Tag: Suzanne Kamata

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Editorial

Can Love Change the World?

The night has nearly come to an end.
The old year is almost past.
Under this dust, it will lay down
Its worn-out life at last.
Whether friend or foe,      wherever you go,
Old wrongs cast
Away. On this auspicious day,
Old grievances shed as the old year parts.

— Nobo Borshe or on New Year by Tagore
Art by Sohana Manzoor

Mid-April, Thailand celebrates Songkran and Cambodia, Thingyan — water festivals like Holi. These coincide with the celebration of multiple New Years across Asia. Sikhs celebrate Baisakhi. Kerala celebrates Bishu and Tamil Nadu, Puthandu. Nepal celebrates Nava Varsha and Bengal Nobo Borsho or Poila Boisakh. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the Bengali New Year in spirit asks us to dispense with our past angst and open our hearts to the new day — perhaps an attitude that might bring in changes that are so needed in a world torn with conflicts, hatred and anger. The poet goes on to say, “I want to tie all lives with love” but do we do that in our lives? Can we? Masud Khan’s poems on love translated by Professor Fakrul Alam explore this from a modern context. From Korea, Ihlwha Choi tells us in his translation, “Loving birds is like loving stars”. But the translation that really dwells on love bringing in changes is Nabendu Ghosh’s ‘Gandhiji’, translated by Ratnottama Sengupta, his daughter. The short story by Ghosh highlights the transformation of a murderous villain to a defender of a victim of communal violence, towering above divides drawn by politics of religion.

Another daughter who has been translating her father’s works is Amna Ali, daughter of award-winning Punjabi writer, Nadir Ali. In ‘Khaira, the Blind‘, the father-daughter duo have brought to Anglophone readers a lighter narrative highlighting the erasure of divides and inclusivity. A folktale from Balochistan, translated by Fazal Baloch, echoes in the footsteps of ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ — a story that can found in the Andersen’s Fairy Tales published in the nineteenth century. I wonder which narrative had come first? And how did it cross cultures retaining the original ideas and yet giving it a local colour? Was it with traders or immigrants?

That such narratives or thoughts are a global phenomenon is brought to the fore by a conversation between Keith Lyons and Asian Australian poet Adam Aitken. Aitken has discussed his cross-cultural identity, the challenges of travel, writing, and belonging. Belonging is perhaps also associated with acceptance. How much do we accept a person, a writer or his works? How much do we empathise with it — is that what makes for popularity?

Cross cultural interactions are always interesting as Rhys Hughes tells us in his essay titled ‘My Love for RK Narayan’. He writes: “Narayan is able to do two contradictory things simultaneously, namely (1) show that we are all the same throughout the world, and (2) show how cultures and people around the world differ from each other.” The underlying emotions that tie us together in a bond of empathy and commonality are compassion and love, something that many great writers have found it necessary to emphasise.

Mitra Phukan’s What Will People say?: A Novel is built around such feelings of love, compassion and patience that can gently change narrow norms which draw terrifying borders of hate and unacceptance. We carry an excerpt this time from her ‘Prologue’. Somdatta Mandal has reviewed Chitra Banerjee Divakurni’s latest , Independence. Starting from around the time of the Indian Independence too is Song of the Golden Sparrow – A Novel History of Free India by Nilanjan P. Choudhary, which has been discussed by Rakhi Dalal. The Partition seems to colour narratives often as does the Holocaust. Sometimes, one wonders if humanity will ever get over the negative emotions set into play in the last century.

Closer to our times, when mingling of diverse cultures is becoming more acceptable in arts, Basudhara Roy introduces us to Bina Sarkar Ellias’s Ukiyo-e Days…Haiku Moments, a book that links poetry to a Japanese art-form. While a non-fiction that highlights the suffering of workers by enforcing unacceptable work ethics, Japanese Management, Indian Resistance: The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers by Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar has been reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha. The narrative, he writes, “tells the story of the biggest car manufacturer in India through the voices of the workers, interviewed over three years. They give us an understanding that the Maruti Suzuki revolution wasn’t the unmitigated success it was touted to be when they tell us about their resistance to being turned into robots by uncompromising management.” That lack of human touch creates distress in people’s hearts, even if we have an efficient system of management and mass production is well elucidated in the review.

To lighten the mood, we have humour in verses from Rhys Hughes and Richard Stevenson’s tongue-in-cheek dino poems. Michael Burch’s poetry explores nuances of love and, yet, changes wrought in love has become the subject of poetry by Malachi Edwin Vethamani and Anasuya Bhar with more wistful lines by George Freek highlighting evanescence.  Sutputra Radheye and Jim Landwehr bring darker nuances into poetry while Scott Thomas Outlar mingles nature with philosophical meanderings. We have more poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Abdul Jamil Urfi and many more exploring various facets of changes in our lives.

These changes are reflected in our musings too. Sengupta has written on how change is wrought on a murderous villain by the charisma of Gandhi in her father’s fiction, as well as this world leader’s impact on Ghosh and her. Devraj Singh Kalsi addresses food fads with a pinch of sarcasm. From Japan, Suzanne Kamata has written of a little island with Greek influences, a result of cultural ties brought in by the emperor Hirohito. Ravi Shankar takes us to Pokhara, Nepal, and Meredith Stephen expresses surprise on meeting a shipload of people from Colorado in the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere while on her sailing adventures with beautiful photographs. Stories by moderns reflect diverse nuances depicting change. While Brindley Hallam Dennis writes of the passing of an era, PG Thomas integrates the past into the present to reflect how they have a symbiotic structure in the scheme of creating or recreating natural movements through changes wrought over time in his story. Paul Mirabile explores the darker recesses of the human existence in his fiction. As if in continuation, the excerpt from Rhys Hughes’ The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm seems to step out of darker facets of humanity with a soupçon of wit at its best.

To create a world that endures, one looks for values that create inclusivity as reflected in these lines from Charles Chaplin’s My Autobiography, “Mother illuminated to me the kindliest light this world has ever known, which has endowed literature and the theatre with their greatest themes: love, pity and humanity.” This quote starts off a wonderful essay from film-buff Nirupama Kotru. Her narrative carries the tenor of Chaplin’s ‘themes’ to highlight not only her visit to the actor’s last home in Switzerland but also glances at his philosophy and his contributions to cinema across borders.

Our issue rotates around changes and the need for love and compassion to rise in a choral crescendo whirling with the voices of Tagore, Charles Chaplin as well as that of twenty-first century writers. Perhaps this new year, we can move towards a world – at least an imagined world — where love will wipe away weapons and war, where love will take us towards a future filled with the acceptance of myriad colours, where events like the Partition and the Holocaust will be history, just like dinosaurs.

Huge thanks to all our readers and contributors, some of whom may not have been mentioned here but are an integral and necessary part of the issue. Do pause by our April edition. I would also like to give my thanks to our indefatigable team whose efforts breathe life into our journal every month. Sohana Manzoor needs a special mention for her lovely artwork.

Thank you all and wish you a wonderful April.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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Read reviews and learn more about Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World by clicking here

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Notes from Japan

Olives and Art in the Inland Sea

Photographs and narrative by Suzanne Kamata

Sodoshima

My daughter Lilia, my friend Wendy, and I set out on a Saturday morning for Shodoshima. It’s the largest island in the Inland Sea, home to about thirty thousand people, many of them aging. My mother-in-law went there years before on a group tour. She brought back olive oil as a souvenir. I am intrigued by the idea of a Japanese island with a Greek flavour. Because of its relatively large size and population, and its popularity with tour groups, I figure it would be somewhat accessible for my daughter, who uses a wheelchair and is deaf.

On the island, we stop at a tourist center for maps. I drive through the town. Some of the streetlights are shaded by green or yellow globes. Maybe they are supposed to look like olives. The road follows the seashore. Off the coast we see fishing boats. Here and there are small clusters of olive trees, the branches beaded with black olives. We finally come across a sign advertising the Olive Garden. I pull over and park in a handicapped parking space. A restaurant is up the hill.

“Shall we go eat lunch?” I ask.

“Yes,” Lilia nods. The hill is steep, but there are no steps. Lilia gets into her wheelchair and I begin to push her up the slope. From the restaurant, the view of the sea is marvelous. I smell olive oil. Wendy and I order spaghetti, which comes with bread. Lilia orders Japanese noodles, which are served with tempura fried shrimp and vegetables. When the food arrives, the server tells us how to eat it. “You should drizzle olive oil on the tempura,” she says. “You should put some olive oil and herbed salt in a small dish and dip your bread in it.”

According to a brochure, locals make olive lip gloss, olive soap, olive wax, olive hand cream, and olive-oil smoothies. You can even take classes in using olives to dye fabric. Every October the island holds an Olive Harvest Festival. People come to pick olives. They enter the “Healthy Olive Cooking Recipe Contest.” I imagine that the people of Shodoshima spend a lot of time thinking about new ways to use the olive oil that they produce. The islanders have been growing olives since 1908, and from the taste of our lunch, it’s clear that they have gotten quite good at it.

“Shall we find the Greek windmill?” I ask after we’ve eaten. I had caught a glimpse of it on our way up the hill. It’s actually a replica of the white windmills often seen on postcards from Mykonos.

Olive Park is just down the road. According to the brochure, the chalk- white building is “an exact replica” of an ancient Greek building. The brochure continues, “You may feel as if you are standing on an island in the Aegean Sea.” I’m surrounded by people speaking Japanese. Somehow, I still feel as if I am on an island in the Inland Sea. I really want to see the Greek windmill, but it’s down another hill.

“I don’t care if I see it,” Wendy says. “I can stay here with Lilia while you go.”

I ask Lilia if she wants to see the windmill. “Yes!” she replies.

Wendy and I take turns backing the wheelchair down the hill. It’s laborious, and maybe dangerous. If we lose control, we could all be injured. At last, we enter an olive grove and get close to the white windmill, which was built to commemorate the friendship between Shodoshima and Milos Island in Greece. Emperor Hirohito planted an olive tree near the windmill. As we walk back to the main building, I pluck an olive from a branch. I pop it into my mouth. It’s bitter and tough-skinned. I spit out the black skin. So much for raw olives.

We enter the small museum. A large statue of Athena greets us. Some brooms are on sale. They’re imitations of brooms in a movie about Kiki, a young witch who runs a delivery service, which has recently been filmed on the island. Lilia wants to watch the film about olive cultivation on the island. While she watches, I look at the exhibits. There are photos of Japanese women in kimonos covered with aprons, pressing olives. “They don’t look happy,” Wendy says. “It looks like hard work,” I add. “And in those clothes!”

“Anger at the Bottom,” an art installation by Takeshi Kitano, is in another small port town called Sakate. In Japan, the artist is a famous comedian called Beat Takeshi who often appears on TV. In the West, he is considered a serious actor, writer, and artist. He created this work of art with another artist, Kenji Yanobe. At first glance, this installation is a well. On the hour, however, a monster rises out like a jack-in-the-box. Water spews from its mouth. I think that Lilia would enjoy seeing this. She loves stories about ghosts and monsters.

On the way, we pass a soy sauce factory, and a small gift shop advertising soy sauce–flavored ice cream. Yuck. But Lilia signs that she wants ice cream. “Later,” I sign back, determined to see the monster rise from the well. It’s almost three o’clock. If we’re late, we’ll have to wait another hour to see the beast rise up. We arrive at the port. Another sculpture, which resembles a silver star, faces the harbor. Some elderly men sit idly in front of a nearby building. I decide to ask one of them where the installation is located. I show him the photo I had printed from the Internet. “Where is this?” He points toward some houses. People probably ask him all the time.

“Is it within walking distance?”

“Yes, but there are few tourists now so you would be able to park closer.” He nods at the wheelchair. “It would be better to drive.”

Wendy has to go back to Takamatsu. We decide that I will drop her off at the nearest ferry terminal and then Lilia and I will come back to see the monster. After that, we’ll go farther north to our hotel. I notice that there are many signs in English directing visitors to “Anger at the Bottom.” I didn’t really need to ask how to get there. I follow the signs down a narrow road. We pass a persimmon tree heavy with fruit. There’s another slight incline. I find a parking area near the well. The monster is already out of the well, but it isn’t moving.

Lilia gets into her wheelchair and I begin pushing her up the hill. She could help me by gripping the wheels and moving them forward. She doesn’t. She sits with her hands on her lap on top of her sketchbook. “Go, Mama, go!” she says. I huff and puff. “What do you mean? Why aren’t you helping?” Surprised at my reaction, she grabs onto the wheels and pulls.

At the well, the monster is still. This is the off- season. As the man at the harbour said, there aren’t many tourists this time of year. Perhaps the monster doesn’t rise and spit out water on the hour in this season. Maybe it stays in place. The monster’s red eyes seem to stare at the sea. I detect a yearning in its expression. Its lips are pressed together. No teeth are visible. The neighbourhood is quiet. The only sounds are the flapping of a crow’s wings and the twitter of an invisible bird. A slight breeze stirs the goldenrods. I wait while Lilia sketches the monster. I’m disappointed that she couldn’t see it in motion. Since it isn’t moving, however, she takes her time drawing it. When she finishes, she shows me her work. “Good job,” I say. “Now how about some soy sauce–flavoured ice cream?”

I read that the sunset somewhere on Shodoshima has been rated one of Japan’s hundred best sunsets. Since our hotel room has a view of the sea, I’m eager to check in before sundown so we can watch. I drive along twisty mountain roads, past a quarry, and past stone sculptures, down to another tiny port town in a secluded cove. I check us in to the hotel. “You can borrow DVDs,” the desk clerk says. “Or borrow books.” The lounge is filled with comfortable white leather armchairs. Some books in English are on a shelf, as well as many books in Japanese. I grab a DVD of a movie called 24 Eyes which is based on a novel written by Sakae Tsuboi, a famous Japanese writer who was born in Shodoshima. From our eighth-floor room, we can look out upon the sea from the bathtub. However, I discover that a mountain is blocking our view of the sunset.

We have dinner in the restaurant on the first floor. All the food is fresh and healthy – fish, followed by peeled grapes and slices of persimmon. After a while, we go back to our room and watch the movie. The plot of 24 Eyes is about a young teacher from the larger island of Shikoku who gets a job on Shodoshima in the 1920s. Most people on the island were poor. They wore kimonos. The teacher wore Western clothes and rode a bicycle, which shocked everyone on the island. Later, of course, everyone grew to love the teacher.

In the movie, there is a lot of singing. The children sing about dragonflies and crows. There is also a lot of crying. One girl has to give up her dream of going to music school because her parents are against it. Another gets sick and dies. Three boys go off to war. Many miserable things happen. Sometimes there is singing and crying at the same time. Lilia cries, too. I bring her tissues and give her a hug.

The next morning, we set out for The Movie Village on the southern coast of the island. Many of the tourists at the theme park are much older than us. I spot a group of senior citizens communicating in sign language. One of them notices that I am signing to Lilia and approaches us. “Where are you from?” she asks in sign language.

“Tokushima,” Lilia signs back.

The woman signs that she is from Osaka. “Is that your mother?” She gestures to me. I’m pleased. We look nothing alike. When we are in America, most people think she is adopted.

“Yes,” Lilia replies. She draws her hand down the middle of her face. “I am half.”

“It’s the first time I’ve met an American,” the woman signs.

We look at the old-fashioned wooden buildings. Kimonos are hung on bamboo poles, as if someone has just finished the laundry. Shops sell vintage toys and candies. Visitors try to walk on bamboo stilts or roll a hoop with a stick.

We come to a restaurant with painted pictures of Japanese movie stars propped in front. At the entrance is a photo of the food served. The restaurant’s theme is Shōwa- era school lunch. I ate Japanese school lunches when I first came to Japan. I taught English at junior high schools, and I ate with the students. I don’t feel nostalgic for those lunches, but Lilia wants to eat here. We go inside. Posters from different movies filmed on Shodoshima cover the walls. Some clothes worn in one movie are on display in a corner. We order school lunch. It’s served on a metal tray, just as I remember. There is a bowl of watery curry, a big white roll sprinkled with sugar, and a tangerine. Lilia gets milk in a bottle. I ask for the milk mixed with coffee, also served in a bottle. To tell the truth, it isn’t that great. I’m glad that the food in Japan has gotten better.

Lilia wants to visit the monkey park. She also wants to check out the ravine with a ropeway going across it. Sadly, we don’t have enough time. But now that she knows this island is here, she can return. We drive along the coast, back to the ferry port. The sea glistens in the late afternoon sun. Sometimes it seems as if all the beauty of the world is within our reach.

Lilia in Sodoshima

Suzanne Kamata was 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

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

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Contents

Borderless, March 2023

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Imagine… Click here to read.

Translations

A translation from Nabendu Ghosh’s autobiography, Eka Naukar Jatri (Journey of a Lonesome Boat), translated by Dipankar Ghosh, from Bengali post scripted by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Uehara by Kamaleswar Barua has been translated from Assamese and introduced by Bikash K. Bhattacharya. Click here to read.

Kurigram by Masud Khan has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam from Bangla. Click here to read.

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

Tagore’s Borondala (Basket of Offerings) has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty from Bengali. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Michael R Burch, Kirpal Singh, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Amit Parmessur, Carl Scharwath, Isha Sharma, Gale Acuff, Anannya Dasgupta, Vaishnavi Saritha, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Pragya Bajpai, George Freek, Sanket Mhatre, Ron Pickett, Asad Latif, Rhys Hughes

Poets, Poetry and Rhys Hughes

In Indian Pale Ale, Rhys Hughes experiments with words and brews. Click here to read.

Conversation

Being fascinated with the human condition and being vulnerable on the page are the two key elements in the writing of fiction, author and poet Heidi North tells Keith Lyons in a candid conversation. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Mother Teresa & MF Hussian: Touching Lives

Prithvijeet Sinha muses on how Mother Teresa’s painting by MF Hussain impacted his life. Click here to read.

The Night Shift to Nouméa

Meredith Stephens writes of her sailing adventures to Nouméa. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Simian Surprises, Devraj Singh Kalsi describes monkey antics. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Multicultural Curry, Suzanne Kamata reflects on mingling of various cultures in her home in Japan and the acceptance it finds in young hearts. Click here to read.

Essays

Which way, wanderer? Lyric or screenplay…

Ratnottama Sengupta explores the poetry in lyrics of Bollywood songs, discussing the Sahityotsav (Literary Festival) hosted by the Sahitya Akademi. Click here to read.

One Happy Island

Ravi Shankar takes us to Aruba, a Dutch colony, with photographs and text. Click here to read.

Cadences in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Paul Mirabile explores the stylistic nuances in this classic by James Joyce. Click here to read.

Stories

Heafed

Brindley Hallam Dennis plays with mindsets. Click here to read.

Busun

A Jessie Michael narrates a moving saga of displacement and reservations. Click here to read.

A Wooden Smile

Shubhangi gives us poignant story about a young girl forced to step into the adult world. Click here to read.

The Infallible Business

Sangeetha G tells a story set in a post-pandemic scenario. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Robin S. Ngangom’s My Invented Land: New and Selected Poems. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Vikas Prakash Joshi’s My Name is Cinnamon. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Aruna Chakravarti reviews Bornali Datta’s In A Better Place: A Doctor’s Journey. Click here to read.

Somdatta Mandal reviews Baba Padmanji’s Yamuna’s Journey, translated from Marathi by Deepra Dandekar. Click here to read.

Basudhara Roy reviews Robin Ngangom’s My Invented Land: New and Selected Poems. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews S.Irfan Habib’s Maulana Azad – A Life. 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 Kindle Amazon International

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Editorial

Imagine…

Art by Pragya Bajpai

Imagine a world without wars, without divisions, where art forms flow into each other and we live by the African concept of Ubuntu — I am because you are’ — sounds idyllic. But this is the month of March, of poetry, of getting in touch with the Dionysian elements in ourselves. And as we have said earlier in the introduction of Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World, what could be a better spot to let loose this insanity of utopian dreams than Borderless Journal!

Having completed three years of our Earthly existence on the 14th of March, we celebrate this month with poetry and writing that crosses boundaries — about films, literature and more. This month in the Festival of Letters or Sahityaotsav 2023, organised by the Sahitya Akademi, films were discussed in conjunction with literature. Ratnottama Sengupta, who attended and participated in a number of these sessions, has given us an essay to show how deep run the lyrics of Bollywood films, where her father, Nabendu Ghosh, scripted legends. It is Ghosh’s birth month too and we carry a translation from his Bengali autobiography which reflects how businessmen drew borders on what sells… After reading the excerpt from Nabendu’s narrative translated by Dipankar Ghosh and post-scripted by Sengupta, one wonders if such lines should ever have been drawn?

Questioning borders of a different kind, we have another piece of a real-life narrative on a Japanese Soldier, Uehara. Written by an Assamese writer called Kamaleswar Barua, it has been translated and introduced by Bikash K. Bhattacharya. The story focusses on a soldier’s narrative at his death bed in an alien land. We are left wondering how his need for love and a home is any different from that of any one of ours? Who are the enemies — the soldiers who die away from their homes? What are wars about? Can people live in peace? They seemed to do so in Kurigram, a land that has faded as suggests the poem by Masud Khan, brought to us in translation from Bangla by Professor Fakrul Alam, though in reality, the area exists. Perhaps, it has changed… as does wood exposed to a bonfire, which has been the subject of a self-translated Korean poem by Ihlwha Choi. Tagore’s poem, Borondala translated as ‘Basket of Offerings’, has the last say: “Just as the stars glimmer / With light in the dark night, / A spark awakens within/ My body. / This luminosity illuminates / All my work.” And perhaps, it is this luminosity that will also help us find our ideal world and move towards it, at least with words.

This is the poetry month, and we celebrate poetry in different ways. We have an interview with poet Heidi North by Keith Lyons.  She has shared a poem that as Bijan Najdi said makes one “feel a burning sensation in …[the]… fingertips without touching the fire”. It flows with some home truths put forward with poignancy. We have poetry by Michael R Burch, Kirpal Singh, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Amit Parmessur, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, George Freek, Sanket Mhatre, Asad Latif and Rhys Hughes. While Burch celebrates spring in his poetry, Parmessur explores history and Hughes evokes laughter as usual which spills into his column on Indian Pale Ale. Devraj Singh Kalsi has written of simian surprises he has had — and, sadly for him, our reaction is to laugh at his woes. Meredith Stephens takes us on a sailing adventure to Nouméa and Ravi Shankar explores Aruba with photographs and words. Suzanne Kamata shows how Japanese curry can actually be a multicultural binder. Prithvijeet Sinha links the legends of artist MF Hussain and Mother Teresa while Paul Mirabile explores the stylistic marvels of James Joyce in his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a very literary piece.

We have a book review by Aruna Chakravarti of Bornali Datta’s In A Better Place: A Doctor’s Journey, a book that is set amidst immigrants and takes up certain social issues. Baba Padmanji’s Yamuna’s Journey, translated from Marathi by Deepra Dandekar, one of the oldest Indian novels has been discussed by Somdatta Mandal.  Bhaskar Parichha has told us about S.Irfan Habib’s Maulana Azad – A Life. Basudhara Roy has brought out the simplicity and elegance of Robin Ngangom’s My Invented Land: New and Selected Poems. He writes in the title poem that his home “has no boundaries. / At cockcrow one day it found itself/ inside a country to its west,/ (on rainy days it dreams looking east/ when its seditionists fight to liberate it from truth.)”. We also carry an excerpt from his book. Stories by Jessie Michael, Brindley Hallam Dennis, Sangeetha G and Shubhangi bring flavours of diversity in this issue.

Our journey has been a short one — three years is a short span. But, with goodwill from all our readers and contributors, we are starting to crawl towards adulthood. I thank you all as caregivers of Borderless Journal as I do my fabulous team and the artists who leave me astounded at their ability to paint and write — Sohana Manzoor, Gita Vishwanath and Pragya Bajpai.

Thank you all.

Looking forward to the next year, I invite you to savour Borderless Journal, March 2023, where more than the treasures mentioned here lie concealed.

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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

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

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Notes from Japan

Multicultural Curry

Courtesy: Creative Commons

By Suzanne Kamata

When my son brought home a memo from school calling for families to host students from Australia, I hesitated to sign up. During college, I’d done a homestay in Avignon, because I was hoping to improve my foreign language skills and experience authentic French family life. Likewise, the visiting students were probably eager to immerse themselves in Japanese culture.

Our family, however, is hardly typical. First, there are the obvious differences. I’m an American, and my husband is Japanese, a relatively unusual combination in Japan. And although I’ve encountered more male nursery school teachers here than in my native country, household duties in Japan tend to be divided according to gender. I was reminded of this when, after my daughter told her teacher about the delicious risotto her father had prepared the night before, she was corrected: “You mean your mother made it.”

I worried about food, too. As an exchange student, I was eager to indulge in the pates, breads and cheeses that were famous in France. A visitor to our house, however, might be culturally confused at breakfast. The morning menu ranges from spaghetti pepperoncino to fried rice and Chinese pot-stickers. Occasionally we start the day with blueberry pie.

Language was another matter. In our family, we communicate in a combination of Japanese, English, and Japanese Sign Language. What would a teenager from Down Under make of our cultural mishmash?

In spite of my reservations, I volunteered to host a student. It would be fun for my own children, I thought, to meet and someone from another country.

A few weeks later, we welcomed Nikki. She told us that as part of a dance troupe, she’d traveled to other countries, and stayed with many different families. She settled easily into our home and quickly made friends with my daughter, who communicates primarily in Japanese Sign Language.

“How old are you?” My daughter wrote in Japanese.

Like many Australian students, Nikki had studied some basic Japanese at her junior high school back home. “Fourteen,” she wrote back.

“Do you like bananas?” my daughter asked via Japanese Sign Language.

I interpreted, and taught Nikki how to reply.

“Yes!” she signed.

As the visit wore on, I was reminded that Japanese culture is now a part of world culture. The video games Nikki played with our children were the ones she played at home. At dinner, we served Japanese-style curry and rice, which she told us she enjoys on the Gold Coast as well. And she related that her little brother was a fan of Japanese comics.

At the end of Nikki’s stay, we sent her off with an American-style hug, a copy of a popular manga, a few Japanese signs, and some warm memories of multicultural Japan.

Suzanne Kamata was 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

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

Categories
celebrations

Borderless Birthday Bonanza

Figments caught straying in whispers of a dream,
Weave together till they form a visible stream,
Filling a void with voices that sing,
With freedom and impunity ring,
Giving credence to a distant, imagined realm.

— Introduction, Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World

As we complete three years of our virtual existence in clouds, connecting, collecting and curating words of ideators, we step into our fourth year with the pleasurable experience of being in bookshops in hardcopy too. Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World, our first hardcopy anthology, takes us into the realm of real books which have evolved over eons in history. This anthology connects us to those who hesitate to step into the virtual world created by technology. And there are many such people – as ingrained in the human heritage is a love for rustling paper and the smell of books. We have had some excellent reviews, praising not just the content but also the production of the book – the cover, the print and the feel. The collection bonds traditional greats with upcoming modern voices. We are grateful to our publisher, Om Books International, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Jyotsna Mehta and their team for giving our book a chance. We do look forward to more anthologies hopefully in the future.

The writings we have collected over the last three years are reflective of diverse voices— some in concurrence with our thought processes and some in discussion or even in divergence. We have a variety of forms — poetry, conversations, fiction and non-fiction. Some are humorous and some serious. We try to move towards creating new trends as reflected in our anthology and our journal. For instance, Monalisa No Longer Smiles starts with an experiment — a limerick was adapted to express the intent of our book and journal; whereas normally this form is used to express light, or even bawdy sentiments. Perhaps, as the limerick says, we will find credence towards a new world, a new thought, a restructuring of jaded systems that cry out for a change.

Borderless Journal did not exist before 2020. Within three years of its existence, our published pieces have found voices in this anthology, in other books, journals and even have been translated to a number of languages. Our own translation section grows stronger by the day supported by translators like Aruna Chakravarti, Fakrul Alam, Radha Chakravarty and Somdatta Mandal. Our interviews and conversations probe to find similarities and divergences in viewpoints. Our stories tell a good tale rather than indulge in stylistic interplay and our poetry is meant to touch hearts, creating a bond between the writers and anglophone readers. What we hope to do is to expose our readers to writing that they can understand. Writers get lost at times with the joy of creating something new or unique and construct an abstraction that can be intimidating for readers. We hope to host writing that is comprehensible, lucid and clear to the lay person.

What we look forward to homing in the coming months is a mingling of different art forms to birth new ideas that will help our species move progressively towards a world in harmony, filled with peace and love, giving credence to voices like that of Tagore, Nazrul or Lennon. “Imagine there’s no heaven…Imagine there’s no countries…no religion, too…Imagine all the people/ Livin’ life in peace…Imagine all the people/ Sharing all the world…” The need to redefine has been felt and as Lennon says in his last paragraph: “You may say I’m a dreamer/ But I’m not the only one/ I hope someday you’ll join us/ And the world will live as one.” With this hope, we continue our journey into another year – a new adventure that will take us to a universe where heaven can be found on Earth, grounded and real, within the human reach and can be shared without war, greed, hatred and anger.

Here, we share with you a few iconic pieces that have found their way to our pages within the last three years.

Poetry

Poems by Arundhathi Subramaniam houses three poems. Click here to read. The following poems from her collection can be found here.

  1. When God is a Traveller (titular poem from her Sahitya Akademi Award winning book)
  2. Eight Poems for Shankuntala
  3. The Fine Art of Ageing

Murmuration by Jared Carter. Click here to read.

Poems by Sukrita Paul Kumar: Poetry on Ukraine. Click here to read.

Arthurian Legends by Michael R Burch. Click here to read.

Conversations

Keith Lyons talks to Jessica Mudditt about her memoir, Our Home in Myanmar, and the current events. Click here to read.

Unveiling Afghanistan: In Conversation with Nazes Afroz, former editor of BBC and translator of a book on Afghanistan which reflects on the present-day crisis. Click here to read.

Professor Anvita Abbi, a Padma Shri, discusses her experience among the indigenous Andamanese and her new book on them, Voices from the Lost Horizon. Click here to read.

In Conversation with Akbar Barakzai, a ‘Part-time Poet’ in Exile: The last interview of Akbar Barakzai where he says, ‘The East and the West are slowly but steadily inching towards each other. Despite enormous odds “the twain” are destined to “meet” and be united to get rid of the geographical lines…’ Click here to read more.

The Making of Historical Fiction: A Conversation with Aruna Chakravarti unfolds the creation of her latest novel, The Mendicant Prince, based on the prince of Bhawal controversy in the first part of the last century. Click here to read. 

Fiction

Half-Sisters: Sohana Manzoor explores the darker regions of human thought with a haunting psychological narrative about familial structures. Click here to read.

Rituals in the Garden: Marcelo Medone discusses motherhood, aging and loss in this poignant flash fiction from Argentina. Click here to read.

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

The American Wonder: Steve Ogah takes us to a village in Nigeria. Click here to read.

Columns

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes: A column by Rhys Hughes which can be fun poetry or prose. Click here to read.

Bhaskar’s Corner: Essays on contemporary life by Bhaskar Parichha. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter: Humour by Devraj Singh Kalsi. Click here to read.

Pandies’ Corner: These narratives highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms, with the support from organisations like Shaktishalini and Pandies. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan by Suzanne Kamata: A column that takes us closer to Japan. Click here to read.

Non- Fiction

Dilip Kumar: Kohinoor-e-Hind: Ratnottama Sengupta recollects the days the great actor sprinted about on the sets of Bombay’s studios …spiced up with fragments from the autobiography of Sengupta’s father, Nabendu Ghosh. Click here to read. 

The Ultimate Genius of Kishore Kumar: Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, an eminent film critic, writes on the legend of Kishore Kumar. Click here to read.

Farewell Keri Hulme: A tribute by Keith Lyons to the first New Zealand Booker Prize winner, Keri Hulme, recalling his non-literary encounters with the sequestered author. Click here to read.

Epaar Bangla, Opaar Bangla:  Bengals of the Mind: Asad Latif explores if homeland is defined by birth. Click here to read.

At Home in the World: Tagore, Gandhi and the Quest for Alternative Masculinities: Meenakshi Malhotra explores the role of masculinity in Nationalism prescribed by Tagore, his niece Sarala Debi, Gandhi and Colonials. Click here to read.

Just a Face on Currency Notes?: Debraj Mookerjee explores Gandhi-ism in contemporary times. Click here to read.

The Idea of India: Bharata Bhagya Bidhata – The Making of a Motherland: Anasuya Bhar explores the history of the National Anthem of India, composed by Tagore in Bengali and translated only by the poet himself and by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.

Translations

Tagore Translations, including translations by Aruna Chakravarti, Fakrul Alam, Somdatta Mandal and Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Nazrul Translations, including Professor Fakrul Alam and Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read.

Gandhi & Robot by Thangjam Ibopishak, translated from the Manipuri by Robin S Ngangom. Click here to read.

Songs of Freedom by Akbar Barakzai, poems translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Give Me A Rag, Please:A short story by Nabendu Ghosh, translated by Ratnottama Sengupta, set in the 1943 Bengal Famine, which reflects on man’s basic needs. Click here to read.

Thanks to our team, contributors and readers for being a part of our journey. Let’s sail onwards…

Painting by Sohana Manzoor

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

Categories
A Special Tribute

Sunflowers of Resilience

Sunflowers by Calude Monet
Sunflowers by Vincent Vangogh
Courtesy: Creative Commons

With resilience, they have withstood what could have become an international disaster for all humankind — an outbreak of a Third World War. The spirit that has resisted the ongoing invasion of Ukraine is admirable. They have stayed strong without bowing, crumbling or annihilating themselves in the wake of an onslaught that hurts humanity across all borders in different degrees and creates a huge population of refugees. We gave voice to one such refugee, Lesya Bakun — not just in our site but also in our first anthology — Monalisa No Longer Smiles: An Anthology of Writings from across the World.

This year, we quest for hope towards peace, a better, more accepting world with poetry on Ukraine. One of the poems here is accompanied by art from Ukrainian artist, Maria Kirichenko. We feature some of the poems gathered on Ukraine over the year.

My friend, Maria Kirichenko by Vineetha Mekkoth. Click here to read.

Poetry by Chad Norman on Ukraine. Click here to read.

Poems by Sukrita Paul Kumar on Ukraine. Click here to read.

Poetry by Scott Thomas Outlar on Ukraine. Click here to read.

Cry of the Sunflower by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

“How Many Times Must the Cannonballs Fly…?” Featuring poetry by Lesya Bakun, Rhys Hughes, Ron Pickett, Michael R Burch, Kirpal Singh, Suzanne Kamata, Mini Babu, Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Sybil Pretious and Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Categories
Contents

Borderless, February 2023

Painting by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

And Wilderness is Paradise Enow…Click here to read.

Conversations

Andrew Quilty, an award winning journalist for his features on Afghanistan, shares beyond his book, August in Kabul: America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban, in a candid conversation. Click here to read.

Abhirup Dhar, a horror writer whose books are being extensively adopted by Bollywood, talks about his journey and paranormal experiences. Click here to read.

Translations

Munshi Premchand’s Balak or the Child has been translated from Hindi by Anurag Sharma. Click here to read.

Atta Shad’s Today’s Child has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Masud Khan’s History has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Ihlwha Choi translates his own poem, Lunch Time, from Korean. Click here to read.

Tagore’s Somudro or Ocean has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Rhys Hughes, Chad Norman, Amit Parmessur, Sister Lou Ella Hickman, Anjali V Raj, Alex Z Salinas, Swati Mazta, Pragya Bajpai, John Grey, Saranyan BV, Dee Allen, Sanjukta Dasgupta, David Francis, Mitra Samal, George Freek, Vineetha Mekkoth, Ron Pickett, Ryan Quinn Flangan, Asad Latif

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

In Climbing Sri Pada, Rhys Hughes takes us on a trek to the hilltop with unusual perceptive remarks which could evoke laughter. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Wanderlust or Congealed Stardust

Aditi Yadav meanders through the human journey and suggests travel as an ultimate panacea. Click here to read.

The Roy Senguptas

Ratnottama Sengupta continues with her own family saga looking back to the last century. Click here to read.

From Gatwick to Kangaroo Island

Meredith Stephens compares her experience of immigration at London airport to the bureaucracy she faces at Kangaroo Island. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Camel Ride in Chandigarh, Devraj Singh Kalsi talks of animal rides with a dollop of humour. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In Sweet Diplomacy, Suzanne Kamata tells us how candies can well save the day in Japan. Click here to read.

Essays

Gandhi in Cinema

Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri explores Gandhi in films and also his views on the celluloid screen. Click here to read.

Where Three Oceans Meet

P Ravi Shankar takes us on a photographic and textual tour of the land’s end of India. Click here to read.

When ‘they’ Danced…

Ratnottama Sengupta discusses the unique Bhooter Naach or the Ghost Dance, in Satyajit Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. Click here to read.

Stories

Between Light and Darkness

Sreelekha Chatterjee tells us a spooky tale of intrigue. Click here to read.

Letting Go

Tasneem Hossian gives a story of what bipolar disorders can do to a relationship. Click here to read.

Is it the End Today?

Anjana Krishnan gives a poignant flash fiction spanning eras. Click here to read.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from Andrew Quilty’s August in Kabul: America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Vinoy Thomas’s Anthill, translated by Nandakumar K. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Sudeshna Guha’s A History of India Through 75 Objects. Click here to read.

Meenakshi Malhotra reviews  Priyadarshini Thakur Khayal’s Padmini of Malwa: The Autobiography of Rani Ruupmati. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Colleen Taylor Sen’s Ashoka and The Maurya Dynasty: The History and Legacy of Ancient India’s Greatest Empire. Click here to read.

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

Categories
Editorial

And Wilderness is Paradise Enow…

Hope in Winter(2020) by Srijani Dutta
“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”

― Omar Khayyám (1048-1131); translation from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald (Rubaiyat, 1859)

I wonder why Khayyam wrote these lines — was it to redefine paradise or just to woo his beloved? I like to imagine it was a bit of both. The need not to look for a paradise after death but to create one on Earth might well make an impact on humankind. Maybe, they would stop warring over an invisible force that they call God or by some other given name, some ‘ism’. Other than tens of thousands dying in natural disasters like the recent earthquake at the border of Turkiye and Syria, many have been killed by wars that continue to perpetrate divides created by human constructs. This month houses the second anniversary of the military junta rule in Myanmar and the first anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian war that continues to decimate people, towns, natural reserves, humanity, economics relentlessly, polluting the environment with weapons of mass destruction, be it bombs or missiles. The more weapons we use, the more we destroy the environment of our own home planet. 

Sometimes, the world cries for a change. It asks to be upended.

We rethink, reinvent to move forward as a species or a single race. We relook at concepts like life and death and the way we run our lives. Redefining paradise or finding paradise on Earth, redefining ‘isms’ we have been living with for the past few hundred years — ‘isms’ that are being used to hurt others of our own species, to create exclusivity and divisions where none should exist — might well be a requisite for the continuance of our race.

Voices of change-pleaders rang out in the last century with visionaries like Tagore, Gandhi, Nazrul, Satyajit Ray urging for a more accepting and less war-bound world. This month, Ratnottama Sengupta has written on Ray’s legendary 1969 film, Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne: “The message he sent out loud and with laughter: ‘When people have palatable food to fill their belly and music to fill their soul, the world will bid goodbye to wars.’” Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri has given an essay on one of the greatest pacifists, Gandhi, and his attitudes to films as well as his depiction in movies. What was amazing is Gandhi condemned films and never saw their worth as a mass media influencer! The other interesting thing is his repeated depiction as an ethereal spirit in recent movies which ask for changes in modern day perceptions and reforms. In fact, both these essays deal with ghosts who come back from the past to urge for changes towards a better future.

Delving deeper into the supernatural is our interviewee, Abhirup Dhar, an upcoming writer whose ghost stories are being adapted by Bollywood. While he does investigative stories linked to supernatural lore, our other interviewee, Andrew Quilty, a renowned journalist who has won encomiums for his coverage on Afghanistan where he spent eight years, shows in his book, August in Kabul: America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban, what clinging to past lores can do to a people, especially women. Where does one strike the balance? We also have an excerpt from his book to give a flavour of his exclusive journalistic coverage on the plight of Afghans as an eyewitness who flew back to the country not only to report but to be with his friends — Afghans and foreigners — as others fled out of Kabul on August 14 th 2021. While culturally, Afghans should have been closer to Khayyam, does their repressive outlook really embrace the past, especially with the Taliban dating back to about only three decades?

The books in our review section have a focus on the past and history too. Meenakshi Malhotra’s review of Priyadarshini Thakur Khayal’s Padmini of Malwa: The Autobiography of Rani Rupmati, again focusses on how the author resurrects a medieval queen through visitations in a dream (could it be her spirit that visited him?). Somdatta Mandal writes of a book of history too — but this time the past and the people are resurrected through objects in Sudeshna Guha’s A history of India through 75 Objects. Bhaskar Parichha has also reviewed a history book by culinary writer-turned-historian Colleen Taylor Sen, Ashoka and The Maurya Dynasty: The History and Legacy of Ancient India’s Greatest Empire.

This intermingling of life and death and the past is brought to life in our fiction section by Sreelekha Chatterjee and Anjana Krishnan. Aditi Yadav creates a link between the past and our need to travel in her musing, which is reminiscent of Anthony Sattin’s description of asabiyya, a concept of brotherhood that thrived in medieval times. In consonance with wanderlust expressed in Yadav’s essay, we have a number of stories that explore travel highlighting various issues. Meredith Stephens travels to explore the need to have nature undisturbed by external interferences in pockets like Kangaroo Island in a semi-humorous undertone. While Ravi Shankar travels to the land’s end of India to voice candid concerns on conditions within Kerala, a place that both Keith Lyons and Rhys Hughes had written on with love and a sense of fun. It is interesting to see the contrasting perspectives on Southern India.

Hughes of course brings in dollops of humour with his travel to Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka as does Devraj Singh Kalsi who writes about camel rides in Chandigarh, a place I known for its gardens, town planning and verdure. Suzanne Kamata colours Japan with humour as she writes of how candies can save the day there! Sengupta continues to travel to the past delving into the history of the last century.

Poetry that evokes laughter is rare but none the less the forte of Hughes as pensive but beautiful heartfelt poetry is that of Asad Latif. This February, the edition features poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan that borders on wry humour and on poignancy by George Freek. More poems by Pragya Bajpai, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Chad Norman, John Grey, Amit Parmessur, Sister Lou Ella Hickman, Saranyan BV and many more bring in varied emotions collected and honed to convey varieties that flavour our world.

Professor Fakrul Alam has also translated poetry where a contemporary Bengali writer, Masud Khan, cogitates on history while Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the ocean tries to capture the vastness and the eternal restlessness that can be interpreted as whispers carried through eons of history. Fazal Baloch has also shared a poem by one of the most revered modern Balochi voices, that of Atta Shad. Our pièce de resistance is a translation of Premchand’s Balak or the Child by Anurag Sharma.

This vibrant edition would not have been possible without all the wonderful translators, writers, photographers and artists who trust us with their work. My heartfelt thanks to all of you, especially, Srijani Dutta for her beautiful painting, ‘Hope in Winter’, and Sohana for her amazing artwork. My heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless Journal, to our loyal readers some of whom have evolved into fabulous contributors. Thank you.

Do write in telling us what you think of the journal. We look forward to feedback from all of you as we head for the completion of our third year this March.

Best wishes,

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

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

Categories
Notes from Japan

Sweet Diplomacy

By Suzanne Kamata

 Courtesy: Creative Commons

Many readers of a certain age are familiar with the story of Mary Poppins, a spirited British nanny with supernatural powers. (She could fly with just an umbrella, for example.) Although the book version didn’t include any songs, the film rendition was a musical, and even now those tunes are lodged in my brain, especially the one about a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down.

Sugar gets a bad rap these days all around the world. My Japanese husband was adamantly opposed to letting our children have sweets when they were small. I, however, had grown up in a household where dessert was served after every lunch and dinner – mostly cookies and pies baked by my mother. He did give in when our kids had the flu.  I recall one sticky afternoon when we melted chocolate and sprinkled bitter powder into molds in order to get our children to take their medicine.

Chocolate is a big deal in Japan on Valentine’s Day. In the weeks before, stores are filled with an array of chocolates in various shapes and sizes, which women are expected to give the men in their lives. But generally, cakes and cookies are often seen as feminine. It’s not manly to confess to a sweet tooth.

In Japan, I’ve found that desserts do exist, and they are often exquisite and delicious, but they are mostly shared on special occasions or when diplomacy is required. Cake can serve as an apology, while candy might be a form of persuasion, a way to literally “sweeten the pot.” To wit, a few years ago, our next-door neighbor came to the door with a white carton with the name of a popular bakery on the side.

“We are going to have some construction done on our house,” she said. “It will be noisy for a while. I apologise in advance.” She handed over the box with a bow. Later, when I looked inside, I found the box full of cream puffs. Although, as our neighbor said, the next few weeks were noisy, each hammer pound reminded me of the flaky pastry balls filled with custard. I could hardly be annoyed.

More recently, I answered the door to find another neighbor bearing a big box of cookies.

“Sorry about the commotion earlier,” he said.

Later, I found out that his car had exploded or at least caught on fire. Apparently, he had left a laptop with a lithium battery on the car seat on that hot day. The police and fire department had come by.

To be honest, I hadn’t really noticed that anything out of the ordinary was going on, but I appreciated his consideration, and my family and I enjoyed the cookies.

These days, when I take a trip out of town, I bring back something sweet as a souvenir for my neighbors. Also, when the farmers who live around here bring us vegetables from their fields, I usually reciprocate by baking carrot cake for them.

In my own country, people sometimes have noisy parties, which lead to complaints and phone calls from irritated others. As a person who likes to sleep in on weekends, I have been peeved by neighbours who cranked their lawnmowers at the crack of dawn. A little bit of sugar, however, can go a long way in keeping the peace and smoothing out relations.

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Suzanne Kamata was 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

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