Art by Sohana ManzoorCourtesy: Suzanne Kamata Some of our visuals in 2024
As we wait for the new year to unfold, we glance back at the year that just swept past us. Here, gathered together are glimpses of the writings we found on our pages in 2024 that herald a world of compassion and kindness…writings filled with hope and, dare I say, even goodwill…and sometimes filled with the tears of poetic souls who hope for a world in peace and harmony. Disasters caused by humans starting with the January 2024 in Japan, nature and climate change, essays that invite you to recall the past with a hope to learn from it, non-fiction that is just fun or a tribute to ideas, both past and present — it’s all there. Innovative genres started by writers to meet the needs of the times — be it solar punk or weird western — give a sense of movement towards the new. What we do see in these writings is resilience which healed us out of multiple issues and will continue to help us move towards a better future.
A hundred years ago, we did not have the technology to share our views and writings, to connect and make friends with the like-minded across continents. I wonder what surprises hundred years later will hold for us…Maybe, war will have been outlawed by then, as have been malpractices and violences against individuals in the current world. The laws that rule a single man will hopefully apply to larger groups too…
Courtesy: Ratnottama Sengupta Courtesy: Farouk GulsaraSome of our visuals in 2024
Amalkantiby Nirendranath Chakraborty has been translated from Bengali by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard. Click hereto read.
The Mirror by Mubarak Qazi has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click hereto read.
Homecoming, a poem by Ihlwha Choi on his return from Santiniketan, has been translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.
Pochishe Boisakh(25th of Baisakh) by Tagore (1922), has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.
Nazrul’sGhumaite Dao Shranto Robi Re(Let Robi Sleep in Peace) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click hereto read.
Jibananada Das’sAndhar Dekhecche, Tobu Ache (I have seen the dark and yet there is another) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Tagore’sShotabdir Surjo Aji( The Century’s Sun today) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Clickhereto read.
A narrative by Rabindranath Tagore thatgives a glimpse of his first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Clickhere to read.
Suzanne Kamata discusses the peace initiatives following the terrors of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide while traveling within the country with her university colleague and students. Click here to read.
A story by Sharaf Shad, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Conversations
Ratnottama Sengupta talks to Ruchira Gupta, activist for global fight against human trafficking, about her work and introduces her novel, I Kick and I Fly. Click here to read.
A conversation with eminent Singaporean poet and academic, Kirpal Singh, about how his family migrated to Malaya and subsequently Singapore more than 120 years ago. Click hereto read.
Perhaps when Dylan Thomas wrote these lines, he did not know how relevant they would sound in context of the world as it is with so many young dying in wars, more than seven decades after he passed on. No poet does. Neither did he. As the world observes Dylan Thomas Day today — the day his play, Under the Milkwood, was read on stage in New York a few months before he died in 1953 — we have a part humorous poem as tribute to the poet and his play by Stuart McFarlane and a tribute from our own Welsh poet, Rhys Hughes, describing a fey incident around Thomas in prose leading up to a poem.
May seems to be a month when we celebrate birthdays of many writers, Tagore, Nazrul and Ruskin Bond. Tagore’s birthday was in the early part of May in 1861 and we celebrated with a special edition on him. Bond, who turns a grand ninety this year, continues to dazzle his readers with fantastic writings from the hills, narratives which reflect the joie de vivre of existence, of compassion and of love for humanity and most importantly his own world view. His books have the rare quality of being infused with an incredible sense of humour and his unique ability to make fun of himself and laugh with all of us.
Nazrul, on the other hand, dreamt, hoped and wrote for an ideal world in the last century. The commonality among all these writers, seemingly so diverse in their outlooks and styles, is the affection they express for humanity. Celebrating the writings of Nazrul, we have one of his fiery speeches translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty and a review of her Selected Essays: Kazi Nazrul Islam by Somdatta Mandal. An essay from Niaz Zaman dwells on the feminist side of Nazrul while bringing in Begum Roquiah. Zaman has also shared translations of his poetry. Professor Fakrul Alam, who had earlier translated Nazrul’s iconic ‘Bidrohi or Rebel‘, has given us a beautiful rendition of his song ‘Projapoti or Butterfly’ in English. Also in translation, is a poem by Tagore on the process of writing poetry. Balochi poetry by Manzur Bismil on human nature has been rendered into English by Fazal Baloch and yet another poem from Korean to English by Ilwha Choi.
Ratnottama Sengupta this month converses with a dancer who tries to build bridges with the tinkling of her bells, Sohini Roychowdhury. Gita Viswanthan travels to Khiva in Uzbekistan, historically located on the Silk Route, with words and camera. An essay on Akbar Barakzai by Hazran Rahim Dad and another looking into literature around maladies by Satyarth Pandita add zest to our non-fiction section. Though these seem to be a heterogeneous collection of themes, they are all tied together with the underlying idea of creating links to build towards a better future.
In focus this time is a writer whose prose is almost akin to poetry, Rajat Chaudhuri. A proponent of solarpunk, his novel, Spellcasters, takes us to fictitious cities modelled on Delhi and Kolkata. In his interview, Chaudhuri tells us: “The path to utopia is not necessarily through dystopia. We can start hoping and acting today before things get really bad. Which is the locus of the whole solarpunk movement with which I am closely associated as an editor and creator…”
On that note, I would like to end with a couple of lines from Nazrul, who reiterates how the old gives way to new in Proloyullash (The Frenzy of Destruction, translated by Alam): “Why fear destruction? / It’s the gateway to creation!” Will destruction be the turning point for creation of a new world? And should the destruction be of human constructs that hurt humanity (like wars and weapons) or of humanity and the planet Earth? As the solarpunk movement emphasises, we need to act to move towards a better world. And how would one act? Perhaps, by getting in touch with the best in themselves and using it to act for the betterment of humankind? These are all points to ponder… if you have any ideas that need a forum on such themes, do share with us.
We have more content which has not been woven into this piece for the sheer variety of themes they encompass. Do pause by our content’s page and browse on all our pieces.
With warm thanks to our wonderful team at Borderless — especially Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous art — I would like to express gratitude to all our contributors, without who we could not create this journal. We would also like to thank our readers for making it worth our while to write — for all of our words look to be read, savoured and mulled, and maybe, some will evolve into treasured wines.
A brief overview of Rajat Chaudhuri’s Spellcasters, published by Niyogi Books, and a conversation with the author.
Spellcasters by Rajat Chaudhuri is a spellbinding fast paced adventure in a phantasmagorical world against the backdrop of climate change and environmental disasters. Chaudhuri, a proponent of solarpunk[1], has nine books under his belt, including the Butterfly Effect (2018) a few fellowships (like Charles Wallace), and a sense of fun as the characters hurtle through the book gripping the readers with their intensity.
In this novel, Chaudhuri’s universe is run by a council, based on Akbar’s Navratnas[2]. They seem to be people in charge of running a chaotic world. This group — though not drawn from Akbar’s court but from various parts of the world — are known as the ‘Nine Unknown Men’. They are said to host great people from the past in another dimension. As they “fold the dimensions and transform matter from one form to another”, manipulating and yet healing characters like Chanchal Mitra, his protagonist, putting the world to ‘rights’ by destroying villainous capitalists who sport shrunken heads of their enemies and indulge in creating drugs that can lead to annihilation of humankind, there is a fine vein of coherence which gives credibility to Chaudhuri’s imagined world.
The locales are all fictitious but highlight real world problems of climate change, unethical scientific research and uncontrolled economic growth that only pamper the pockets of the rich craving power. He weaves in episodes that had made headlines in Indian media, like Ganesha drinking milk, and Himalayan disasters, a result of interferences by human constructs like dam building and ‘development’. A sensuous mysterious woman with curly hair, Sujata, who sets Mitra back on track and is as good as a Marvel heroine when accosted with villains, adds to the appeal of the book.
He describes a barefoot tribe which seems more idyllic than real. But given that it is a phantasmagorical fantastical novel, one would just accept that as a part of the Spellcasters’ world. However, the import of the message the tribal leader conveys to the characters on the run is astute. “We take little from this land and try to return what it gives us. So did our forefathers and all those who walk this country with the animals. But the settlers in villages and cities never tire of drawing out the last drop of earth’s riches…” A similar take on nomadism and settler communities can be found in nonfiction in Anthony Sattin’s Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped our World, who talks of the spirit of brotherhood, or asabiyya, that bound the nomads together, a concept borne in the fourteenth century in the Middle East. One wonders if the Nine Unknown Men who cast spells are also bound by some such law as at the end the ‘Perfect Lovers’ disappear into another adventure in time… perhaps, to resurface in Chaudhuri’s next book?
Chaudhuri is poetic with words. He writes stunning descriptions of storms and climate events: “The rivers are boisterous and overflowing, the skies are being torn apart by forests of lightning. The great snow-capped peaks from where these rivers emerge have vanished behind walls of water tumbling down from the skies.”
The thing that makes his book truly unique is the way his characters seem to internalise or grow out of the miasma that encapsulates the world below the mountains. They seem like an extension of the chaotic external environment with strange happenings. Even in the council meeting held by the Nine Unknown Men, some of the crowd seem to be wisps of mists. Chanchal Mitra has to go above the hovering fog to start healing back to normal. The novel starts in a seemingly dystopian setting. The ending is more of a fantasy. There is a strain of Bengaliness in his wry humour, in small factual details, like we find Jagadish Chandra Bose seated in the council hall, though LJ drawn from RL Stevensons’ fictional pirate from Treasure Island (1883), Long John Silver, and Caligari from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), have larger and more crucial roles in the novel. Spellcasters is a thriller that entices with words, a gripping plot and suspense — set against a backdrop of strange climate events that are becoming a reality in today’s world, though the characters are more interesting than those drawn from real life.
The novel is written by an author who is compelled by perhaps more than a need to record his times. He has a vision… though not clearly laid out as a didactic message. But it hovers in the fog that is part of the book. One of the things that came across[3] was to create utopia, we need the chaos of dystopian existence…a theme that rebel poet Nazrul addresses in his poem, ‘Proloyullash’ (The Frenzy of destruction): “Why fear destruction? It’s the gateway to creation!”
Rajat Chaudhuri
In a past life, Chaudhuri had been a consumer rights activist, an economic and political affairs officer with a Japanese Mission and a climate change advocate at the United Nations, New York. Working in such capacities could have generated his vision, his worldview. Let us find out more about it by asking him directly:
What made you turn to writing from being an activist and climate change advocate? How long have you been writing fiction? What made you turn to fiction?
I am still involved with activism through my work with NGOs and my writing for popular media and other venues. However, I have gradually shifted my energies to creative fiction through which, nowadays, I try to engage with climate change and other planetary crises.
I have been writing fiction for nearly two decades now, my first novel, Amber Dusk was published seventeen years ago. As a full-time activist I have had the opportunity to interact and work with people from various strata of society right from the villages of India to international fora like the United Nations, where I have often noticed a tug-of-war of ideas between big business, sections of civil society, governments and other major groups like women, indigenous people and so on. While watching and participating in these, I had begun to realise how stories can open another flank in our efforts to communicate our ideas.
Today, you see, storytelling is everywhere. Stories are being recruited for issues big or small, important or completely worthless, even dangerous! In my case, I realised that stories can be an important vehicle for communicating issues surrounding planetary crises to my audience. Stories tend to be sticky — they remain with us for a long time and studies are now showing that well told stories can trigger changes in perceptions, beliefs and ideas. But it took me a long time to transform this realisation into book projects. Before that I had written other books – contemporary fiction, urban fantasy and so on.
What made you conceive Spellcasters? How long did it take you to write?
There are two or three strands that came together in the writing of Spellcasters. Most important among these is my interest in psychology and mental disorders and specifically in the fact that the ideas that dominate the world today, you can call them spells too, make us behave like we are affected by some kind of mental illness. Ideas and practices like limitless growth, conspicuous consumption and so on, make us behave as if we have lost our minds as we go on plundering the planet for energy and resources despite the fact that `nature’ is striking back at us with ever-increasing fury. So, our mental illness is causing planetary illness and at the centre of all this are these powerful, mesmerising, false beliefs, which right from the time of the Club of Rome have been known to be dangerous.
So, when I began to plan this novel, all these thoughts were in my mind partly driven by my activism. And at the same time, I had been reading Sudhir Kakar’s works about magic and mysticism in India and the parallels between Indian and western psychology so all of that came together. It took me about five years to complete Spellcasters not at one go, there was other stuff I have worked on in between.
What kind of research went into making the book?
To create the main character, the journalist Chanchal Mitra, I worked closely with my psychoanalyst friend Anurag Mishra who happens to be a student of Sudhir Kakar. And that research was really intense. We had long face-to-face and online sessions and I read a lot about the varieties and specificities of mental disorder.
Then there is of course that background layer of interest which oftenseeds ideas in your mind. This usually comes from your reading, and I had been interested in reading about the occult traditions of the East and the West for many years. Characters like Mme Alexandra David-Neel[4], the magic healers among indigenous peoples, the power of entheogenic substances like mushrooms have always fascinated me, and some of that came back while researching this book. Writing the climate layer of the story was comparatively easier because of my first-hand activist experience.
Do you have a vision or a message that you tried to address in this novel? I felt it moved from a dystopian setting to that of a fantasy — though not to utopia. Do you think a dystopian vision is necessary to evolve utopia?
The message is simple, and we all know it: Ideas of limitless growth have affected us mentally and so we behave and act in ways (resource extraction, carbon emission) that are making the planet sick. We are passing on our illness to the planet. The belief in limitless growth is a zoonotic disease that our species has transferred to the living planet. Still, we do not act because we are under the effect of these powerful ideas, these powerful spells, that’s where the novel gets its name. The message, if we can call it one, is to be aware of this and try to break out of these spells.
The path to utopia is not necessarily through dystopia. We can start hoping and acting today before things get really bad. Which is the locus of the whole solarpunk movement with which I am closely associated as an editor and creator. But `darkness’ can be redeeming too. Jem Bendell writes about this in detail. Grief and sorrow can indeed make us stronger; author Liz Jensen navigates grief and encounters hope in Your Wild and Precious Life, which is a must read for everyone asking these questions. But coming back to Spellcasters it is really neither dystopia or utopia if we are talking about the climate layer of the story, it’s very much set in the present. What might look dystopian are the gothic and magical elements and settings which serve as a counterpoint to the cold logic of the scientist character, Vincent.
Your novel has broken various barriers by mingling different constructs. So, tell us, how do you combine realism with fantasy, science with literature and create your own world?
It’s not difficult actually. Fantasy, magic and `unreason’ are woven around the borders of the familiar. We see them often without noticing it. Leaping a little higher or using a prescription eye-cleanser can do the trick!
To answer the other part of your question, science and literature or nature and culture were never apart in the first place. They were sundered because of the partitioning project of modernity which goes back to the work of Hobbes and Boyle and has its own history and protagonists. Science fiction as you know does not care much for this division. Climate fiction because of its scaffolding of science and reason needs to bring the two together. As a climate fiction writer, I try to keep the scientific complexities in the background, but they remain as building blocks of the story. In this book however we have a full chapter which is out of a scientist’s journal, and I did that for a change in flavour and in the spirit of experimentation.
Are your imaginary locales based on real cities? Please elaborate.
Often so. In Spellcasters the cities of Anantanagar and Aukatabadare modelled on Calcutta and Delhi respectively. A close reader can easily pick out the similarities but then I also enjoy changing some details especially when I am writing mixed-genre work like this one. So, there is no Chinese joint (like the one Chanchal hangs out at) in Calcutta where you can openly smoke weed but there are places quite similar to the one I described and there is indeed a real person with an eye of glass who used to hang out in one of these.
You have spoken of storms on the hills. Do you also see this as an impact of climate change? Do you think building roads, tunnels or hydel power stations on the hills can, over a period of time, have adverse effects on climate or humanity? Can you suggest an alternative to such ‘development’?
The avalanches, the unseasonal rains, especially the cloudbursts are all closely connected to climate change. Having said that, we also have to be careful to avoid climate reductionism. Often it is a concatenation of factors (including carbon emissions and climate change) and processes, their effects amplified by feedback loops, that precipitate disasters. This is very true if we study migration, for which climate change can be one of the driving forces but there could be other factors like economic opportunities, cultural patterns etc implicated in such flows.
Mindless development which does not take into account the fragility of nature and the interconnections between all beings big and small, microscopic or enormous, animate or inanimate, will set into motion processes that will precipitate crises like climate change. Yes, big dams are definitely a problem and small hydro is always a better option. We often hear that nature is self-healing or that there have been many previous extinctions, and that the planet has made and remade itself, but that’s like telling ourselves, please prepare for suicide while the super-rich and the cults of preppers, especially in the advanced industrialised nations, can escape to their doomsday bunkers.
The alternatives to the current development model is to be found in the ideas of Gandhi, of Schumacher, in solarpunk literature, in Vandana Shiva’s works among plenty of other places. The basic idea is to live in harmony with the planet, cut down on emissions, reduce resource extraction, try community based participatory solutions to problems instead of relying on economic, high-tech or market-based instruments, step back, go slow and let nature cloth and feed us so that we can live with dignity while forsaking greed.
In Spellcasters, you show climate change as an accepted way of life at the end. Do you think that can be a reality? Do you think climate change can be reversed?
A novel often presents itself as a bouquet of ideas without the author demonstrating any clear bias for one over the others. But as an activist-writer I usually drop clear hints as to what is more desirable without making it too obvious. There is always this ongoing duel between politics and aesthetics in a novel and the best among us balance the two quite well.
Climate change can of course be engaged with, controlled and reversed, if we can stick to the ambitious targets of the Paris climate agreement with the rich nations facilitating the process with more funds to poorer nations. Both producers and consumers have a role to play here, and we need serious lifestyle changes in the advanced industrial nations (or rather the global North) and a serious focus on climate justice for any meaningful change to occur. Only planting trees and carbon-trading won’t do.
Your language is very poetic. Do you have any intention of trying poetry as a genre?
Thank you. I haven’t ever thought of writing poetry because I am not gifted with the art of brevity which I think is essential there. But I have enjoyed translating poetry from Bengali to English, which was published as a book. I plan to do more of that.
What can we next expect from your pen?
I have been trying to finish a work of non-fiction about climate change and I hope to do this by the end of the year.
Let me also take this opportunity to thank you Mitali and your team at Borderless Journal for your service to literature. You are doing important work here and I am really grateful for your interest in my novel.
Thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing your wonderful book.
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[1]Solarpunk is a sci-fi subgenre and social movement that emerged in 2008. It visualizes collectivist, ecological utopias where nature and technology grow in harmony. Read more by clicking her
[2]Navratnas or the nine gems were a bunch of very gifted men in his court, like Birbal and Tansen.
[3]The author does not agree to this reading in the interview. He sees his novel evolve out of the solarpunk movement.
In Cherry Blossom Forecast, Suzanne Kamata brings the Japanese ritual of cherry blossom viewing to our pages with her camera and words. Clickhere to read.
Where the mind is without fear … Where the world has not been broken up into fragments … Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way … Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action…
As we complete the fourth year of our virtual existence in the clouds and across borders, the world has undergone many changes around us, and it’s not only climate change (which is a huge challenge) but much more. We started around the time of the pandemic — in March 2020 — as human interactions moved from face-to-face non-virtual interactions to virtual communication. When the pandemic ended, we had thought humanity would enter a new age where new etiquettes redefining our social norms would make human existence as pandemic proof as possible. But before we could define new norms in the global context, takeovers and conflicts seem to have reft countries, regions and communities apart. Perhaps, this is a time when Borderless Journalcan give a voice to all those who want to continue living as part of a single species in this world — where we can rise above our differences to find commonalities that make us human and part of the larger stream of humanity, that has been visualised by visionaries like Tagore or John Lennon — widely different cultural milieus but looking for the same things — humankind living together in harmony and moving towards a world without violence, without hate, without rancour and steeped in goodwill and love.
Talking of positive values does not make sense in a world that seems to be veering towards darkness… Many say that humankind is intrinsically given to feelings of anger, hate, division, lust, shame and violence. But then we are just as much inclined towards happiness, fun, love, being respectful and peaceful. Otherwise, would we be writing about these? These are inherited values that have also come down to us from our forefathers and some have been evolving towards embalming or healing with resilience, with kindness and with an open mind.
If you wake up before sunrise, you will notice the sky is really an unredeemable dark. Then, it turns a soft grey till the vibrant colours of the sun paint the horizon and beyond, dousing with not just lively shades but also with a variety of sounds announcing the start of a new day. The darkest hours give way to light. Light is as much a truth as darkness. Both exist. They come in phases in the natural world, and we cannot choose but live with the choices that have been pre-made for us. But there are things we can choose — we can choose to love or hate. We can choose resilience or weakness. We can choose our friends. We can choose our thoughts, our ideas. In Borderless, we have a forum which invites you to choose to be part of a world that has the courage to dream, to imagine. We hope to ignite the torch to carry on this conversation which is probably as old as humanity. We look forward to finding new voices that are willing to move in quest of an impractical world, a utopia, a vision — from which perhaps will emerge systems that will give way to a better future for our progeny.
In the last four years, we are happy to say we have hosted writers from more than forty different nationalities and our readers stretch across almost the whole map of the world. We had our first anthology published less than one and a half years ago, focussing more on writing from established pens. Discussions are afoot to bring out more anthologies in hardcopy with more variety of writers.
In our fourth anniversary issue, we not only host translations by Professor Fakrul Alam of Nazrul, by Somdatta Mandal of Tagore’s father, Debendranath Tagore, but also our first Mandarin translation of a twelfth century Southern Song Dynasty poet, Ye Shao-weng, by Rex Tan, a journalist and writer from Malaysia. From other parts of Asia, Dr Haneef Sharif’s Balochi writing has been rendered into English by Fazal Baloch and Ihlwha Choi has transcreated his own poetry from Korean to English. Tagore’s Phalgun or Spring, describing the current season in Bengal, adds to the variety in our translated oeuvre.
Devraj Singh Kalsi has explored darker shades of humour in his conversation with God while Suzanne Kamata has ushered in the Japanese spring ritual of gazing at cherry blossoms in her column with photographs and narrative. Keith Lyons takes us to the beautiful Fiordlands of New Zealand, Ravi Shankar to Malaysia and Mohul Bhowmick trapezes from place to place in Sri Lanka. Farouk Gulsara has discussed the elusiveness of utopia — an interesting perspective given that we look upto ideals like these in Borderless. I would urge more of you to join this conversation and tell us what you think. We did have Wendy Jones Nakashini start a discussion along these lines in an earlier issue.
I would want to thank our dedicated team from the bottom of my heart. Without them, we could not have brought out two issues within three weeks for we were late with our February issue. A huge thanks to them for their writing and to Sohana Manzoor for her art too. Thanks to our wonderful reviewers who have been with us for a number of years, to all our mentors and contributors without who this journal could not exist. Huge thanks to all our fabulous loyal readers. Devoid of their patronage these words would dangle meaninglessly and unread. Thank you all.
Wish you a wonderful spring as Borderless Journal starts out on the fifth year of its virtual existence! We hope you will be part of our journey throughout…
Enjoy the reads in this special anniversary issue with more content than highlighted here, and each piece is a wonderful addition to our oeuvre!
It was dark outside but for a faint yellow glow hanging like a cobweb around the gate lamp. She saw two figures moving stealthily, sneaking up the verandah. They were coming in her direction. As they approached the façade of the house they scanned the wall, and then the pillars.
The two men came right up to where she was hidden behind the window, and one was pointing above their heads at the exterior wall. He was well-built, about six feet, and wore a long raincoat speckled with rain and a cap with a chinstrap. He had something in his hand which looked like a crowbar for jimmying locks. The other man, much shorter, had a thickset brutish face, and he had such a cruel look in his eyes that Sujata gasped when she saw him standing so close. He was carrying a jerrycan. This guy had a vermilion streak on his forehead, and his bucktooth was shining in the faint light.
Will they try to break in? She could call out for help with the hope that someone would hear. But the nearest house belonged to a private school, and there would be no one there except for the caretaker who would be dead drunk. The hotel further down the road was still waterlogged, and the labourers—even if they heard her—won’t be able to make it here in time. Too late to call the police, and then there would be many questions.
The shorter of the two opened the jerrycan and began to splash some liquid on the walls and on the chairs kept outside. Petrol! His partner pulled a tool from his pocket and reached up to the wall. The electricity metres were just above his head. What! They were trying to short circuit the electric wires and start a fire! That’s what she thought they were upto. And when she rushed out, they would shoot her and dump her body into the flames.
She went stiff for a second but was alert right the next moment. With a swift movement she swept away the curtains, pushed the shutter and stood straight in front of the window.
The thuggish-looking character with the jerrycan took a step back at the sound and then he saw her. He gave out a low whistle to warn his companion while trying at the same moment to draw his gun. But whatever happened after that was too fast for him, or anyone for that matter.
It is impossible to provide an exact record. If someone was watching, they would have seen her cross her hands after she swept away the curtains to face the hired hitmen. She joined her hands, crossing her arms in that millennia-old swastika mudra—which they say can even stop the devil in his tracks.
It could have ended there but didn’t. As she made the hand gesture, buck-tooth whistled but he couldn’t draw his gun. An ice shower from another world froze his muscles. He turned to stone, buried as if under an avalanche of ice.
Through that daze he saw the curls of her hair writhe and twist, having come to life, animated and growing longer. Sinuous dark ribbons hissing their way out through the window, hoods raised, fangs exposed. Till there was no one on this side, only these swarthy hissing messengers of death slithering into the verandah.
The taller of the two hearing the other whistle, cursed under his breath, ‘Damn! What is it yaar?’
He glanced to his left but it was all too late. All that Sujata heard as she stepped back was a blood-curdling cry of agony as a blue tongue of fire leapt out from the metre box lashing at the two, flinging them back. Both were knocked out cold. It was only left for the fire to do the rest.
A hot train of sparks charged ferociously through the wires and licked the petrol doused wall. Within seconds the lawn lit up with this eerie blue light. Blue changed to white. Flames shivered like teasing tongues. Now they leapt through walls and doorways, and were streaking across the ceiling of her room in angry crimson arrows.
She threw on her jacket and rushed towards the passage for the kitchen exit. Amitav Ghosh’s book about climate change still lay open on the couch where Chanchal had left it. She stopped, scooped it up and stuffed it into her knapsack. A book is always a good weapon, hardbacks are even better. Below the book was a half-eaten bar of Atman dark chocolate; she had given it to him.
She took a bite and jammed it into her pocket. The curtains in the passage had caught fire from the radiated heat coming from the next room. She made a dash for the kitchen. If it got hot beyond a point, the gas tank would explode. Not another moment to lose!
But the kitchen door leading out to the backyard was jammed. She struggled with the oil and grime-caked bolt, losing precious minutes. Is this how she will go then?
ABOUT THE BOOK
Chanchal Mitra wakes up in a far-off desert town, sharing a dingy hotel room with the flamboyant Mr. Kapoor, who is planning to abduct a billionaire. Kapoor insists that the billionaire tycoon is an impostor. Chanchal is unwittingly drawn into the plot. Soon they are joined by the mystery woman Sujata, her eyes dark like murder; and then a crutch-clutching ex-sailor, who is quick with a gun.
In the smog-swathed capital city of Aukatabad, an organic chemist engaged by the tycoon to design a mind-altering drug, is found dead from an overdose. Elsewhere, the billionaire industrialist’s chocolate factory is contaminated by salmonella while Sujata fights a fiery death at the hands of hired killers. As weird weather overtakes the land and Kapoor sets out with his accomplices to kidnap the businessman, the flimsy lines between friend, foe and lover begin to quickly disappear.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rajat Chaudhuri’s works include novels, story collections, edited anthologies and translations. He curated The Best Asian Speculative Fiction and co-edited the Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures(Asia-Pacific) anthology.
His most recent novel, The Butterfly Effect was twice listed by Book Riot (US) as one of the ‘Fifty must read eco-disasters in fiction’ and among ‘Ten works of environmental literature from around the world’. Acclaimed for its exploration of a ‘Ballardian near-future’, this novel is now taught in Indian, American and European universities. His short fiction has also appeared in the internationally acclaimed climate fiction video game, Survive the Century. Chaudhuri has received writing fellowships from Charles Wallace (UK), Hawthornden Castle (Scotland) and Livonics (India) and residency awards from Arts Council Korea-InKo (South Korea) and Sangam House (India).
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
An internationally acclaimed publishing house, Niyogi Books, established in 2004, has more than 650 titles today. They not only specialize in textual context but also strive to give equal importance to visuals. They purvey a wide range of content on art, architecture, history, culture, spirituality, memoirs, and every aspect, which connects with our rich heritage. Under their umbrella, they have fiction and non-fiction that cover books on social science, cookery, and self-help as well as English Translations of modern classics from different Indian languages. Niyogi Books has recently launched four new Imprints: Olive Turtle (English fiction), Thornbird (English Translation), and Paper Missile (English non-fiction) and Bahuvachan (Hindi Translation: Fiction & Non-Fiction). Also, they have co-published a number of critically acclaimed books with reputed institutions like the British Library, Rietberg Museum Zurich, IGNCA, National Gallery of Modern Art, Ministry of Culture (Govt. of India), National Manuscript Mission, Sahitya Akademi, among many others.
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