1910. Click here to read the translation.

 Anondodhara Bohichche Bhubone (The Universe reverberates with celestial ecstasy), a song …Click here to read the translation.

Ebar Phirao More (Take me Back) a poem… Click here to read the translation.

Lukochuri has been translated from Bengali as Hide and Seek. Click here to read the translation.

Taal Gaachh or The Palmyra Tree, a lilting light poem, has been translated from Bengali. Click here to read the translation.

Nobobarsha or New Rain, a poem describing the rain transports one to Tagore’s world. Click here to read the translation.

Hobe Joye has been translated as  Song of Hope for that is exactly what it is in spirit. Click here to read.

Eshechhe Sarat, a poem describing autumn in Bengal, has been translated as Autumn. Click here to read the translation.

Aalo Amar Aalo is a paean to light and its impact on us. Click here to read the translation.

Tomar Shonkho Dhulay Porey (your conch lies in the dust), is an inspirational poem to shed apathy. Click here to read the translation.

 Prothom Diner Shurjo (The Sun on the First day) is one of the last poems of Tagore. Click here to read the translation.

 Banshi or Flute is an inspirational poem delving into the relationship with the divine muse. Click here to read the translation.

 Somudro or Ocean has probably been written during Tagore’s travels. Click here to read the translation.

 Borondala (Basket of Offerings) is a poem of ecstasy. Click here to read the translation.

Nobo Borsho or New Year, is a poem written on the Bengali New Year, urging people to rid themselves of past angst. Click here to read the translation.

Bhoy hote tobo is the first Birthday Song by Tagore, a poem written in 1899. Click here to read the translation.

Pran or Life, a poem that reflects the poets outlook on life. Click here to read the translation.

Megh or Cloud is a poem about clouds with spiritual undertones reflecting transience . Click here to read.

Proshno or Question  with its poignant overtones continues relevant to this date. Click here to read.

Sharat or Autumn, describes Bengal in the season of sharat or early autumn. Click here to read.

Amra Bedhechhi Kasher Guchho (We have Tied Bunches of Kash) is a hymn to an autumnal goddess. Click here to read. 

Tomar Kachhe Shanti Chabo Na (I Will Not Pray to You for Peace) is a song that inspires to survive the dark phases of life. Click here to read.

Tagore’s 1400 Saal (The Year 1993), was read in London in 1993, including Tagore’s own rather brief translation and had a response from Nazrul. Click here to read.

Prarthona or Prayer is a poem in which the poet seeks inner strength. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Dhoola Mandir or Temple of Dust is a poem that questions norms, even from the current times. Click here to read.

Phalgun or Spring  describes spring in Bengal. Click here to read.

Pochishe Boisakh (25th of Baisakh) is a birthday poem Tagore wrote in 1922 and from he derived the lyrics of his last birthday song written in 1941. Click here to read.

Chhora or Rhymes , a poem describing the creative process, it was written in 1941. Click here to read.

Okale or Out of Sync gives a glimpse of how out of sync situations are also part of our flow. Click here to read.

Mrityu or Death dwells on Tagore’s ability to accept death as a reality. Click here to read.

 Olosh Shomoy Dhara Beye (Time Flows at an Indolent Pace) reflects his perspective on history. Click here to read.

Suprobhat or Good Morning gives an unusual interpretation to morning. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

Songs of Tagore: Seven songs translated by Aruna Chakravarti from a collection that started her on her litrary journey and also our Tagore translation section. Click here to read.

Songs from Bhanusingher Padabali: Translated by Radha Chakravarty: Two songs by Tagore written originally in Brajabuli, a literary language developed essentially for poetry, has been translated by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Categories
Contents

Borderless, September 2024

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

And Wilderness is Paradise Enow… Click here to read.

Translations

Raja O Praja or The King and His Subjects, an essay by Tagore, has been translated from Bengali by Himadri Lahiri. Click here to read.

Nazrul’s Roomu Jhoomu Roomu Jhoomu has been transcreated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

The Mirror by Mubarak Qazi has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

The Source by Ihlwha Choi has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Suprobhat or Good Morning by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Rhys Hughes, Cal Freeman, Jackie Kabir, Jennifer McCormack, Pramod Rastogi, Miriam Bassuk, K B Ryan Joshua Mahindapala, Paul Mirabile, Shamik Banerjee, Craig Kirchner, Thomas Emate, Stuart MacFarlane, Supriya Javalgekar, George Freek, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Michael Burch

Musings/Slices from Life

Finding the Fulcrum

Farouk Gulsara gives a poignant account of looking after an aged parent. Click here to read.

Watery World

Keith Lyons finds the whole world within a swimming pool. Click here to read.

Days that don’t Smell of Cakes and Candy

Priyanka Panwar muses on days which not much happens… Click here to read.

Rayban-dhan

Uday Deshwal revisits his life with his companion sunglass. Click here to read.

In Favour of a Genre…

Saeed Ibrahim argues in favour of short stories as a genre. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Shades of Grey – Hair and There, Devraj Singh Kalsi writes of adventures with premature greying. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Sneaky Sneakers, Suzanne Kamata grins at life in Japan. Click here to read.

Essays

Ah Nana Bari!

Fakrul Alam writes nostalgically of his visits to Feni in Noakhali, a small town which now suffers from severe flooding due to climate change. Click here to read.

A Manmade Disaster or Climate Change?

Salma A Shafi writes of floods in Bangladesh from ground level. Click here to read.

A Doctor’s Diary: Life in the High Ranges

Ravi Shankar writes of his life in the last century among the less developed highlands of Kerala. Click here to read.

Stories

The Useless Idler

Paul Mirabile writes of a strange encounter with someone who calls himself an ‘idler’. Click here to read.

Imitation

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao explores parenting. Click here to read.

Final Hours

Mahila Iqbal gives a poignant story about aging. Click here to read.

Friends

G Venkatesh writes a story stirring environmental concerns. Click here to read.

Conversation

Ratnottama Sengupta converses with Reba Som, who recently brought out, Hop, Skip and Jump; Peregrinations of a Diplomat’s Wife. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Mineke Schipper’s Widows: A Global History. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Anuradha Marwah’s Aunties of Vasant Kunj. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Karan Mujoo’s This Our Paradise: A Novel. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Swadesh Deepak’s A Bouquet of Dead Flowers translated from Hindi by Jerry Pinto, Pratik Kanjilal, Nirupama Dutt, Sukant Deepak. Click here to read.

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Anuradha Marwah’s Aunties of Vasant Kunj. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Ayurveda, Nation and Society: United Provinces, c. 1890–1950 by Saurav Kumar Rai. Click here to read.

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Categories
Editorial

And Wilderness is Paradise Enow…

Prayer Wheel at Nurulia, Ladakh. Photo Courtesy: Farouk Gulsara
We lock eyes, find glimmers
of smiles, trust our leaders.
We break bread with strangers
because there aren’t any.

--Imagine by Miriam Bassuk

Imagine the world envisioned by John Lennon. Imagine the world envisioned and partly materialised by Tagore in his pet twin projects of Santiniketan and Sriniketan, training institutes made with the intent of moving towards creating a work force that would dedicate their lives to human weal, to closing social gaps borne of human constructs and to uplifting the less privileged by educating them and giving them the means to earn a livelihood. You might well call these people visionaries and utopian dreamers, but were they? Tagore had hoped to inspire with his model institutions.  In 1939, he wrote in a letter: “My path, as you know, lies in the domain of quiet integral action and thought, my units must be few and small, and I can but face human problems in relation to some basic village or cultural area. So, in the midst of worldwide anguish, and with the problems of over three hundred millions staring us in the face, I stick to my work in Santiniketan and Sriniketan hoping that my efforts will touch the heart of our village neighbours and help them in reasserting themselves in a new social order. If we can give a start to a few villages, they would perhaps be an inspiration to some others—and my life work will have been done.”  But did we really have a new social order or try to emulate him?

If we had acted out of compassion and kindness towards redefining with a new social order, as Miriam Bassuk points out in her poem based on Lennon’s lyrics of Imagine, there would be no strangers. We’d all be friends living in harmony and creating a world with compassion, kindness, love and tolerance. We would not have wars or regional geopolitical tensions which act against human weal. Perhaps, we would not have had the issues of war of climate change take on the proportions that are wrecking our own constructs.

Natural disasters, floods, fires, landslides have affected many of our lives. Bringing us close to such a disaster is an essay by Salma A Shafi at ground level in Noakhali. More than 4.5 million were affected and 71 died in this disaster. Another 23 died in the same spate of floods in Tripura with 65,000 affected. We are looking at a single region here, but such disasters seem to be becoming more frequent. And yet. there had been a time when Noakhali was an idyllic vacation spot as reflected in Professor Fakrul Alam’s nostalgic essay, filled with memories of love, green outdoors and kindnesses. Such emotions reverberate in Ravi Shankar’s account of his medical adventures in the highlands of Kerala, a state that suffered a stupendous landslide last month. While Shafi shows how extreme rainfall can cause disasters, Keith Lyons writes of water, whose waves in oceanic form lap landmasses like bridges. He finds a microcosm of the whole world in a swimming pool as migrants find their way to New Zealand too. Farouk Gulsara muses on kindness and caregiving while Priyanka Panwar ponders about ordinary days. Saeed Ibrahim gives a literary twist to our musings.   Tongue in cheek humour is woven into our nonfiction section by Suzanne Kamata’s notes from Japan, Devraj Singh Kalsi’s piece on premature greying and Uday Deshwal’s paean to his sunglasses!

Humour is wrought into poetry by Rhys Hughes. Supriya Javelkar and Shamik Banerjee have cheeky poems that make you smile. We have poetry on love by Michael Burch and poetry for Dylan Thomas by Ryan Quinn Flanagan. Miriam Bassuk has described a Utopian world… but very much in the spirit of our journal. Variety is brought into our journal with poetry from Jackie Kabir, Jennifer McCormack, Craig Kirchner, Stuart MacFarlane, George Freek, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal and many more.

In translations, we have Nazrul lyrics transcreated from Bengali by Professor Alam and poetry from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. We pay our respects to an eminent Balochi poet who passed on exactly a year ago, Mubarak Qazi, by carrying a translation by Fazal Baloch. Tagore’s Suprobhat (Good morning) has been rendered in English from Bengali. His descriptions of the morning are layered and amazing — with a hint of the need to reconstruct our world, very relevant even today.  A powerful essay by Tagore called Raja O Praja (The King and His Subjects), has been translated by Himadri Lahiri.

Our fiction hosts two narratives that centre around childhood, one by Naramsetti Umamaheswararao and another by G Venkatesh, though with very different approaches. Mahila Iqbal relates a poignant tale about aging, mental health and neglect, the very antithesis of Gulsara’s musing. Paul Mirabile has given a strange story about a ‘useless idler’.

A short story collection has been reviewed by Rakhi Dalal, Swadesh Deepak’s A Bouquet of Dead Flowers, translated from Hindi by Jerry Pinto, Pratik Kanjilal, Nirupama Dutt, Sukant Deepak. Somdatta Mandal has written about a book by a Kashmiri immigrant which is part based on lived experiences and part fictive, Karan Mujoo’s This Our Paradise: A Novel. Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed Ayurveda, Nation and Society: United Provinces, c. 1890–1950 by Saurav Kumar Rai, a book which shows how healthcare was even a hundred years ago, politicised. Meenakshi Malhotra has reviewed Anuradha Marwah’s novel, Aunties of Vasant Kunj, of which we also have an excerpt. The other excerpt is from Mineke Schipper’s Widows: A Global History. Ratnottama Sengupta converses with Reba Som, author of Hop, Skip and Jump; Peregrinations of a Diplomat’s Wife.

We have more content that adds to the vibrancy of the issue. Do pause by this issue and take a look. This issue would not have been possible without all your writings. Thank you for that. Huge thanks to our readers and our team, without whose support we could not have come this far. I would especially like to thank Sohana Manzoor for her continued supply of her fabulous and distinctive artwork and Gulsara for his fabulous photographs.

Let us look forward to a festive season which awakens each autumn and stretches to winter. May we in this season find love, compassion and kindness in our hearts towards our whole human family.

Have a wonderful month!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Categories
Review

This Our Paradise

Book Review by Somdatta Mandal

Title: This Our Paradise: A Novel

Author: Karan Mujoo

Publisher: Ebury Press (an imprint of Penguin Random House)

“A debilitating symptom of exile is unfamiliarity with your homeland” – Karan Mujoo

For ages, Kashmir had been defined as a paradise on earth. However, with the advent of insurgency, political unrest, strife, bloodshed, terrorism and insecurity for the past several decades, this picture of the ideal and beautiful place has been largely shattered. This debut novel by a person of Kashmiri origin, now settled near Delhi, is a moving tale of the ground realities that have been taking place in this region for a long time. Adding the suffix of “A Novel” to the title, the author obviously wants to steer clear of all the controversies that might arise because as he himself states in the “Author’s Note” at the end, “the names and places in this book are a mix of the real and the imaginary… Certain incidents in the novel are based on real events. But their details have been imagined. Hence the names of victims and perpetrators have been changed or tweaked.”

The author was acutely aware of the fact that Kashmir is too large a canvas to be contained in a single book or movie, and so he tells the story of two Kashmiri families, one Hindu and the other Muslim. The stories of both families intertwine tragically in the end. In both cases, the boys are at the mercy of forces much larger than them. Both lose their Kashmir, in different ways. The first story is of a Kashmiri Pandit family who, when the narrative begins, is moving half-heartedly from their house in Bagh-i-Mehtab in Srinagar to their new home in Talab Tillo in Jammu, which was just a dilapidated 12×12 foot hovel with a tin roof and crumbling walls. The patriarch Papaji is a clerk in a food cooperative and his wife Byenji is a homemaker. He is very optimistic that all this is a temporary affair. He still believed in the inherent goodness of people, in ties built over generations and that things would soon turn for the better. The narrator is their eight-year-old grandson who is one of the thousands of children of exile who had nothing to do, nowhere to go. He spent his days playing cricket and climbing the tangkul [1]in the garden. Everything is rosy till 1989. But then, propelled by ISI and the Jamaat, a secessionist movement rises and changes everything. There was gun culture everywhere. For the media, too, Kashmiri Pandits became disposable footnotes in a far greater struggle. Slowly they joined the ranks of the forgotten and became a tragedy that could not be prioritised. At the end of the novel, we find that the idea of exile which harboured within it the hope of return, did not apply to them anymore. They were truly displaced.

Mujoo juxtaposes the earlier story with the story of a Muslim family, set in Zogam, a small village in Lolab Valley. There, after years of prayers, a boy named Shahid is born to Zun and her husband in 1968. Quarantined from everyone else in the village, Sahid’s days passed listening to tales and making them up. As a result, he slowly developed into a shy, quiet boy who found it difficult to mingle with others and liked being with nature. Compared to the slick city dwellers, the people of Zogam seemed like wretched beings with no dreams and ambitions. They were content with their lot because they were not exposed to the luxuries and opportunities life held. Sahid gradually grew up in a society where corruption and unemployment were rife. He made friends with Rashid, who believed that the system had to be dismantled. The trajectory of his life changes when he meets Syed Sahab ― an Islamic theologian and rabble-rouser, who wants to overthrow the Indian state. He brainwashes the young boys into believing that the day they made Sharia their lives, their lives would become Jannat[2]. He preached that Jihad[3] was coming to the Valley soon, and everyone should be ready for it.


The next section takes us back once again to the Pandit protagonists and their life story. The year is 1968 and our young narrator gradually turns worldly-wise when he is taken to different places by his young uncle, Vicky, including the Dal Lake and the Sheikh Colony – a settlement of sweepers, scavengers and tanners who were reviled by all Kashmiris. Believing that education would relieve them of all penury and social ostracisation, Vicky becomes their temporary teacher. Without the knowledge of his parents, he gradually gets enmeshed within other radical ideas and different military groups that had emerged in the city. On the other hand, Shahid realised he could either be a clerk and part-time Jamaat[4]sympathiser or a full-time Jamaat worker. In the end, he opts for the latter and believes that he was no longer a poor farmer’s son from Zogam whose life and death were insignificant.

An interesting section of the narrative told in minute details is how the young jihadis[5] are escorted over the difficult mountain terrain by a Gujjar guide and clandestinely taken across the border to makeshift and rudimentary Pakistani camps in Muzaffarabad. The aim was to indoctrinate the boys in orthodox Islamic ideology and impart basic military training. They were brainwashed into believing that the most important thing was to attack all symbols of India: blow up government banks and offices, kill army and police personnel, murder judges, bureaucrats, teachers, politicians, cripple the state, silence all the voices who oppose the Tehreek[6] and instill the fear of Allah in the hearts of all unbelievers. After they are once again brought back to the Indian side, the boys turn into hardcore terrorists and Sahid is no exception. No matter how hard his parents tried, he had simply become one of the thousands of boys who were ready to fight for the cause.

Without giving out further details of the parallel storylines, we can conclude by stating that through this book Karan Mujoo has tried to ask some fundamental questions. How does a boy become a terrorist? How does society crumble?  What forces a family to go into exile? To serve this need, to create a picture of these chaotic years, he has attempted a certain sort of distillation. He only hopes that the illusion has been marginally successful. Through the vividly drawn characters whose lives intersect with one another, each navigating their own paths through love and life, the author successfully captures the essence of human experience and the eternal yet illusive search for paradise.

We have been reading fictional and non-fictional accounts of the problems in Kashmir for a long time, but the painstaking way in which this debut novelist has tried to give us the entire scenario in a nutshell is praiseworthy. The book is strongly recommended for all readers who would find the universal quest for happiness really moving, and how the author has blended fact and fiction with remarkable ease.

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[1] A pear tree

[2] Paradise

[3] Holy war

[4] Party, community or assembly

[5] Warriors of Jihad

[6] Cause

Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is aa former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India.

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

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Categories
Contents

Borderless, August 2024

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

A Sprinkling of Happiness?… Click here to read.

Conversation

A review of and discussion with Rhys Hughes about his ‘Weird Western’, The Sunset Suite. Click here to read.

Translations

Two Songs of Parting by Nazrul have been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

The Snakecharmer, Shapuray by Nazrul, has been translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read.

Leaving for Barren, Distant Lands by Allah Bashk Buzdar has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Loneliness has been translated from Korean by the poet, Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Olosh Shomoy Dhara Beye (Time Flows at an Indolent Pace) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael Burch, Arshi Mortuza, Jason Ryberg, Saranyan BV, Koiko Tsuuda, Jane Hammons, Noopur Vedajna Das, Adeline Lyons, George Freek, Naisha Chawla, John Grey, Lakshmi Chithra, Craig Kirchner, Nia Joseph, Stuart MacFarlane, Sanjay C Kuttan, Nilsa Mariano, G Javaid Rasool, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Rhys Hughes

Musings/ Slices from Life

Breaking Bread

Snigdha Agrawal has a bovine encounter in a restaurant. Click here to read.

That Box of Colour Pencils

G Venkatesh writes of a happy encounter with two young children. Click here to read.

The Chameleon’s Dance

Chinmayi Goyal muses on the duality of her cultural heritage. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Godman Ventures Pvt. Ltd., Devraj Singh Kalsi looks into a new business venture with a satirical glance. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In In Praise of Parasols, Suzanne Kamata takes a light look at this perennial favourite of women in Japan. Click here to read.

Essays

The Comet’s Trail: Remembering Kazi Nazrul Islam

Radha Chakravarty pays tribute to the rebel poet of Bengal. Click here to read.

From Srinagar to Ladakh: A Cyclist’s Diary

Farouk Gulsara travels from Malaysia for a cycling adventure in Kashmir. Click here to read.

Bottled Memories, Inherited Stories

Ranu Bhattacharyya takes us back to Dhaka of the 1930s… and a world where the two Bengals interacted as one with her migration story. Click here to read.

Landslide In Wayanad Is Only The Beginning

Binu Mathew discusses the recent climate disaster in Kerala and contextualises it. Click here to read.

Stories

The Orange Blimp

Joseph Pfister shares a vignette set in the Midwest. Click here to read.

A Queen is Crowned

Farhanaz Rabbani traces the awakening of self worth. Click here to read.

Roberto Mendoza’s Memoirs of Admiral Don Christopher Columbus

Paul Mirabile explores myths around Christopher Columbus in a fictitive setting. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Shabnam, translated from Bengali by Nazes Afroz. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Maaria Sayed’s From Pashas to Pokemon. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Upamanyu Chatterjee’s Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life. Click here to read.

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews Shuchi Kapila’s Learning to Remember: Postmemory and the Partition of India. Click here to read.

Rakhi Dalal reviews Namita Gokhale’s Never Never Land. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Malvika Rajkotia’s Unpartitioned Time: A Daughter’s Story. Click here to read.

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International