Tag: The Kite of Farewells: Stories from Nagaland

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Borderless, August 2025

Art by Sohana Manzoor

Editorial

Storms that Rage… Click here to read.

Translations

Nazrul’s Jonomo, Jonomo Gelo (Generations passed) has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read and listen to a rendition by the famed Feroza Begum.

Ajit Cour‘s short story, Nandu, has been translated from Punjabi by C Christine Fair. Click here to read.

The Scarecrow by Anwar Sahib Khan has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Five poems by Aparna Mohanty have been translated from Odia by Snehprava Das. Click here to read.

Angshuman Kar has translated some of his own Bengali poems to English. Click here to read.

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

Tagore’s Shaishabshanda (Childhood’s Dusk) has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read.

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Ron Pickett, Fakrul Alam, William Miller, Meetu Mishra, Heath Brougher, Laila Brahmbhatt, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Snigdha Agrawal, George Freek, Ashok Suri, Scott Thomas Outlar, Dustin P Brown, Rajorshi Patranabis, Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Poets, Poetry & Rhys Hughes

From the Vale of Glamorgan are two poems on the place where Rhys Hughes grew up. Click here to read.

Musings/Slices from Life

Menaced by a Marine Heatwave

Meredith Stephens writes of how global warming is impacting marine life in South Australia. Click here to read.

The Man from Pulwama

Gowher Bhat introduces us to a common man who is just kind. Click here to read.

More than Words

Jun A. Alindogan writes on his penchant for hardcopy mail. Click here to read.

To Bid or Not to Bid… the Final Goodbye?

Ratnottama Sengupta ponders on Assisted Dying. Click here to read.

Musings of a Copywriter

In Syrupy Woes, Devraj Singh Kalsi looks at syrupy health antidotes with a pinch of humour. Click here to read.

Essays

‘Verify You Are Human’

Farouk Gulsara ponders over the ‘intelligence’ of AI and humans. Click here to read.

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

Meenakshi Malhotra explores Somdatta Mandal’s translation of Manottama, the first woman-authored Bengali novel published in 1868. Click here to read.

Bhaskar’s Corner

In Bidyut Prabha Devi – The First Feminist Odia Poet, Bhaskar Parichha pays a tribute to the poet. Click here to read.

Stories

The Sixth Man

C. J. Anderson-Wu tells a story around disappearances during Taiwan’s White terror. Click here to read.

I Am Not My Mother

Gigi Baldovino Gosnell gives a story of child abuse set in Philippines where the victim towers with resilience. Click here to read.

The Archiver of Shadows

Hema R explores shadows in her story set in Chennai. Click here to read.

Ali the Dervish

Paul Mirabile weaves the strange adventures of a man who called himself Ali. Click here to read.

The Gift

Naramsetti Umamaheswararao moulds children’s perspectives. Click here to read.

Notes from Japan

In American Wife, Suzanne Kamata gives a short story set set in the Obon festival in Japan. Click here to read.

Conversation

Neeman Sobhan, author of Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome, discusses shuttling between multiple cultures and finding her identity in words. Click here to road.

Book Excerpts

An excerpt from M.A.Aldrich’s From Rasa to Lhasa: The Sacred Center of the Mandala. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Neeman Sobhan’s An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome. Click here to read.

Book Reviews

Somdatta Mandal reviews Chhimi Tenduf-La’s A Hiding to Nothing. Click here to read it.

Madhuri Kankipati reviews O Jungio’s The Kite of Farewells: Stories from Nagaland. Click here to read.

Bhaskar Parichha reviews Snehaprava Das’s Keep it Secret: Stories. Click here to read.

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

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Editorial

Storms that Rage

Storm in purple by Arina Tcherem. From Public Domain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

('Tinkinswood Burial Chamber' by Rhys Hughes)

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

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

We wish you all a wonderful reading experience!

Gratefully,

Mitali Chakravarty.

borderlessjournal.com

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

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Click  here to access the contents for the August 2025 Issue

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Review

The Kite of Farewells

Book Review by Madhuri Kankipati

Title: The Kite of Farewells: Stories from Nagaland

Author: O’Jungio

Publisher: Rupa Publications

O. Jungio’s The Kite of Farewells: Stories from Nagaland is a collection of short stories of longing and grief set in contemporary Nagaland. The author is a tribal studies scholar, and cultural historian whose research and essays focus on oral traditions, folklore, and socio-cultural changes among Naga communities. In the book’s preface, he writes, “The objects—mute spectators to human sorrow—become the vessels of collective grief, the repositories of the most intimate of the farewells”. And every story in this collection does explore of longings of different kinds followed by farewells.

The first story, ‘Fire’, begins with a man driving in a downpour. He forgot to carry the food packed by his Ayo’s(mother’s). Like many others she believes hotels are “vectors for every ungodly disease in the world masquerading as something palatable.” What follows is at night he ends up in a strange village for food and shelter; where it seems like the lines between the living and the dead are blurred. The narrator chances upon a man who serves him raw food. He notes, “perhaps by way of some idiosyncratic tradition, this village served raw food on this particular day of the great harvest” and starts a fire to cook himself only to be spooked out by the man. Despite his longing for food, he has to make an escape. 

In ‘The Encyclopaedia of a Salesman’, a young man selling encyclopaedias meets a retired government official. Initially, the narrator is cautious about why a man so steeped in command would be interested in something as democratic as encyclopedias. He reflects: “With a career of bossing around subordinates, were more inclined to be loud in their admission of suspicion and disinterest in things that challenged and subverted their sphere of command. What annoyed such men more was the vague possibility that for once in their life they would be hoodwinked by a lesser man like me. It would amount to an abominable upset of social order.” This single observation is enough to collapse multiple distances of age, profession, class. The salesman’s mind, seasoned by years of observation, becomes its own encyclopedia. Just when the disparity gets real, Jungio reminds us of a harder truth: that conversations end.

Jungio tries play on the longing for nostalgic memories in ‘Scoreboard’, highlighting an exchange about keeping a manual scoreboard for FIFA world cup 2017; the son arguing “you can get match summaries and stats from google” for the father to brush it off with “it has been a tradition for me”. The whole act of hanging a whiteboard with teams playing and the predictions along with their scores stands out as a cherished activity for the season. When tragedy strikes, that brief exchange transitions itself into a way of longing, in the practices we all hold on to after the passing of loved ones.

It is not just about the personal objects of longing, but also the social objects, or feeling like a forgotten object that has stood still in time. In the story ‘Showroom’, we meet a middle-aged man, who has always “shopped cheap and done so unapologetically,” visits a new mall in town after much contemplation, only to find himself embarrassed when he misunderstands the mall purchase policy. The story is tinged with humour.

In ‘Sacred Crow’ the concept of ‘Echu Li’ is introduced to the reader and the protagonist at the same time as “a world not different from ours. It is a transient stop for the dead before they move on to the Great Home, where they all would become noble spirits, formless like the wind” — which presents itself as an acceptance of loss. The protagonist awaits the black crow, building curiosity only to close on a note that better fits the tales passed around orally in rural Nagaland.

The final story, ‘The Newspaper Kite’, features four rowdy boys who “create” trouble for their neighbours with their games, their little understanding of familial financial struggles and a bond they both form with a man in his sixties. They lovingly call ‘Amotsu’ when he kindly returns them their newspaper kite in a new frame the boys “dropped” in his garden. The boys find joy in a paper boat because “Lofty ideas are, to an extent, a luxury when the means to materialise it are limited or absent. When you are poor, you train your mind to dream on a budget, and some days, you surprise yourself by getting so much out of so little.” When the boys find about the sudden demise of the Amotsu, they remember his words, “There is always a next day,” with the awareness that the coming days would be without Amotsu. It is in the memory of “that thread trick Amotsu used to do” while flying kites, the boys stay connected to the person who left this world.

O. Jungio does a balancing act between inherited lore and the present. He subtly hints at that it is the lore that differs from landscape but not the emotions or beliefs. Regardless of the objects that offer solace, people connect with the commonality of emotions.

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Madhuri Kankipati is a reader, writer, and translator with too many hobbies and refuses to pick just one. She was raised to follow instructions, but the real world doesn’t work that way, she just stares at her problems. You can find her on instagram @withlovemadhuu

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

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