Gower Bhat discusses the advent of coaching schools in Kashmir for competitive exams for University exams, which seem to be replacing real schools. Clickhere to read.
In winters, birds migrate. They face no barriers. The sun also shines across fences without any hindrance. Long ago, the late Nirendranath Chakraborty (1924-2018) wrote about a boy, Amalkanti, who wanted to be sunshine. The real world held him back and he became a worker in a dark printing press. Dreams sometimes can come to nought for humanity has enough walls to keep out those who they feel do not ‘belong’ to their way of life or thought. Some even war, kill and violate to secure an exclusive existence. Despite the perpetuation of these fences, people are now forced to emigrate not only to find shelter from the violences of wars but also to find a refuge from climate disasters. These people — the refuge seekers— are referred to as refugees[1]. And yet, there are a few who find it in themselves to waft to new worlds, create with their ideas and redefine norms… for no reason except that they feel a sense of belonging to a culture to which they were not born. These people are often referred to as migrants.
At the close of this year, Keith Lyons brings us one such persona who has found a firm footing in New Zealand. Setting new trends and inspiring others is a writer called Harry Ricketts[2]. He has even shared a poem from his latest collection, Bonfires on the Ice. Ricketts’ poem moves from the personal to the universal as does the poetry of another migrant, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, aspiring to a new, more accepting world. While Tulip Chowdhury — who also moved across oceans — prays for peace in a war torn, weather-worn world:
I plant new seeds of dreams for a peaceful world of tomorrow.
Fiction in this issue reverberates across the world with Marc Rosenberg bringing us a poignant telling centred around childhood, innocence and abuse. Sayan Sarkar gives a witty, captivating, climate-friendly narrative centred around trees. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao weaves a fable set in Southern India.
A story by Nasir Rahim Sohrabi from the dusty landscapes of Balochistan has found its way into our translations too with Fazal Baloch rendering it into English from Balochi. Isa Kamari translates his own Malay poems which echo themes of his powerful novels, A Song of the Wind (2007) and Tweet(2017), both centred around the making of Singapore. Snehaprava Das introduces Odia poems by Satrughna Pandab in English. While Professor Fakrul Alam renders one of Nazrul’s best-loved songs from Bengali to English, Tagore’s translated poem Jatri (Passenger) welcomes prospectives onboard a boat —almost an anti-thesis of his earlier poem ‘Sonar Tori’ (The Golden Boat) where the ferry woman rows off robbing her client.
We have plenty of non-fiction this time starting with a tribute to Jane Austen (1775-1817) by Meenakshi Malhotra. Austen turns 250 this year and continues relevant with remakes in not only films but also reimagined with books around her novels — especially Pride and Prejudice (which has even a zombie version). Bhaskar Parichha pays a tribute to writer Bibhuti Patnaik. Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan explores ancient Sangam Literature from Tamil Nadu and Ratnottama Sengupta revisits an art exhibition that draws bridges across time… an exploration she herself curated.
We have a spray of colours from across almost all the continents in our pages this time. A bumper issue again — for which all of the contributors have our heartfelt thanks. Huge thanks to our fabulous team who pitch in to make a vibrant issue for all of us. A special thanks to Sohana Manzoor for the fabulous artwork. And as our readers continue to grow in numbers by leap and bounds, I would want to thank you all for visiting our content! Introduce your friends too if you like what you find and do remember to pause by this issue’s contents page.
Wish all of you happy reading through the holiday season!
I’d wanted to go on the Shikoku Mannaka Sennen Monogatari (One Thousand Year Story in the Middle of Shikoku) train trip ever since I saw it advertised on a poster in the window of Tokushima Station. When I investigated, however, I discovered one couldn’t begin the journey in Tokushima, where I live. Although it starts (or ends, depending on which way you’re coming from; it’s a one-way trip) deep in the mountains of Tokushima, I would have to change trains a few times before boarding the special sightseeing train. It would take hours to get there. A better way would be to board in Tadotsu, which is in the neighboring prefecture Kagawa. I could drive there in a little over an hour, take the fancy train to Oboke, and return by express train.
I decided to take a ride on the spur of the moment. The train was pretty much booked for the rest of the season, at least on the days when I didn’t have other plans, like my job. I did find one last seat on a train in mid-November. It might have been more fun to go with someone else, but I didn’t have time to coordinate with friends. I immediately booked the seat, reserving my lunch as well.
The morning of my train trip was chilly, but sunny. I donned a thin tunic and a long cardigan, wondering if it would be cold in the mountains. Maybe I should bring my down jacket? I rolled up a windbreaker and stuffed it into my backpack. I entered my destination – Tadotsu Station – into my phone’s navigation app, selected a podcast for the drive, and set off.
Tadotsu turned out to be a sleepy little town, which makes sense. These are the kinds of places that need something special to attract visitors and their money. If the whole purpose of these sightseeing trains is to rejuvenate dying towns, then Tadotsu seemed like a good choice. I could see that some construction was in progress, perhaps to accommodate the hordes of new visitors brought by the train. Porta potties temporarily served as bathrooms.
In front of the station, an intriguing sculpture attracted my attention. To me, it looked like a tall armless man wearing a hat, backed by a sickle. There was an emblem like a coat of arms where the neck of the man would be. At the base of the sculpture was a plaque with the words: “Thankful for my own life. Thankful for having you in it.”
Later, I discovered that it was meant to commemorate Doshin So, nee Michiomi Nakano, a former military intelligence agent who spent many years in China. After returning to Japan, he was stationed in Tadotsu, where he established a cram school to teach Buddhist philosophy and martial arts.
In 1947, he founded Shorinji Kenpo, a Japanese martial art with a holistic system. The training methods are divided into self-defense training, mental training, and health training. According to his philosophy, spirit and body are as one, and they must be trained together as such. His teachings emanated from this small town of about 20,000 people to the rest of the world. The emblem, as it turned out, was the symbol for Shorinji Kenpo.
I took a photo of the monument and proceeded to the train platform, where I was met with heavy equipment surrounded by a chain link fence. A sign apologised for this inconvenience, and explained that construction was underway to make the station barrier-free.
I was twenty minutes early, but my fellow passengers – Japanese, as far as I could tell – were already milling about, taking selfies and photos of each other in advance of their train trip. The group was mostly female, middle-aged, and older. Many people were wearing masks.
A cinematic melody heralded the approach of the train, accompanied by another rush for selfies and photos. The three cars, all different colors, were named after spring, summer, and fall. What happened to winter? A small doormat with the train’s motif, which resembled a stylized tree, was positioned on the platform at the entrance to the train. I boarded the green “spring” car, Haru Akari, and found my seat, a fuzzy green upholstered chair at a table against the wall, facing the window. The two seats next to me were unoccupied.
Most people wore casual clothes. I rarely saw folks from Tokushima get dressed up, unless it was for a wedding, say, or a graduation ceremony. One woman at the four-top on the other side of me was striking in a sumptuous Chinese-style jacket and gold barrettes. I wondered for a moment if she might be some kind of celebrity. I tried not to stare.
I examined the orange cloth placemat, again with the tree motif. Already my mouth was watering. Disposable chopsticks and a wet napkin were aligned at the bottom, while a spoon rested on a rectangle of granite. Paper napkins, toothpicks, and creamers were tucked into a small basket made of vines. Brochures detailing the train’s route, souvenirs for purchase, and additional menu items were laid out.
You could use your phone to scan a QR code and order keychains, sweet potato cakes, or a yusan-bako, a traditional lunch box which originated in Tokushima. This one was made of Japanese cypress adorned with Kagawa lacquerware. It had three drawers for various delicacies, which fit into a box with a handle, perfect for toting to a picnic in a meadow somewhere. You could also buy a CD with the train’s theme song.
I had already ordered my lunch, but I glanced at the menu anyway. Fish cutlets, another specialty of Tokushima were available, along with bamboo shoots, and ice cream made with sake lees. The sweet potato crumble, with a dollop of whipped cream, was also tempting, but I summoned my willpower.
One of the uniformed attendants pointed out the wooden box under my car for storing my backpack and purse. I got those items out of the way. She also handed me a coupon for soup and water to be redeemed at our first stop. And then finally, the train began to move. A whistle blew. Japan Railway employees and others lined up with flags and round paper fans and began waving at us. We all waved back.
After that enthusiastic send-off, the train began to trundle along the tracks, picking up speed as we zipped past backyards of houses, apartment buildings with laundry hanging on balconies, convenience stores, crows alighting on power lines, an empty playground. We passed rice paddies, some surrounding family gravestones; a construction site with bright blue, green, and yellow earth moving machines.
As we neared Kotohira Station, our first stop, a young woman chirped that Kotohira’s brass band had been declared second best in the country. She reminded us to redeem our coupons in the welcome center. After the train had stopped, I followed everyone into a small room adjacent to the station where we lined up at a counter. I handed over my little piece of paper and received a bottle of water and a small China cup of kabocha1potage. I perched on the padded bench to drink it, while gazing around at the proud display of photos of the award-winning high school band. A white-gloved attendant came around with a tray to collect my empty cup, and I got back on the train.
A young Chinese family – a couple and their plump baby – were now occupying the seats beside me. The train moved on. The view outside my window was now more expansive – terraced fields, occasional houses with tiled roofs and walled gardens, tufts of pampas grass, a patch of pink and magenta cosmos.
The voice announced that we were nearing Sanuki Saida Station, which boasts a 700-year-old tabunoki tree, said to be a “power spot.” Apparently if you stand under the tree, you can absorb some of its spirit and energy. The tree has also been designated a Kagawa Prefectural Protected Tree. The train came to a stop again, but this time we didn’t get off. Instead, we all whipped out our smartphones to take photos of the person dressed in a polar bear costume shooting soap bubbles from a bubble gun. The baby was delighted.
Once we were again underway, the attendant distributed large square bento boxes with gold-rimmed lids. I opened mine to find an array of chilled meat dishes – the first course. I unsheathed my disposable chopsticks and broke them apart. “Itadakimasu!2”
Out the window, farmland had given way to gnarly brush. `Although the foliage wasn’t quite at its peak, swatches of scarlet and gold popped against the greenery. I wondered about the wildlife in the mountains. I knew that there were monkeys, boars, and deer. The latter two appeared on menus deep in the interior of Shikoku. You could get a burger made with game meat, or “peony hot pot,” in which thin slices of pink boar meat curled up like flower petals after being cooked in miso broth.
Next to me, the young parents passed their good-natured baby back and forth. When I caught his eye, I smiled at him, and he showed his dimples, smiling back. I remembered how, when I had first come to Japan, whenever I had tried to engage with a stranger’s baby on the train, the baby’s face had crumpled up in terror. Apparently, big-nosed foreigners were scary even for infants. At least back then. It was nice to be able to engage with a small child without causing tears.
We made a brief stop at Tsubojiri Station, a small, unmanned station accessible only by switchback, surrounded by trees. “You can get off the train and smoke,” the voice announced. We all scampered off the train, but I didn’t see anyone light up a cigarette. Instead, passengers posed in front of the station’s sign and the weathered wooden building.
Back on the train, the next course was served – buttered rice and pork, arranged on a gold-rimmed China plate. The narration continued. “Please look to the right. You will be able to see Mount Hashikura. You can take a ropeway to Hashikura Temple, which was established by the famous Buddhist monk Kukai, also known as Kobo Daishi.”
Kobo Daishi is known as the father of Shikoku’s 88-Temple Pilgrimage. Hashikura Temple is not one of the 88, but is considered to be an associated temple. According to the Tourism Shikoku website, the name “Hashikuraji” contains the character for “hashi,” or chopsticks, “an everyday unifying ubiquitous tool of daily life for all Japanese. In 828 [CE], Konpira Daigongen revealed himself to the priest Kukai and promised to save all who use chopsticks, a pledge of salvation for all.”
According to an announcement, we would soon have a good view of the Yoshino River, the majestic “wild” river which runs west to east across Shikoku. Its rushing waters carved out the Oboke Gorge over millennia. This river flows 121 miles, past Tokushima City, and the house where I live, and into the Kii Channel. At one time, it flooded repeatedly. The “Tora-no-Mizu” (“Tiger’s Water”) flood of 1886 (Year of the Tiger), one of the worst floods in Japanese history, led to the deaths of an estimated 30,000 people. Now, however, strong levees keep the waters in check, though heavy rains can still shut down the roads nearest the river. These days, the Yoshino River is more known as a place where visitors can enjoy various forms of recreation including swimming, fishing, and white-water rafting.
As I gazed out at the glassy emerald waters, which reflected the rocky banks, the voice announced that we were approaching Awa-Ikeda. High school baseball, I thought. Sure enough, the voice told us that we would soon have a view of baseball players practicing at Ikeda High School’s diamond, and that they had once won the National High School Baseball Tournament at Koshien.
The train chugged on. We passed another station, Awa Kawaguchi, where another person in a polar bear suit filled the air with soap bubbles. A sign on the platform declared that this was a town where tanuki (an indigenous animal that is often called raccoon-dog, and is a notorious trickster in Japanese folklore) and people live together.
A polar bear suit filled the air with soap bubblesA man wearing a woven peaked hat
After traversing another tunnel, coffee was served with a petite madeleine. Outside the window, I could see the water rushing through the gorge, frothing over rocks. We were almost at the end of our thousand-year journey. It had lasted a little over two hours.
The train pulled into Oboke Station, in the town of Miyoshi, and we got off. We were greeted by a man wearing a woven peaked hat and happi coat, banging on a drum affixed with characters from the animated series Anpanman. Although my fellow travelers had been mostly Japanese, quite a few European and American tourists were milling around the station, perhaps waiting for transportation.
At the time I first visited, over thirty years ago, I recall no restaurants or hotels, but now there was a large roadside station with souvenir shops, food vendors, and a Yokai House. There was even yokai3-themed food. Some traditional houses have been refurbished as high-end inns.
I took a short walk around the area and then attempted to buy a return ticket on an express train. Although the station was now geared for tourists with English signage and souvenir shops, it was still old-fashioned in many ways. I realised it wasn’t equipped to deal with phone apps or credit cards. I hadn’t brought a lot of cash, but I had just enough to buy a ticket back to my starting point.
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
“Please show me your international driver’s licence.”
“Certainly!”
Alex produced the licence.
“This is out of date! I’m sorry but we can’t hand over the car.”
“No! It’s current! It’s valid for five years.”
We scrutinized the licence. The start date was prominently displayed, but not the expiration date. As we squinted to decipher the fine print on page three, we discovered that it had expired three years ago. Alex had thought it would be valid for five years, but it was only valid for one. We attributed it to his light-heartedly referred to “OCD Deficit Disorder”. And that is how a one-week road trip suddenly became a public transport and taxi trip.
This was my first visit back to Japan after having left at the beginning of the pandemic. Alex and I had been deliberating where to spend our honeymoon, and we agreed that the island of Shikoku in western Japan where I had spent over twenty years would be our first choice.
Onigiri. Photo courtesy: Mariko Hisamatsu
There were so many things to look forward to. The first thing I did, before even leaving Kansai Airport, was rush into the convenience store and buy an onigiri flavoured with an umeboshi pickled plum. An onigiri is a triangle of rice, with a choice of flavours in the centre such as fish, seaweed, or the aforementioned umeboshi. It is wrapped in a crisp sheet of seaweed. Before eating it you gently pull away a thin layer of wrapping which protects the outer seaweed from absorbing the moisture of the rice. As you bite into it you can enjoy the three distinct textures and flavours – the piquant centre, the contrasting bland rice, and the crisp outer layer of seaweed. Next, I purchased a mugwort daifuku. This is a Japanese sweet, consisting of a layer of pounded mugwort-flavoured rice around a centre of sweet azuki bean paste. All of this was washed down with a bottle of green tea.
From the above account, it might sound like I was returning to Japan to indulge in simple culinary delights from a convenience store, and maybe this is a possibility I am unwilling to admit to myself. Of course, the main purpose was to reconnect with old friends, the second to reconnect with old pleasures, such as the aforementioned onigiri and daifuku, and the third, to stay in a traditional Japanese house.
After having been refused permission to drive our hire car, we headed back towards the terminal and searched for the railway station. We caught trains out to the UNESCO heritage listed site of Koyasan to enjoy the autumn leaves, and then seven trains and two buses later, to Wakayama station. Finally, we caught a taxi to our accommodation, which turned out to be a house that was over two hundred years ago, dating from the end of the Edo Period.
Jiomaru-an Edo period house. Photo Courrtesy: Alan Noble Inside the house. Photo Courtesy: The Host
The door slid open to reveal an earthen floor. We walked down the hall to the kitchen, left our shoes in the sunken area, and donned the provided slippers. The kitchen opened onto two traditional tatami rooms, with fusuma sliding cupboards, and latticed paper shoji screens leading onto the garden. Beyond the shoji was a narrow hall known as an engawa, with a small wooden table and chair where you could enjoy sipping a drink while looking out over the garden. This was the kind of room I had been longing for during my five years away from Japan.
But we hadn’t had dinner yet and I was longing to ride to a local supermarket to purchase a ready meal.
‘“Do you have any bicycles?” I asked the host.
“Certainly. We have mountain bikes too!”
“You don’t want to go cycling in the dark?” queried Alex. “Not after a long-distance flight, seven trains, two buses, and a taxi ride? Surely not!”
I insisted, and Alex gave up persuading me otherwise. Rather than a mountain bike I chose the mamachari, a vintage bike replete with a shopping basket attached to the front handlebars.
We cycled to the supermarket, as I had done almost daily during my twenty years of living in Shikoku. There we bought sushi and sashimi ready meals, and cycled home, scanning to avoid roadside ditches with sheer drops and no guard rails. Once safely home, we indulged in the much longed for sushi and sashimi, enjoyed the traditional deep Japanese bath, spread out the futons on the tatami, and luxuriated in a deep sleep.
The next morning, we woke to a gentle light streaming through the latticed paper shoji screens. We cycled to Wakayama castle, Alex on the mountain bike and me on the mamachari. We strolled around the traditional garden before entering the castle and then completed it with a visit to the adjacent tearoom, where we enjoyed green tea and a sweet bean paste confectionery.
The following day, we bid farewell to our Edo Period home, and our kind host drove us to the ferry terminal. As soon as I saw the sign in Japanese for Tokushima, I could feel the colour rising to my cheeks. This had been my home in Japan for fifteen of my twenty years in Shikoku, until the day I departed for a routine visit to Australia, just before the international borders were closed due to COVID. Little did I know that the pandemic would prevent me from returning to Japan. I boarded the ferry as I had so many other times after returning from various work trips, but this time I was visiting on my honeymoon. The two-hour crossing readied me for the arrival in my old stomping ground and was heralded by the sentimental music played to signal a homecoming. Alex and I exited the ferry to be met by my old friend and writing mentor, Suzanne. Overcome with emotion, I covered my face with my hands to spare her the sight of my crumpled features and then gave her a hug. Then I went back to covering my swollen eyes and gave her another hug.
Platter of Sushi at Sally’s home. Photo courtesy: Alan Noble
Suzanne drove us to the home of the son of another old friend, Sally, who had kindly offered us a couple of nights’ accommodation. That evening a subset of old friends dropped in to see us and eat sushi. I braced myself for the entry of each friend into the house, trying to compose my features, after an unanticipated five-year interval. My eyes, however, betrayed me. I caught the expressions of those who returned by gaze, and they could sense my relief and excitement of meeting them again. Over five years people’s appearances were a little different. Those who had long hair now wore it shorter. Those with shorter hair had grown it. Those who were curvaceous were now svelte, and those who were svelte were now curvaceous. A child had now become a lanky teenager. I’m sure I must have looked different to them too. What had not changed was people’s smiles, conversation and sense of humour. People who I would normally see a few times over a month were now all present in the same room in the space of a few hours.
A few days later, we took the bus across Shikoku to Matsuyama, where another happy reunion took place of eight friends from six different countries. I was freshly aware of the joys of the expat life, where you can make friends from a greater range of countries, and a greater range of ages, than you would at home.
Ranma Carvings in a traditional room. Photo Courtesy: Alan Noble
I had been craving another stay in a traditional house, and we savoured a room with ranma carvings suspended from the ceiling, letting in light and air flow from the adjacent room. We sat at the kotatsu low heated table on the tatami, and slept on futon, in a room featuring shoji paper screens facing outside and fusuma cupboards where futons were stored. Features which had once seemed so ordinary were now infused with nostalgia.
Family obligations called us back to Australia after only one week of our Japanese honeymoon. A taxi was followed by a bus which took us on the long trek back across Shikoku, driving through impossibly long tunnels, crossing elegant bridges, with views of the sea and mountains. Once we crossed the final bridge onto the largest main island of Honshu, the landscape was transformed into high rise apartments, and dense traffic. We alighted from the bus at Kobe’s Sannomiya Station.
There we asked directions to the airport limousine bus and made a final purchase of onigiri. My favourite umeboshi pickled plum one was not on sale, so I had to make do with a tuna mayonnaise one and a pickled seaweed one. We ran to the bus stop, purchased tickets, and skipped into the bus holding our luggage. There was no time to store the luggage in the hold. Once the bus pulled into the traffic, we knew we could relax after our long and complicated journey. I gently pulled away the wrapping separating the layers of the tuna mayonnaise onigiri and savoured the contrasting flavours and textures. Our fleeting trip to Japan was punctuated by savouring onigiri on both arrival and departure. We bade farewell to this land of delectable tastes, exquisite arts, historic houses, hair-raising bicycle rides, and precious friends.
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Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her recent work has appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal, Continue the Voice, Micking Owl Roost blog, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, and Mind, Brain & Education Think Tank. In 2024, her story Safari was chosen as the Editor’s Choice for the June edition of All Your Stories.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Festivals are affirmations of joy and love that bind humanity with their sense of hope even in a world torn by violence and climate change. As the end of the year approaches, we invite you to savour flavours of festivals past and, a few, yet to come, before the cycle starts again in the new year. The colours of celebrations are vibrant and varied as shades of nature or the skies.
We have new years spread out over the year, starting with January, moving on to the Chinese New Year around February, the Bengali new year in April to festivals of environment, light, darkness as in Wiccan beliefs, Tagore’s birth, more conventional ones like Deepavali, Eid, Durga Puja and Christmas. People celebrate in different ways and for different reasons. What we have also gathered is not only the joie de vivre but also the sadness people feel when celebrations are muted whether due to the pandemic, wars or for social reasons. In some cases, we indulge in excesses with funny results! And there are of course festivals of humanity … as celebrated by the bauls — the singing mendicants of Bengal — who only recognise the religion of love, compassion and kindness.
Ramakanta Rath’sSri Radha celebrating the love of Radha and Krishna have been translated from Odiya by the late poet himself, have been excerpted from his full length translation. Click here to read.
Bijoya Doushumi, a poem on the last day of Durga Puja, by the famous poet, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, has been translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.
A Clean Start: Suzanne Kamata tells us how the Japanese usher in a new year. Click here to read.
Shanghai in Jakarta: Eshana Sarah Singh takes us to Chinese New Year celebrations in Djakarta. Click here to read.
Cherry Blossom Forecast: Suzanne Kamata brings the Japanese ritual of cherry blossom viewing to our pages with her camera and words. Clickhere to read.
Pohela Boisakh: A Cultural Fiesta: Sohana Manzoor shares the Bengali New Year celebrations in Bangladesh with interesting history and traditions that mingle beyond the borders. Clickhere to read.
The New Year’s Boon: Devraj Singh gives a glimpse into the projection of a new normal created by God. Click here to read.
A Musical Soiree: Snigdha Agrawal recalls how their family celebrated Tagore’s birth anniversary. Click here to read.
An Alien on the Altar! Snigdha Agrawal writes of how a dog and lizard add zest to Janmashtami (Krishna’s birthday) festivities with a dollop of humour. Click here to read
Memories of Durga Puja : Fakrul Alam recalls the festivities of Durga Puja in Dhaka during his childhood. Click hereto read.
KL Twin Towers near Kolkata?: Devraj Singh Kalsi visits the colours of a marquee hosting the Durga Puja season with its spirit of inclusivity. Click here to read.
Hold the roast turkey please Santa: Celebrating the festive season off-season with Keith Lyons from New Zealand, where summer solstice and Christmas fall around the same time. Click here to read.
Odbayar Dorj writes of celebrating the start of the new school year in Mongolia and of their festivals around teaching and learning. Click here to read.
Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives a story set in a village in Andhra Pradesh. Clickhere to read.
Feature
A conversation withAmina Rahman, owner of Bookworm Bookshop, Dhaka, about her journey from the corporate world to the making of her bookstore with a focus on community building. Clickhereto read.
The idea of spring heralds hope even when it’s deep winter. The colours of spring bring variety along with an assurance of contentment and peace. While wars and climate disasters rage around the world, peace can be found in places like the cloistered walls of Sistine Chapel where conflicts exist only in art. Sometimes, we get a glimpse of peace within ourselves as we gaze at the snowy splendour of Himalayas and sometimes, in smaller things… like a vernal flower or the smile of a young child. Inner peace can at times lead to great art forms as can conflicts where people react with the power of words or visual art. But perhaps, what is most important is the moment of quietness that helps us get in touch with that inner voice giving out words that can change lives. Can written words inspire change?
Our featured bookstore’s owner from Bangladesh, Amina Rahman, thinks it can. Rahman of Bookworm, has a unique perspective for she claims, “A lot of people mistake success with earning huge profits… I get fulfilment out of other things –- community health and happiness and… just interaction.” She provides books from across the world and more while trying to create an oasis of quietude in the busy city of Dhaka. It was wonderful listening to her views — they sounded almost utopian… and perhaps, therefore, so much more in synch with the ideas we host in these pages.
Our content this month are like the colours of the rainbow — varied and from many countries. They ring out in different colours and tones, capturing the multiplicity of human existence. The translations start with Professor Fakrul Alam’s transcreation of Nazrul’s Bengali lyrics in quest of the intangible. Isa Kamari translates four of his own Malay poems on spiritual quest, while from Balochi, Fazal Baloch bring us Munir Momin’s esoteric verses in English. Snehprava Das’s translation of Rohini K.Mukherjee poetry from Odia and S.Ramakrishnan’s story translated from Tamil by B.Chandramouli also have the same transcendental notes. Tagore’s playful poem on winter (Sheeth) mingles a bit for spring, the season welcomed by all creatures great and small.
We have good news to share —Borderless Journal has had the privilege of being listed on Duotrope – which means more readers and writers for us. We are hugely grateful to all our readers and contributors without who we would not have a journal. Thanks to our wonderful team, especially Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork.
Hope you have a wonderful month as we move towards the end of this year.
Several years ago, I published a short book, A Girls’ Guide to the Islands (Gemma Open Door, 2017) about traveling amongst the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea with my daughter, who is deaf and uses a wheelchair. One of the islands that we visited was Naoshima, the site of several art museums, including the Chichu Art Museum, which houses five paintings from Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series. In addition to writing about our responses to the various artworks, I touched upon the difficulties and differences in traveling with a wheelchair user. For one thing, the ferry which conveyed us from Takamatsu City to the island, did not have an elevator to the upper decks. While others got out of their vehicles to take in the scenery from above decks, my daughter and I spent the crossing in my car.
Shortly after this trip, I received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation for a longer book about traveling with my daughter, which became the award-winning Squeaky Wheels: Travels with My Daughter by Train, Plane, Metro, Tuk-tuk, and Wheelchair(Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2019). A slightly different variation of our trip to Naoshima appears in that book.
Although I loved our time on the island, and had not yet visited all the museums and installations, I had not been back since that trip with my daughter. I finally had a chance to revisit last month when I learned that the couple who had administered the grant that had made my book possible would be visiting Naoshima. I arranged to meet with them on my way back from Kyoto, where I was going to attend a book launch. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be going with my daughter this time. She is now an adult living in Osaka, and it takes a bit of effort to coordinate our schedules. Nevertheless, I figured I could scout out the situation before planning our next mother-daughter adventure.
Although on previous visits, I had taken a ferry from Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku, this time I took the shinkansen, Japan’s high speed bullet train, from Kyoto to Okayama, where I spent the night in a hotel. The next morning, I easily found the stop for the bus bound for the ferry terminal. Almost everyone in the queue was foreign. As far as I could tell, most of them were from Europe.
No doubt some had timed their visit with the Setouchi Trienalle, an art festival which takes place mainly in the ports and amongst eleven islands every three years. Japan, in general, has seen a huge surge in tourism over recent years due to the weak yen and governmental efforts to promote inbound tourism. While this has been good for Japan’s economy, it has driven prices up for local residents. It also means that public transportation is often crowded.
When we arrived at the ferry terminal, I purchased my ticket and joined the tail end of a very long line. Luckily, I was able to board the ferry and find a seat. I was pleasantly surprised to find the ferry had been upgraded since my last visit. Not only was it appointed with plush seats facing the water, but also there was now an elevator!
About twenty minutes later, we arrived at Minoura Port. Armies of English-speaking guides were readily available. I quickly found my way to the bus stop and onto the bus that would take me to the recently opened Naoshima New Museum of Art. I had just enough time before meeting my benefactors to check it out and have lunch.
The inaugural exhibition featured the work of twelve artists and groups, including Takashi Murakami, who has achieved worldwide fame. His cartoonish characters appear on coveted Louis Vuitton bags. He also designed a special shirt, printed with cherry blossoms, for fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers. His work on display, a 13-meter-wide painting, is modeled after a 17th century folding screen titled Scenes In and Around Kyoto by Iwasa Matabei. Murakami’s rendition portrays scenes of everyday life in early modern Kyoto. But look closely, and you will find some of his iconic original characters!
Another impressive exhibit, Head On, by Cai Guo-Qiang, features lifelike wolves running toward and colliding with a glass wall. According to the exhibit brochure, the wall “symbolizes the intangible yet deeply felt ideological and cultural divisions between people and communities.”
After going through the exhibits, and vowing to return with my daughter, I popped into the museum café for a quick lunch. The dining area was in open air, with a view of the sea and the islands beyond. I ordered pumpkin toast, perhaps Naoshima’s answer to America’s ubiquitous avocado toast, and a nod to the famous Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculptures which grace the island.
Finally, I took another bus and went to meet my friends. They are no longer awarding grants to parent artists, having shifted their focus to indigenous groups, however, I will remain forever grateful for their support. We met and had a drink near the Benesse House Park, just outside the Terrace, where my daughter and I had dined several years ago. Then it was time for me to head to the ferry terminal and back to Takamatsu, where I would catch a bus. I happened to cross at sunset – a final blast of beauty before returning home.
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Art by Henry Tayali(1943-1987). From Public Domain
Let us imagine a world where wars have been outlawed and there is only peace. Is that even possible outside of John Lennon’s song? While John Gray, a modern-day thinker, propounds human nature cannot change despite technological advancements, one has to only imagine how a cave dweller would have told his family flying to the moon was an impossibility. And yet, it has been proven a reality and now, we are thinking living in outer space, though currently it is only the forte of a few elitists and astronomers. Maybe, it will become an accessible reality as shown in books by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke or shows like Star Trek and Star Wars. Perhaps, it’s only dreamers or ideators pursuing unreal hopes and urges who often become the change makers, the people that make humanity move forward. In Borderless, we merely gather your dreams and present them to the world. That is why we love to celebrate writers from across all languages and cultures with translations and writings that turn current norms topsy turvy. We feature a number of such ideators in this issue.
Nazrul in his times, would have been one such ideator, which is why we carry a song by him translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. And yet before him was Tagore — this time we carry a translation of an unusual poem about happiness. From current times, we present to you a poet — perhaps the greatest Malay writer in Singapore — Isa Kamari. He has translated his longing for changes into his poems. His novels and stories express the same longing as he shares in The Lost Mantras, his self-translated poems that explore adapting old to new. We will be bringing these out over a period of time. We also have poems by Hrushikesh Mallick translated from Odia by Snehprava Das and a poignant story by Sharaf Shad translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch.
Book reviews homes an indepth introduction by Somdatta Mandal to Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi. We have a discussion by Meenakshi Malhotra on Contours of Him: Poems, edited and introduced by Malaysian academic, Malachi Edwin Vethamani, in which she concludes, “that if femininity is a construct, so is masculinity.” Overriding human constructs are journeys made by migrants. Rupak Shreshta has introduced us to immigrant Sangita Swechcha’s Rose’s Odyssey: Tales of Love and Loss, translated from Nepali by Jayant Sharma. Bhaskar Parichha winds up this section with his exploration of Kalpana Karunakaran’s A Woman of No Consequence: Memory, Letters and Resistance in Madras. He tells us: “A Woman of No Consequence restores dignity to what is often dismissed as ordinary. It chronicles the spiritual and intellectual evolution of a woman who sought transcendence within the rhythms of domestic life, turning the everyday into a site of resistance and renewal.” Again, by the sound of it a book that redefines the idea that housework is mundane and gives dignity to women and the task at hand.
We wind up the October issue hoping for changes that will lead to a happier existence, helping us all connect with the commonality of emotions, overriding borders that hurt humanity, other species and the Earth.
Huge thanks to our fabulous team, especially Sohana Manzoor for her inimitable artwork. We would all love to congratulate Hughes for his plays that ran houseful in Swansea. And heartfelt thanks to all our wonderful contributors, without who this issue would not have been possible, and to our readers, who make it worth our while, to write and publish.
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