Tag: UK.

A Family Wedding

By Fiona Sinclair

They couldn’t simply walk out of the wedding and drive home. Earlier, a vintage double decker bus had conveyed the guests to the chapel in the neighbouring town, leaving cars behind in the car park. He gripped her hand muttering ‘’We’ll have to take the bus back.’’

Once on the bus, he sat by the window his face turned away from her. She felt temporarily shut out as in silence he tried to grasp the betrayal. All she could do was continue to hold his hand. When he finally spoke, there was a rage she had not witnessed before. As if it was a secret weapon, he had kept hidden away from her.

His voice was granite. The few words were emphasised by a shake of the head. “I ‘d never have believed he’d do that to me.’’ Then the taboo four letter word was discharged like a bullet never before used against this favourite brother. Hearing it she took a sharp in breath.

Another silence as she saw him battle tears. His eyes filled, a few overflowing down his cheek to be hastily flicked away. She stroked his arm knowing that no words would palliate. It occurred to her that she was witnessing someone’s heart break. A cliché but this was not the romantic love the phrase was coined for but backstabbing by a sibling he adored. Suddenly an admission, “You warned me, but I wouldn’t listen.”

Sam and Maria loved an opportunity to wear fine clothes. In the current preference for casual dressing there were fewer occasions for them to peacock. So, this wedding gifted them a chance. Sam had treated himself to a new blue suit, ‘’ Don’t want to let Nick down,” he had declared. His black hair had been cut. Sam was fortunate that at 60 he still retained a full head, that gave him a youthful look. The style unintentionally echoed that of Rod Stewert and garnered

comments to that wherever he went. His red tie matched Maria’s red dress. Red was her colour and complimented her brunette hair worn long still even in her 50s. Applying her eye make-up contemplatively around her dark eyes, Maria considered how relieved she had been at the advent of Clair into Nick’s life. It had drawn his eyes away from her to this bubbly blonde girl whom Sam approved of largely because she made his brother happy again.

All eyes alighted on Sam and Maria as they entered the pub that would be the locus for the wedding festivities. They were eyed up and down simply because they were so well dressed. But Maria also picked up inquiring looks from a crowd who did not seem to know them. They were not hostile merely curious as to the couple’s identity. She assumed they must be friends of the bride and groom, strangers to Sam and Maria because they did not reside in the town that had a micro community of original families who stuck together in the face of an invasion of newcomers.

Nick stood with a pint of larger in his hand. A cue of guests greeted him, and he answered with his easy banter basking in the attention. Sam and Maria waited their turn like seeking an audience with a VIP. At length there was a pause. Sam, hand outstretched greeted him with their usual salutation, “Hello mate.” Maria kissed him and whispered, “You look great.” But, the brother’s bonhomie seemed to fade at the sight of them. There was none of the usual joshing that came so easily to them. Maria picked up a distance in his demeaner, as if he was mentally stepping away from them. His greeting was polite but not warm, treating them more like acquaintances rarely encountered. The brothers’ conversation was reduced to platitudes – “Nice day for it’’, “Looking forward to …’’ until a silence fell between them like a sword cutting off further dialogue.

“Well,’’ said Nick, “better greet the other guests.’’ and he was gone.

“Yes of course,” said Sam his words trailing after the brother. Maria saw once again the dynamics of the relationship. Her husband the elder, deferred to the younger, blind to the slight, making excuses. “He looks nervous.”

Sam and Maria were left drinks in hands feeling like extras lacking direction. The rest of the guests were clearly familiar with each other. In knots that precluded mingling, they exchanged hearty private jokes and shared anecdotes. To look less conspicuous, the couple examined the buffet, admired the blousy wedding cake. Eventually, they were forced to make small talk between themselves, until even that ran dry. Sam scanned the room and remarked, “Strange but I don’t know anyone here.”

An old lady presented herself in front of the couple and with all the forthrightness of the elderly asked, “Who are you?”

Sam with impeccable politeness responded, “I’m the older brother.’’

She looked surprised, “I never knew he had one.’’

Clearly, she was an elderly relative belonging to Clair. But Sam hissed to Maria, “Apparently, I don’t exist.’’ His tone was humorous but with a slight note of hurt. Nobody likes to have their existence challenged. At this point an uneasiness began to nudge Maria. A mixture of the brother’s off hand manner and her previous experience of being the butt of his ‘banter’ a word she came to associate with the smiling face of bullying.

She knew from the moment they heard of the engagement that Sam did not expect to be best man. There was a younger brother and although their relationship had been smashed years ago, Sam was fair-minded enough to accept that Nick would diplomatically not select either brother

for that honour. Indeed, Nick had been at pains to explain, “Don’t want to play favourites mate.” Consequently, Sam and Maria assumed the role would go to one of his friends.

Several characters from Sam’s time in the town began to drift in. They too skirted the clusters of guests who were strangers to them and gravitated towards Sam and immediately went down memory lane. This involved bemoaning the town’s infestation of newcomers that had driven up the price of housing.

Maria had never been part of these reminiscences since she was not deemed a local. Letting them meander through their shared past, she idly looked at the people in the bar now brimming with wedding guests in all manner of outfits. Consequently, she was first to see the entrance of Nick’s best friend and David, the younger brother, and observe as they gravitated towards the grinning groom. Standing together she saw instantly that the three men were dressed in the same wedding livery. Grey suits, lilac ties and buttonholes. It was a subtle and elegant look. She read the situation clearly. There was only one reason that David would be included in this ensemble. With her pulse racing as if she had been running, she knew that she must prepare her husband. Stepping close to him, despite the group still chewing on the past, she whispered directly into his ear “David is best man,” But Sam brushed away her words with “No Nick would never do that to me.” She felt sick at this blind faith.

In some ways the younger brother and Sam were alike. Both were bright and attended grammar school. Both excelled at sport. Both developed an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. But while Sam had taken full advantage of everything a grammar school education had to offer, David had squandered his schooling. Sam had recognised and seen off his alcohol dependence while David continued to embrace it. As such he took low grade jobs which he routinely lost when he stole from the till or the cellar to fund his drinking. The rest of the family were indulgent towards this dilettante lifestyle. His routine was beer for breakfast, followed by a lurch up the high street around 11 am to spend a couple of hours in the bookies, then home for an afternoon sleep before heading out in the evening to the pub. This waste of life infuriated Sam. He had patiently tried to help him quit the drink, but each time he failed. Largely because David was resentful of his older brother. He envied his career, his abundant travel and his strong will that enabled him to kick the drink. For Sam the death knell to their relationship came when David stole a substantial amount of money from their mother. While the rest of the family forgave him, Sam would not. The brothers had not spoken since.

When the local gossip was finally exhausted, Sam turned back to his wife. “What made you say that?’’ he frowned.

“See for yourself,” she gestured.

There was silence as he took in the group of men clearly at ease with each other, smiling over their pint glasses. She saw as he observed them a slight flicker of doubt in his grey eyes. That were usually so inscrutable. ‘’ I see David’s on his best behaviour.’’ He remarked dryly as he observed that his brother was clasping a pint of coke. Before Maria could prepare her husband still further, the moment was sabotaged by Aunty Francis, the much-loved sister of his late mother. With her typical acuity she had observed the sartorial anomaly and greeted Sam with a “Didn’t you get the dress code memo?’’

“Apparently not,” he replied. As the three of them chatted, Maria wondered what was going through her husband’s mind. He betrayed nothing but listened attentively as Aunty Francis gave a precis of events on her side of the family.

As they clambered onto the vintage bus that had been hired as a ‘fun’ means of transporting the guests to the wedding venue in the neighbouring city, it became evident to Maria that they were the only relatives from Nick’s side of the family on board. Puzzled she pondered how the others were getting to Canterbury. She decided not to highlight this observation to Sam but wondered if with his eye for detail, had he picked on this oddity himself?

The other passengers were quite literally in high spirits. Having imbibed liberally at the pub, they now passed around hip flasks. Alcohol had unleashed their playful side. Guffaws bounced around the vehicle as the old double decker navigated the narrow country lanes bashing overhead trees, jerking its passengers abruptly from side to side like a fairground ride. Maria forced a smile at the antics. She tried to share her husband’s faith in his brother, thrusting to the back of her mine the side of Nick she was more familiar with.

The bus arrived at the venue prematurely. It was a small Zoroastrian chapel built into the ancient city walls. It had been chosen for its quirkiness. Fellow passengers finding the doors firmly closed to them were content to mill about looking at watches still however in celebratory mood. Sam was not good at aimlessly wandering so suggested a coffee in a nearby café. Making their way through the Saturday morning shoppers their appearance was met with curious stares. An elderly quartet enjoying a late breakfast remarked, “You two look fabulous. Is it your wedding day?’’ Setting them right Sam hissed to his wife ‘’ We do scrub up well.’’

In their absence the venue doors had been opened. It was a small building more like a priest hole than a chapel. Its shape was dictated by being part of the fabric of the ancient wall. The ceilings were low and the walls made of the same flint as the wall itself. It accommodated about 40 seats. None of the plain pine chairs had been reserved apart from the front row nearest the altar. Of course, the maths did not stack up. There would necessarily be a remainder of guests without seating. Consequently, there had been a free for all when the doors were opened. Every chair was now occupied. The overspill would have to stand at the rear.

No provision had been made for Sam and Maria. Losing out in the seating lottery they were forced to stand at the back of the chapel joining a rag tag of the couple’s acquaintances, who knowing their place had not troubled with formal wedding attire. Trainers and track bottoms sufficed.

The front row was clearly reserved for close family members such as Aunty Nancy and her family. The two brothers sat side by side. Their positioning screaming to all that David was best man. This casting roles was now undeniable, even to Sam. He gripped Maria’s hand as he stared at the front row only able to articulate, “I don’t believe he’s done this to me.’’

“Betrayal,” Maria thought to herself takes many forms. It can be blatant. An affair. Theft from a trusted friend. But it could also be subtle, cunning even. This was the kind she was witnessing. It was designed as a personal slight, targeting Sam only, so not obvious to outsiders thereby avoiding censure. Any accusations of exclusion could be disingenuously argued away by ‘We just wanted everyone involved in the ceremony to be coordinated.” But it was the hurt caused by these actions, felt acutely by Sam and to a lesser extent by herself that was the reality. They were not particularly sensitive or mimsy but knew when they were being slighted. It was not an oversight either. The proof of intention lay in the withholding of information, that created this shock that felt like an assault. She knew that if Nick had simply revealed his plans to Sam, he would have understood and accepted as his brother’s right to have the wedding he desired.

Maria looked up at her husband. His face was white. His mouth set in a line. She had no time to sympathise as the wedding march suddenly issued from the sound system. The choreography of the proceeding’s events built upon this undertone of spite. The bride was a petite woman whose best attributes were her blonde bob and baby blue eyes that gave a false impression of innocence. At forty and married before, she had nevertheless opted to wear a white confection. But it was the presence of Ted, Sam’s stepfather, parading her up the aisle that slapped the couple in the face. Maria spontaneously articulating, “My God, Ted’s giving her away!”

This man was a controversial figure to her husband. He attributed his mother’s premature death to Ted’s negligence. A heavy drinker, he had insisted, despite a long flight from Florida that he and Joan have a night cap at their local. Clumsy with exhaustion she had misjudged the gap between the car and the curb and taken a bad fall from which she never recovered.

With no-one to rein in his drinking, Ted became a familiar in the pub at the end of his road. Drinking despite doctor’s warnings until he compromised the use of his legs. The last Sam and Maria had seen him was confined to an electric wheelchair.

Yet here he was Lazarous-like walking the bride down the aisle dressed in the wedding livery; his steps sure, thoroughly pleased with himself. The insults seemed to come like a flight of arrows.

Behind the bride was his middle-aged sister, resplendent in an overblown lilac dress that even a young girl would struggle to carry off.

“Ridiculous,” thought Maria repressing a giggle. “She looks like a giant blueberry.”

Sam had seen enough. “We’re leaving after the ceremony.”

Maria greeted the words with relief. They would not have to attend the lavish reception that might, as the evening wore on, prove incendiary. The idea of grinning through the speeches, pretending they were not hurt at the exclusion, made her inwardly groan. The couple had been subtly wrong-footed. If they made a scene in public, lost their composure, they would be accused of ruining the wedding.

So as the newly weds embraced and the congregation applauded, Sam and Maria, slipped unremarked out of the chapel doors. One advantage of being consigned to the back, Maria conceded was the proximity to the exit.

Waiting at the bus stop she allowed Sam to brood. Maria took stock of the family. All their relationships were messy. Sam and his sister Karen skilfully skirted each other at family events including their mother’s funeral. Bridges between these two could not be repaired. She had accused Sam of stealing from their mum. Her mother-in-law had set her straight, but no apologies were issued and Sam was not a forgiving man especially where his beloved mother has concerned. Maria although she loved her mother-in-law, as an outsider could see, she was often loath to call her family to order. Strange since as a retired lawyer she had a fiery reputation when practicing but this did not translate into the governance of her children. As a result, grievances stewed. Maria saw that now sister and sister in-law worked in cahoots. They wanted a happy Facebook family. Sam and Maria had no place in their plans. It was clear that the wedding livery, the synchronisation of the wedding party were messages to the elder brother. He was being evicted.

As the local bus slowly wound its way back to the town where their car was corralled, Sam began to open up more. “I’ve bailed him out so many times.’’

Maria was aware of the phone calls from Nick asking for a loan to cover a gambling debt or car repairs. Sam had given without hesitation, reporting to her with a grin, “Nick’s in a pickle again’’ — entirely accepting of his brother’s flaws. She was also aware that Sam had for years treated his brother to expensive outings to soccer matches and Formula 1 Races, happy to pay for days out with the favoured brother whose company he so appreciated.

Maria listened attentively, her eyes never leaving his face as the idea of the brother he thought he knew began to die in the face of so much reality. He recalled how as a youngster himself he had become in loco parentis to his siblings, while his mother worked long hours in London and dad managed a public house. With a five-year distance between himself and his brothers and sister, he had made their supper, prepared lunches, ensured their homework was competed and readied school uniforms for the following day.

Sam’s mind was clearly being torn apart. He still struggled to find excuses, trying to make sense of his brother’s betrayal. “Do you think it’s Clair’s doing?’’

She saw him clutching at straws, trying to shift the blame on the pretty blonde who had turned his head and responded with a noncommittal “maybe’.

Then his thoughts changed tack again, “Well I never knew he was so weak.’’

Quite suddenly, he issued what she knew to be a death sentence to the relationship, “I will never forgive for this, never speak to him again.’’ His wife knew that this was not just anger speaking. Sam had a propensity of cutting people who had crossed him out of his life. There would be no way back for the brother. The judgement would be final.

Turning towards her he then pronounced, “You are my family now.’’ Words she never thought she would hear him say, content that she would always share him with this brother. Long suspecting that if it came to a choice Nick would be chosen over her.

While many women would have rejoiced at these words, would feel relief at no longer being subjected to Nick’s hectoring, his public put downs, all behaviour unheard of amongst her own family and friends, the emotional responsibility felt like a great weight placed upon her.

“But will I be enough?” She responded anxiously.

He hugged her. “Of course.”

Maria wondered if this was the right time to reveal her own experiences of the brother, especially his spiteful behaviour which gone unchallenged through out his life, practiced upon her even in front of her own friends, evidenced by his remarks at her own wedding reception “Déjà vu here, I can’t remember what number marriage Sam’s on now.” The other guests were left open-mouthed.

But Maria knew the timing was not right. It would seem opportunistic as if she was airing her own grievances. Perhaps too it would be too much truth for her husband to manage for one day. It would be a conversation for another time.

Later that evening although they did not articulate it, watching TV they each listened for the phone. Expecting a call that would either challenge why they were missing from the reception or enquire if someone was sick – a normal reaction to their absence– one that would at least suggest the wedding had not been a deliberate snub. But the call never came. The family it seemed were satisfied that they had achieved their objective. Either that or during their revelry, they simply had not registered the couple’s non-attendance.

Fiona Sinclair is a retired English teacher. She lives in the UK in a rural village with a Yamaha motor bike, a feral garden and a husband. Fiona has been writing poetry for over 15 years. She has had several collections of poetry published by small presses in the UK. Over the last 3 years, Fiona has written short stories that have been published in good magazines in both the US and UK.

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Tags Canterbury, Fiona Sinclair, UK., US, Yamaha, Zoroastian

Conversation

Overland to India with an American Hippie Named Ed: An Interview with Lily West

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date July 14, 2026
No Comments on Overland to India with an American Hippie Named Ed: An Interview with Lily West

By Suzanne Kamata

In Lily West’s travel memoir West goes East she recounts venturing from her native England overland toward India in the early 1970s with an impulsive American named Ed, a pro-Palestine fellow hippie whom she meets en route, on a shoestring budget. With the brazenness that comes with youth, they become entwined with all sorts of shady characters, finding themselves the guest of a charming conman in Amman, and being mistakenly deposited in a brothel in Cairo. Among other adventures, they rescue a polar bear from heat stroke in a zoo in Khartoum, are arrested twice in Egypt (and not for climbing to the top of a pyramid, which they do), and find themselves spectators at a public hanging in Iraq.

Many of the places they visited, such as the West Bank, Sudan and Afghanistan, are even less accessible now. West, by the way, is one of the few people who have traveled to every country on earth recognised by the UN. Although she made these travels as a man, she now lives in Japan as a woman. This award-winning book is a wild ride into the treacherous terrain of a bygone era. Lily generously agreed to answer a few questions.

Suzanne Kamata: First of all, congratulations on launching this book into the world! It has had a very positive reception, including an award for NomadMania Best Travel Book 2024. In the introduction you write that you hadn’t intended to write a book about traveling with your friend Ed, and that the idea came to you decades later. Can you tell us about the writing process? Also, how did you manage to recreate the scenes so vividly?

Lily West: I had often been urged to write a book, but never found the time or energy to do so. Then a friend introduced me to a publishing agent from English Agency Japan, who on hearing some of my travel stories, begged me to write a sample chapter which I eventually did. Then he demanded another and another until somehow after a year the book was finished. I guess the scenes in “West goes East” had remained vivid in my memory, because I had had some fifty years to remember them.

SK: Could you tell us a bit about the road to publication?

LW: The road to actual publication was a long one. My agent took six years only to come up with two concrete offers from publishers. Lots of offers that turned out to be pie in the sky though! I rejected both, the one because they wanted to edit the book down to half its size, the other because they wanted the chapter about Israel and all mention of Palestine removed. No! So, the manuscript continued to sit in my computer. Then Harry Mitsidis, the founder of the NomadMania extreme travel group, and arguably the world’s most travelled man, came over to Japan to verify that I really had been to the 193 UN member countries and thus was qualified to join the group. He was amazed that I was so easy to verify. Luckily, I had sent a postcard to my parents from every country I had been to. And my parents had kept them all! So, we became friends; I mentioned to him that I had written a book, and he asked me to send him a couple of chapters. He was so impressed that he said he would write a foreword and get the book published on Amazon. (This was technically beyond my ability!)

But he made it a condition that I include an epilogue about Lily’s much harder and longer journey, the journey to be accepted as the woman I knew I was. To be honest, I wasn’t very keen on this, because nowhere in the travel book do I mention or hint that I am a “transgender” woman. In fact, in 1972, the year the events in the book happened, it was still my Big Secret, something which could never be divulged to anyone, so I can understand its absence. However, as requested, I wrote the epilogue, which I have heard has caused some readers to cry. Naturally, Harry also wanted Lily West to be credited on the cover as the author, which was fair, because Lily had written the book!

SK: What was the first foreign country you ever visited? What activated your wanderlust?

LW: Well, I was brought up in England, but my mother was German, so we went there most summers. But I think you mean the first country visited by myself. I’ll give you two. I HATED the cruelty of school so much that at 17, I ran away and hitchhiked to Madrid which improved my Spanish enormously. Then that summer the local Education Committee paid for me to spend three months in the Soviet Union studying Russian.
My German grandfather collected stamps, interesting enough, but what fascinated me were the names of the countries. Not just looking at the exotic names, I knew I wanted to go and actually see them! So, after I graduated, I said goodbye to England and set off on my second overland trip to India, as described in West goes East, but this time with no intention of returning.

SK: Early on in the book it becomes clear that Ed has the potential to get into trouble. You write that you were unlikely traveling companions, with very different personalities, and yet you stuck together. Was there any point in your travels that you at least considered going your own way?

LW: Yes, in Baghdad over the Donkey Boy incident! I was so angry with him! But we had gone through so much together that it would have been difficult to split up. Of course, I knew we would part in Delhi, and I would be going off on my own, which eventually landed me in Japan. (After I had been there just under a year, Ed arrived with his wife and son.)

SK: What does it mean to you to be a UN master (one who has visited all 193 countries recognised by the United Nations)?

LW: The end of one lifelong journey! This April, I took part in the largest gathering of UN Masters ever. 64 of us in Azerbaijan! Some had taken considerably less time than the 49 years I had taken, but Harry Mitsidis explained that many more people had been in space or climbed Everest than had visited every country in the world, so we had achieved something very special. Now I do appreciate meeting people from every country and know I can chat about their homeland. 2016 was a significant year for me, as that was when I finally visited No.193, Equatorial Guinea. I was very happy that I had managed this, but to put things into context, something more meaningful for me happened two months later when I was invited to join a 500-strong group of foreign women in Japan. Actually, that was more important for me!

SK: You’ve visited every country in the world recognised by the United Nations, but some have changed greatly since you first visited them. Are there any such countries that you would like to return to? And why/why not?

LW: There are some countries I don’t want to return to, because war has changed them almost irreparably. It would be too sad to see Syria, Iraq, Palestine, or Afghanistan. Or for that matter my two visits to Israel sufficed for me to see what this country was like. Whereas others such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Uzbekistan or Peru have become too touristed and I would rather remember them as they were. I visited Africa 30 times, but on my final visit in 2017, I survived a bad car accident in the Comoro Islands, in which my head broke the windscreen. Surely the Gods were telling me that’s enough!

SK: What is Ed up to now? Has he read the book? If so, what was his response?

LW: Sorry to say that Ed passed away suddenly in 2022. Yes, he had read the book at the insistence of my agent. I knew he would not be happy, even though his full name and where he came from are never mentioned. He wanted all reference and memories of his hippie past erased. For instance, he destroyed all the photos he had taken as well as his diaries. He never told his wife about my book; in fact, she only learned of it from me after his death. She bought the book, read it and then paid me the biggest compliment anyone ever has regarding West goes East: “Thank you so much, Lily. You brought Ed back to life!”

SK: You mention in your epilogue that female Japanese students responded to you differently as a woman; “less daunting,” you wrote. Have you noticed any difference in how you are treated when traveling as a woman versus traveling as a man?

LW: Yes and no. Generally, I find people, especially women, are kinder and more friendly to Lily. Of course, it’s always easier to talk to someone of your own gender. Also, I’m more outgoing and confident in myself as a fellow woman in the company of other women.

But like any other woman, I find myself much more on my guard, while not being paranoid about men, just more watchful in their presence. Luckily, Japan is safer for women than let’s say the UK or the US, but as a woman, I can’t take that personal safety for granted as I would if I were a man.

SK: I realise that this is a book about your travels with Ed, but you drop tantalizing hints about other episodes in your travels. For example, in the epilogue, you write that you and your Japanese partner were taken hostage on a trip to the Central African Republic. What???? Could you share a bit about that?

LW: Very long story from 1996. Fifteen of us were on an overland truck going from East Africa to West Africa. We had budgeted 10 days to go through Congo, but the “roads” were that awful, little but bog holes and mud, that it took us 56 days. During which time three passengers died: snakebite, malaria and cut to pieces by our own tyre chains. However, we felt lucky it had not been more!

Within two weeks, there were no more shops and as cook, I had to go into the villages and exchange stuff for food. Luckily, I found they wanted empty bottles in which to store the poison they used for hunting. I was the cook, but I wouldn’t use meat because I am a vegetarian. One evening, the two Australians who did most of the digging came back from a village with some meat, which they barbecued. A couple of days later, we ran into the first Westerner we had seen, a Belgian in the lumber business. He invited us to eat with him. One of the Australians started to tell him about the meat they had had. The Belgian asked where the village was, then he raised his and asked “Did it have fur?” No. “Did it have a hoof?” No. “I think you ate a baby!” One Australian just vomited, but the other said: “Tasted OK!”

And so, in such a dilapidated state, we finally reached the ferry over the Congo River to Bangui in the Central African Republic. By this time, we were down to 9 or 10 functioning members, for this didn’t really include a French Canadian, our only native French speaker. But he had lost his mind, and would never speak to anyone again during the rest of the trip. So that left me as the only actual French speaker. Anyway, we were at last on the ferry, chattering away about which hotel in Bangui we were going to stay in and really excited about having a shower as opposed to bathing in rivers with crocodiles and snakes.

We parked our truck on some waste ground by the river and I went exploring. The town of Bangui seemed eerily quiet as I found my way to the Novotel. Entering the hotel, I knew all was far from well when I saw a cloud of flies buzzing around the dead man at the check-in desk. Back at the truck, I told the others about the hotel and that we had better leave Bangui first thing in the morning. Everyone agreed, but at about 4 o’clock in the morning, soldiers arrived and started to knock down our tents and force us on to our truck. Those who argued or were too slow were jabbed with their rifles.

So off we went with two armed soldiers on the truck to guard us, but where were they taking us? Back to Congo or somewhere to shoot us?

We hastily formed an escape plan. At a given signal, the two hefty Australian diggers knocked the soldiers to the floor and stood on their guns, while the driver drove like mad overtaking the accompanying jeeps. I had found where the US Embassy was and it was there we headed. All other embassies were closed. We had one American in our group, so we figured that was our best chance. At five o’clock in the morning, our English driver smashed into the gates of the US Embassy at full speed. But the gates were so sturdily made that they did not give way!

In the shock, the soldiers recovered their guns and were screaming “Tirez-le!”, (Shoot him!). The driver got out of his cab window, flung himself into the embassy grounds and hid behind a wall. The soldiers opened fire and lights came on the embassy. They forced the co-driver to turn round and we were taken to a large building where we were all herded into an underground cell at gunpoint. To make matters worse, we could hear the screams of someone being tortured.

At noon, our driver arrived accompanied by personnel from the US Embassy and the Central African Republic Army as well as government officials. Slowly I pieced things together.

The soldiers who had captured us had taken part in a failed coup d’etat and now needed us as human shields to get past the checkpoints and out of Bangui. A deal was struck. They would take us 700km to the Cameroon border where they would set us free. Everyone shook hands and we set off. It took several days to drive, for we had to stop along the way many times as the soldiers constantly tried to intimidate us. Once they lined us up firing-squad style, but shot over our heads. Their idea of a joke, I guess.

However, after 500km, we reached the town of Bouar, which was rebel-held territory, so they felt safe and saw no reason to release us. They kept us in the camp, under guard with no indication as to what might be our fate. After ten days or so, I determined to try to find a way to get out of this camp. Most of the others seemed to sunk into despondency or were just too sick to move.

There were 30 soldiers holding us and I tried reaching out to those who seemed a bit more friendly. I persuaded two of them that we were running out of food, so they took me into the market. The next day, I asked them to take me in again, this time with Takako, my partner. Then while they were drinking beer in a bar, she and I ran for it to another bar which I had spotted the day before.

Were there any foreigners in Bouar, I asked. Yes, there were two and someone offered to take us to their house. The two foreigners turned out to be French Jehovah’s Witness missionaries! By this time, I would have joined! And as I hoped, they had a radio. It was hidden under the floorboards and they let me use it to contact the US Embassy. “You still there”, was the surprised response. “We’ll get you out in the morning,” they promised.

Very early in the morning, a helicopter landed and after more bargaining, the rebels finally let us drive to the Cameroon border. We crossed the border and those of us who could still walk were in the very first bar on the Cameroon side celebrating. Suddenly, in walked the rebel soldiers still with their guns! Oh, no, surely not, I almost exclaimed! Then, the two I had befriended came up to me and asked me to translate. “Don’t worry! We’re so glad we didn’t have to shoot you and would like to buy a beer for you all.” I answered: “We’re also very glad you didn’t shoot us!” To general laughter, everyone raised their beer bottles: “Salut!”

Three days later we arrived in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon. With our driver, I went to the British Embassy to report the three deaths, all Commonwealth citizens. The Ambassador listened as we told our story.

Then he stood up and shook our hands: “Jolly good show, chaps! Let me get you a drink!” The brandy was welcome.

Takako and I were able to contact our families for the first time and reassure them that we were not dead as they feared. We flew to Europe from Cameroon and then on to Japan, arriving three months late. Astonishingly, I was able to keep my job. While I know I went to Africa for adventure, sometimes you can get more adventure than you bargained for!

SK: Wow! What a harrowing experience! Thanks for sharing that! Are there any other travel memoirs or travel writers that you admire and would recommend?

LW: The Roads To Sata by Alan Booth, In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin, An African in Greenland by Tete-Michel Kpomassie.

SK: What’s next? Will there be another book?

LW: I could write another book, yes, but I doubt that I am able to write another book that would be as good as this one. I feel that this is my masterpiece. Every time I look through it, I think, wow, I wrote this! Many travel books nowadays have the author writing about doing many different trips over the years, one chapter per country. I certainly could do one of those too, but I, and others, think that a major strength of West goes East is that it is a story of one continuous journey rather than many short ones. It describes eight months of travelling overland from Syria to India via Afghanistan in 1972, in a world that no sadly longer exists and the people we met along the way, both locals from those countries and other Westerners.

SK: Thank you so much! I, for one, am glad you got this book out into the world.

Lily West and her Japanese students. Photo provided by Suzanne Kamata.

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 Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

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Interview

The Global Story of Plants, People and Plastic

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date July 14, 2026
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Keith Lyons in conversation with Helen Townsend, an environmental entrepreneur and a plant enthusiast

Helen Townsend speaking to women at Girls-in-STEM that aims to close gender gap in science in 2026. Photo sourced by Keith Lyons

Helen Townsend has spent her career uncovering the connections between people, plants and the planet. From working with herbarium collections in Nepal and Bangladesh to leading campaigns against single-use plastics and creating nature-based toys for children, the environmental entrepreneur has come to see climate change, biodiversity loss and waste as deeply interconnected global challenges. In this interview, she reflects on the power of plants, the importance of global responsibility, and why reconnecting children with nature may be one of our greatest reasons for hope.

Keith Lyons (KL): How did you find yourself in Nepal and Bangladesh, and what did you do there?

Helen Townsend (HT): In 2006 I was working in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on a project digitising African plant specimens. The aim of the project was to increase African botanists’ access to their countries’ important specimens which had been collected during colonial exploration and taken to the UK. In 2009, the project expanded to Asia, and I went to Nepal to train staff and set up the digitising project at the National Herbarium of Kathmandu. I also spent six months in Bangladesh volunteering at a girls’ school in Dhaka.

KL: How were your experiences in those places influence your awareness of environmental issues which are both linked with modern society and global?

HT: While growing up in New Zealand and living in the UK, I knew we used too much plastic packaging and tried to avoid it but it was when I was in Nepal and Bangladesh and saw plastic rubbish on the streets and in the rivers that I started to realise the scale of the plastic pollution problem. In New Zealand we produce so much more rubbish than people in Nepal and Bangladesh but because it’s collected weekly and taken away, we never have to confront the environmental impact of our purchasing choices.

KL: What fascinates you about plants?

HT: Plants are beautiful, especially trees! But the more I learn about them the more interesting they become. Plants are often seen as the backdrop to a scenic view or ‘nice to haves’ for people living in cities but they are absolutely essential not only for the survival of all life but also for our physical, mental and emotional well-being.

How has this interest run through your study, work and approach?

HT: Both of my businesses have tackled systemic issues by providing alternatives to single-use plastics and reconnecting kids with nature. These issues are directly related to protecting the environment and helping parents pass on their love of nature to their kids.

KL: What broader lessons have you learned from working with plant collections, botanical gardens and herbariums?

HT: Working on projects to return botanist’s access to plant specimens taught me how interconnected societal problems are and how our current problems are grounded in colonial and capitalist thinking. Europeans taking plant specimens from Africa and Asia in the 1800s directly impacts the work of today’s botanists from those areas. In the same way, climate change and the biodiversity crisis have been caused by rich countries’ exploitation, again taking more than their share of nature and resources.

KL: Waste is often seen as a local issue, whether it be plastic, uncollected rubbish, dumping, or pollution in waterways. Why do you see it as a global issue?

HT: Billion-dollar companies headquartered in the USA or Europe take oil from the Middle East and turn it into plastic to be made into products in China which are then shipped to New Zealand. After we’ve used the product, we put our plastic ‘recycling’ out to be collected, and it’s shipped to Indonesia where it contributes to enormous landfills contaminating the land, water ways, oceans and health of communities we will never visit.

This is not an accident. It is a planned devaluing of the global south so rich countries can continue to consume overpackaged and unnecessary junk to make a few people extremely wealthy. If we look at waste as a local issue, we can pat ourselves on the back for taking part in a beach clean-up, while ignoring the capitalist system that created the inequality and environmental destruction of countries we do our best not to think about.

KL: What initiatives have you been involved in which have looked for solutions to problems, and how did you go about turning ideas into action?

HT: After returning to New Zealand, I set up a company called ‘The Rubbish Whisperer’ to provide replacements to single-use plastics. I made reusable produce bags and introduced paper straws to cafes and restaurants in New Zealand, advocating for straws on request. Providing reusable alternatives was an important component in the grass roots movement to eliminate single-use plastics. Working alongside activists, scientists and community groups, we were successful in achieving New Zealand’s 2019 ban on single-use plastic bags and restrictions on plastic straws.

Now I have a company called ‘Sustained Fun’, the world’s first climate change focused toy company. Toys are vital to climate change because they teach social norms and shaped how kids see the world. The toy industry works on a fast fashion business model and is training kids to be over-consumers of cheap, disposable plastic junk. If we want adults who care about the environment, we need kids to learn how to love nature. Luckily all this entails is to get kids out into it! We make fun and sustainable toys and games that encourage kids and families to connect with nature.

Anthea Bell and Helen Townsend, co-founders of Sustained Fun with their reusable water-balloons. Photo sourced by Keith Lyons

KL: When it often seems that environmental problems can feel overwhelming, what gives you hope?

HT: This is something I struggle with a lot. It doesn’t always feel like things are getting better. I make an effort to seek out positive news and connect with others who are excited about nature and are making a positive impact. Running ‘Sustained Fun’ also gives me hope as I can help to create a more positive future for kids and families.

KL: What helped shaped your perspective and desire to make a difference?

HT: I’m not sure. I don’t understand why everyone wouldn’t want to make a difference? We all want swimmable rivers, clean beaches, forests, amazing animals and breathable air. And, especially for those of us from rich, privileged countries, it’s our responsibility to make sure a healthy environment is there for all people and the next generation.

KL: If someone could see the world through your eyes just for one day, what do you think they would notice differently?

HT: Plants! Instead of seeing plants as a green backdrop, they would see them as the view, noticing which ones are native and which are invasive. They’d look at deforested hillsides and imagine them covered in mature forests. They’d look at a polluted estuary and see it teeming with life. Wherever I go, I imagine what it used to look like before we cut down the trees and what it will look like again, once we’ve restored them.

KL: What kind of world would you hope today’s young people inherit?

HT: I would love it if every year wildlife numbers increased so that when young people look back at 2026, they are amazed at how far we’ve come. I can’t wait for my grandchildren to say to me ‘I can’t believe you were excited to see one whale in the harbour, I often see hundreds’.

KL: If you could leave one message for readers around the world, regardless of where they live, what would it be?

HT: Do more and speak up. We need to move swiftly and urgently to prevent the worst effects of climate change and stop biodiversity loss. Whatever your skills, experience and profession, turn them to protecting the environment. And if you have kids, teach them to love the environment by getting them out into nature as often as possible!

Links

https://sustainedfun.com

Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless Journal’sEditorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

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

Tags Anthea Bell, Bali, Bangladesh, Borderless Journal, China, Dhaka, Ediburch, Europe, Girl in STEM, Helen Townsend, Kathmandu, Keith Lyons, Middle East, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Sustained Fun, UK., USA

Essay

One Soul, Two Seas

By Charudutta Panigrahi

There is a cartographic trick that India plays on the careless observer. Place a finger on Goa, cradled in the lap of the Western Ghats where the Mandovi meets the Arabian Sea. Now drag that finger clean across the peninsula — past the Deccan plateau, past the red laterite and the black cotton soil — until it arrives at Odisha, where the Mahanadi fans into the Bay of Bengal. The distance is vast. The terrain changes several times over. And yet, when you finally arrive, you feel, inexplicably, that you have not travelled at all. You have merely walked from one room of the same house into another.

Goa and Odisha are India’s fraternal twins, stationed like sentinels on opposite coasts, facing outward toward different oceans but turning inward toward an almost identical soul. They share no border, no common neighbour, no obvious historical corridor. And yet their resemblances are so startling, so layered, that they make a quiet mockery of the assumption that east and west shall never meet. In this country, at least, they have been meeting all along.

The Plate That Speaks First

Begin where all honest cultural inquiry must begin — at the table. In both Goa and Odisha, the grammar of a meal is written in two words: rice and fish. The xitt-kodi of a Goan Catholic household — rice with fish curry — is a mirror image of the bhata-machha that anchors every Odia thali. The curry leaves may change, the tamarind may yield to kokum, but the fundamental covenant between grain and sea remains unbroken.

Both states worship the coconut with equal fervour. It thickens their gravies, sweetens their desserts, oils their hair, and thatches their roofs. And in both places, the humble samosa — that deep-fried triangle of spiced potato — enjoys a curious and disproportionate celebrity, sold at every bus stand, every temple gate, every rain-drenched evening stall, as if it were the official snack of the coastline itself.

Weavers of Light

If food is the first language, cloth is the second. Odisha’s handloom tradition is among the most sophisticated in the world. The Sambalpuri ikat, with its geometric precision born of a tie-and-dye technique older than memory, is a textile that calculates like mathematics and sings like poetry. The Bomkai of Ganjam, the Kotpad of Koraput — each weave carries a district’s autobiography in its warp and weft.

Goa’s handloom heritage is no less poignant. The Kunbi saree, woven by the indigenous Kunbi community in checks of red and maroon, is a garment of earthy defiance — a refusal to vanish beneath the weight of colonial and commercial textile culture. In both states, the handloom is not an industry. It is an act of inheritance.

The handicraft traditions run parallel with uncanny symmetry. Odisha’s Pattachitra — those luminous scroll paintings rendered on cloth with pigments drawn from stone, earth, and lamp-black — find a philosophical cousin in Goa’s azulejos-inspired tile art and the painted terracotta work of its hinterlands. Odisha’s silver filigree from Cuttack, those impossibly intricate webs of metal that seem to have been spun by patient spiders, speak the same aesthetic dialect as the filigree and brass work of Goan artisans.

Temples, Tides, and the Slow Pulse

Both states are drenched in divinity. Odisha shelters the Jagannath Temple of Puri, whose Rath Yatra rolls through the world’s imagination every year, and the Konark Sun Temple, a stone chariot frozen mid-gallop toward the dawn. The Lingaraj Temple of Bhubaneswar presides over a city that was once a forest of a thousand shrines. Goa, often misread as merely a beach destination, guards some of the oldest Hindu temples in western India — the Mangeshi Temple, the Shanta Durga Temple, the Mahalasa Narayani, the Tambdi Surla — alongside the Basilica of Bom Jesus, where the remains of St. Francis Xavier lie in baroque silence. In both states, the sacred is not a Sunday affair. It is the air.

And then there is the pace. Both Goa and Odisha move at a tempo that the hyperventilating metros of India find baffling. The Goan susegad — that philosophy of contented ease — is a first cousin of the unhurried dignity with which Odisha conducts its daily life. Long before the global “slow living” movement became a wellness-industry buzzword, these two states had been practising it for centuries, not as aspiration but as instinct.

Songs in Different Scales

The musical traditions reveal yet another layer of kinship. Odisha gave the world Odissi — both the dance and the music — a classical tradition of astonishing fluidity, shaped by poets like Jayadeva, whose Gita Govinda remains one of the supreme lyric achievements in any language. The folk traditions — Dalkhai, Gotipua, the tribal Dhemsa — pulse with a rhythmic vitality that no concert hall can contain.

Goa’s musical soul lives in the Mando, a slow, swaying ballad of love and longing born from the encounter between Konkani sensibility and Portuguese fado. The Dulpod, faster and more festive, is its playful sibling. And beneath the tourist-facing trance and EDM, Goa’s folk traditions — Fugdi, Dhalo, Dekhni — carry the same rooted, communal energy that Odisha’s village squares have known for generations.

Goa’s Tiatr and Odisha’s Jatra are born of the same impulse — raucous, deeply local theatre traditions that turn village squares into stages, blend music with social satire, and have for generations served as the people’s newspaper, courtroom, and concert hall rolled into one.

The Literary Mirror

The literary parallels are quietly profound. Fakir Mohan Senapati, the father of modern Odia literature, wrote Chha Mana Atha Guntha — a searing, ironic novella about land, power, and peasant dispossession — in the 1890s. Across the map, Goa’s literary tradition in Konkani, shaped by figures like Bakibab Borkar (the poet-laureate of Konkani verse), Ravindra Kelekar, and Damodar Mauzo, has grappled with similar themes of identity, colonial memory, and the tension between tradition and modernity. Odisha’s Pratibha Ray and Goa’s Mauzo — both Jnanpith laureates — wrote in languages the literary mainstream often overlooks, yet carved from Odia and Konkani respectively a body of work so luminous that the nation’s highest literary honour had no choice but to find its way to their doors. Both literatures are enormous in depth and criminally under-read outside their states.

Even the economies rhyme. Both states sit on vast mineral wealth — iron ore in Goa, iron ore, bauxite and coal in Odisha — and both have built significant chapters of their economic story on extraction. Mining has been, for decades, a genuine engine of revenue and employment. But prosperity extracted from the earth exacts its own price. Both states have watched hills reshaped and rivers thickened with slurry, and both have grappled with the same difficult question that every resource-rich society must eventually face: where does sustainable use end and irreversible damage begin? The Dongria Kondh resistance in Odisha’s Niyamgiri hills and Goa’s prolonged civic movement against unregulated mining are stories of communities recognising that the wealth beneath their feet should not come at the cost of the world above it. In both states, the mandate is the same: to mine responsibly, restore what can be restored, and find an economic imagination that honours both the ledger and the landscape.

Stone, Laterite, and the Architecture of Belonging

The buildings of Goa and Odisha could not, at first glance, look more different. Odisha’s architectural glory resides in the Kalinga style of temple building — a tradition that flowered between the sixth and thirteenth centuries and produced some of the most breathtaking sacred structures on the subcontinent. The Rekha Deula, with its curvilinear tower soaring heavenward, the Pidha Deula, with its stepped pyramid, and the barrel-vaulted Khakhara Deula — each is a masterclass in proportion, carved from sandstone and laterite without a drop of mortar, held together by iron dowels and the sheer precision of stone cut to stone. The Lingaraj Temple rises a hundred and eighty feet; the Sun Temple at Konark was conceived as a stone chariot for Surya himself.

Goa’s architectural signature, meanwhile, is the Indo-Portuguese house — the balcão-fronted villa with its oyster-shell windows, its Baroque churches, its colour-washed facades in ochre and cerulean and terracotta. Where Odisha built upward in devotion, Goa built outward in conviviality.

And yet the kinship runs deeper than surface style. Both traditions are rooted in laterite — that rust-red, iron-rich stone quarried from the earth itself — and in an instinctive dialogue between structure and climate. Goan houses, whether Hindu or Catholic, were designed around the monsoon: thick laterite walls to absorb the heat, sloping roofs of Mangalore tile to shed the deluge, courtyards to channel light and air. The traditional Hindu house in Goa, with its rajangan (courtyard) and its Tulasi Vrindavan (holy basil) at its centre, is an inward-looking sanctuary not unlike the courtyard homes of rural Odisha, where domestic life orbits an open-air heart and thatched or tiled roofs slope against the same seasonal fury. In both states, the house is not merely shelter. It is a cosmology — oriented by Vastu[1], shaped by rain, and built from the very ground on which it stands.

The Sacred as Daily Bread

Spirituality in Goa and Odisha is not a compartment of life; it is the wallpaper. In Odisha, they say Bara Masa re Tera Parba — thirteen festivals in twelve months — and this is not hyperbole but arithmetic. From Rath Yatra to Raja Parba, from Nuakhai to Kumar Purnima, the Odia calendar is a procession of devotion, agriculture, and communal joy so tightly woven that one cannot tell where worship ends and daily life begins. The festivals are tied to the rice cycle — seeding, sowing, harvesting — so that the act of farming itself becomes a prayer. Odisha is a land where Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism have coexisted and cross-pollinated for millennia, leaving behind the cave monasteries of Udayagiri and Khandagiri, the Buddhist stupas of Ratnagiri and Lalitgiri, and the Shakti temples that dot the landscape like exclamation marks of feminine divinity.

Goa answers with its own brand of sacred pluralism. Here, Hindus light candles at the Basilica of Bom Jesus, and Catholics offer prayers at the Shantadurga temple at Fatorpa. The feast of Our Lady of Miracles gathers both communities under the same roof, exchanging oil and candles between church and temple as naturally as neighbours exchange sugar. The Zagor celebrations and the Shigmo festival are not Hindu events attended by Christians out of politeness; they are Goan events, full stop. In both states, religion is not a doctrine to be debated but a rhythm to be lived — embedded in the morning’s first lamp, the evening’s last bell, and every meal served between.

The Farmer and the Monsoon

Rice is not merely the staple food of Goa and Odisha; it is the organising principle of their rural civilisations. In Odisha, paddy covers nearly seventy per cent of cultivated land, and the entire social calendar revolves around its seasons — Akshaya Tritiya marks the seeding, Raja Sankranti the completion of sowing, Nuakhai the first tasting of the new harvest. The traditional beushening method — broadcasting seed and then tilling post-emergence — speaks of a farming intelligence shaped by centuries of reading the monsoon, the soil, and the floodplain.

In Goa, the ingenuity takes another form: the Khazan system, an ancient network of bunds and sluice gates that reclaim low-lying coastal land from the tides, allowing farmers to cultivate salt-tolerant rice varieties and rear fish and prawns in the same fields. It is an act of ecological engineering so elegant that modern agronomists study it as a model of sustainable land use.

Both states grow coconut, cashew, and areca nut alongside their paddy. Both rely overwhelmingly on the monsoon — Odisha’s irrigation covers barely a third of its cultivable land, and much of Goa’s paddy is rainfed. Both are lands of small and marginal farmers, where the average holding is modest and the relationship between cultivator and earth is intimate, personal, and unmediated by large-scale mechanisation. And in both states, a quiet revolution is underway: Odisha’s Millets Mission and Goa’s growing organic farming movement are attempts to reclaim indigenous crop diversity from the grip of high-yield monoculture — to remember that the land, like the people, thrives best when it is allowed its full vocabulary.

The Playing Field

In a nation drunk on cricket, Goa and Odisha are the two states that have had the audacity to fall in love with other sports. Goa is India’s football heartland. The game arrived with an Irish priest in 1883 and never left. Clubs like Salgaocar, Dempo, and Churchill Brothers have won national titles; six Goans have captained the Indian football team. During the FIFA World Cup, Goan streets erupt into a carnival of flags and giant screens, and the village tournament — barefoot boys on a laterite pitch — remains as sacred as Sunday Mass. Football in Goa is not a sport. It is an identity.

Odisha’s sporting soul beats to a different drum — the hockey stick. The state has produced legends like Dilip Tirkey, Amit Rohidas, Sunita Lakra, and Deep Grace Ekka, and became the first state government in India to sponsor the national hockey team. The Birsa Munda International Hockey Stadium in Rourkela, which hosted the 2023 World Cup, is a monument to Odisha’s commitment. But what unites both states is not the particular sport but the underlying defiance: a refusal to accept cricket’s monopoly on the Indian sporting imagination.

Both states also share a love for traditional and community games — Kho Kho and Kabaddi [2] are played at village festivals in both, and both have ISL football franchises (FC Goa and Odisha FC) that draw passionate, roaring crowds. The playing field, it turns out, is yet another room in the same house.

Rivers, Mangroves, and the Shared Ecology

The ecological parallels between these two states are no less striking. Both are coastal, riverine, and monsoon-fed. Both shelter significant mangrove ecosystems — the Khazan mangroves along Goa’s estuaries and the Bhitarkanika mangrove forests of Odisha, one of the largest in India. Both are biodiversity hotspots: Goa’s Western Ghats forests are a UNESCO heritage site, while Odisha’s Simlipal and Satkosia reserves harbour tiger, elephant, and crocodile populations of national importance. The Olive Ridley sea turtles that nest on Odisha’s Gahirmatha beach have cousins that occasionally visit Goa’s Morjim. Both states understand, in their bones, that the sea is not merely a border but a livelihood, a deity, and a defining force — and that the mangrove, the estuary, and the fishing village are not the periphery of civilisation but its very foundation.

And then there is the matter of diaspora. Both Goa and Odisha are states whose people have scattered across the world yet remain fiercely tethered to home. The Goan communities of Bombay, the Gulf, the UK and Lisbon mirror the Odia communities of US, Europe, Surat, Hyderabad, and beyond. In both cases, the expatriate carries the cuisine, the festival calendar, and the mother tongue like a portable homeland — and returns, without fail, for the annual feast or the harvest celebration, as though the umbilical cord to the village were made not of flesh but of something altogether more durable.

Goa and Odisha do not need a bridge between them. They already are the bridge — two ends of a single cultural arc that bends across the Indian landmass, proving that civilisational kinship does not require geographical proximity. They are proof that identity in India is not merely a function of latitude and longitude but of something deeper: a shared covenant with the sea, with rice, with the loom, with the slow and sacred act of living.

If India is a house with many rooms, these two states are the twin balconies — one facing the sunset, the other the sunrise — built from the same stone, painted in the same light, listening to the same tide.

East and West do not merely meet here. They embrace.

[1] science of architecture in alignment with natural forces

[2] Local community games which involve teams

Charudutta Panigrahi writes on culture, geography, and the quiet connections that maps forget to draw.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems

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

Essay

Sam Dalrymple and the Shattered Lands

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date May 14, 2026
No Comments on Sam Dalrymple and the Shattered Lands

By Farouk Gulsara

When the word ‘Partition’ is mentioned, it is always assumed to refer to the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. In fact, the Partition of the British Raj occurred five times.

Not so long ago, as recently as 1928, a vast expanse of land from Aden in the West to Rangoon in the east was united as the Indian Empire, all under British rule. It was the zenith of the British Empire, and it seemed the sun would never set on the Empire. A quarter of the world’s population lived here, from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia, and they all used the Indian rupee. One would travel across the span with an Indian passport. By 1971, in just 40 years, this Empire had been shattered five times, resulting in 12 nation-states.

We should learn to tell stories by listening to how housewives gossip. They narrate intimate personal stories about their neighbours, with vivid detail, as if they were there in the target’s bedroom. It becomes more believable when real characters are added. The same advice applies to telling history, his-story. Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia does exactly that. A dry subject like history is turned into an unputdownable book by giving human faces to the people making difficult decisions at the administrative level and to those who have to bear the brunt of those decisions. Perhaps the author’s filmmaking background pushed him towards this style. That makes it very engaging.

The author, Samuel Hew Tantallon Darymple, is a scholar of Sanskrit and Persian, as well as a historian, author, activist, and social media influencer. He co-founded Project Dastaan[1], a peace-building initiative that uses digital technology to reconnect people displaced by the 1947 Partition of India with their childhood communities and villages.

The five Partitions mentioned in this book are: the separation of Burma from India in 1937; the reclassification of Aden as a British protectorate; the formation of Pakistan; the dissolution of the 550-odd princely states; and, finally, a bloody civil war that led to the formation of Bangladesh.

The Indian idea of ‘Bharat’ is traditionally shaped by the ancient Hindu geography of Bharatvarsha, a triangular landmass stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south. Notably, Afghanistan, mentioned in the Mahabharata, and Burma, known as Brahmadesh (Land of Brahma), do not fall within this framework. The city of Kandahar in Afghanistan is apparently named after Gandhari, the blindfolded matriarch of the Kaurava clan.

After the 1905 Partition of Bengal and the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, calls for self-governance grew louder. To pacify the Indian public, the Crown sent a group of seven, known as the Simon Commission[2], in 1928 to implement constitutional reforms. It did nothing to advance Indian independence but demarcated Burma as a territory quite separate from British India, and its inclusion in India was an error.

Coincidentally, this was the aftermath of the 1928 Depression. Before this, Burma was a melting pot of cultures. Its capital, Rangoon, one of the busiest commercial cities in Asia, was labelled the ‘Paris of the East’. It is said that in 1920, there were more traders in Burma than in New York. Rangoon port was an important harbour for the export of rice, teak and petroleum. Its banking services drew people from many regions. It was a multilingual and multicultural city, shaped by large-scale migration. People were heard speaking Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Marwari, Urdu, Chinese, English, and other languages.

The turn of the economic tide and the disparity in economic status between the ethnic Burmese and the sojourners sparked a series of unrest. The Chettiars and Bengali houses and shops were targeted. Indians were systematically excluded from Burma, forcing rich traders to become refugees and make a beeline for India. This long march over the Patkai hills to India became a feature again as Japanese soldiers (and the Indian National Army under Bose) advanced during World War 2. The experiences of Mariappan, a Tamil shopkeeper who fled to Tamil Nadu to start anew in Burma because of his lowly caste, and had to run again because of Burmese nationalism, are heart-wrenching. Then there is Uttam Singh, who had to endure a treacherous long march home to Punjab across the hills. Losing everything, it was a miracle that he and his family made it in one piece. Little snippets like these are the real reasons this book grows on readers.

Caught in the middle are the Naga people, whose land lies precariously between Burma and India. Although its leaders rallied for an independent Naga state, a fifth of the region fell under Burmese control. For decades to come, insurgency remained an issue. On April 1st 1937, Burma was carved out of British India, leaving many unanswered questions and triggering years of attempts to usurp power within Burma, followed by years of military rule and turmoil.

After its capture by the British East India Company, Aden was governed as part of the Bombay Presidency. It was an important coal station for ships. The administrators regarded Arabs as fundamentally different from Indians. To increase efficiency, the British decided in 1937 to rule the port of Aden as a British colony and its hinterland as a protectorate, much to the dismay of many in the Indian community there. The rise of Arab nationalism that followed, with the emergence of dynamic leaders such as Gamal Nasser of Egypt, who promoted Arab patriotism, meant the former Arabian Raj kingdom would no longer be associated with Indians. Indians, once regarded as cultured and civilised, were soon viewed as competitors. By the late 1950s, a reverse exodus began. Indians with deep roots in these Arab lands, including property, businesses, and connections, had to flee helter-skelter back to India and the UK. The Ambanis were one such family affected by this.

Although Jinnah initially joined the Indian National Congress, his affiliation with the Muslim League grew stronger as he felt that Gandhi was leading the party and the nation towards a more Hindu-centric direction. The way the Congress conducted its meetings was as if they were at a religious ceremony, with chanting of mantras and singing of religious hymns. Muslims began to question how they would be treated in an independent India with Congress at the helm of power. Even though Jinnah appeared as an icon of Hindu-Muslim unity, later events propelled him and other Muslims to push for a two-state solution for post-independent India.

In a way, as Gandhi promoted his Hindu agenda, the Burmese, with their Buddhist practice, also increasingly felt more detached from India, further fuelling Burmese nationalism.

The post-WW2 era saw many changes in India. Britain was in debt, and the push for independence and a separate nation for Muslims was in full force. The third Partition was about to take place, but it was preceded by mindless killings and violence in the areas destined to be part of Pakistan. The Bengal region witnessed brutality on Direct Action Day, led by Suhrawardy and his acolyte, Mujibur Rahman, who would later be instrumental in the formation of Bangladesh. Things were no better in Punjab. The confusion created by Radcliffe’s arbitrary carving of the country left people unsure which country they belonged to, even one month after the ‘tryst with destiny’ speech.

There was then a scramble to recruit the 550-plus princely states to join Pakistan or India, or to stand alone. This was the 4th Partition. Recruitment reached feverish heights in states such as Junagadh, Kashmir, and Hyderabad. Junagadh housed two sacred Hindu sites, Dwarka and Somnath, but was ruled by a Muslim Nawab. Kashmir had a Hindu king, but his subjects were predominantly Muslims. The situation was reversed in Hyderabad.

The shattered subcontinent of India has been in constant flux even after attaining self-rule. It has to deal with internal squabbles and hostile neighbours. The situation becomes complicated as the world divides itself into the blue corner of capitalism and the red corner of communism. Marxism and Maoist ideology spread across its states, creating skirmishes here and there.

Pakistan, too, had its own problems. The insistence on using Urdu as the national language was not taken lightly by the Bengali-speaking East Pakistanis. The discord reached a tipping point in 1971, when the Bengali Awami League won the Pakistani elections. Civil war broke out when West Pakistani leaders refused to accept the election results. India sent in its troops to squash West Pakistan’s army and effectively completed the Fifth Partition, the creation of the country of Bangladesh.

The recurring theme throughout the book is that people continue to help one another, regardless of the day’s political climate. Despite ideological differences, people help people. The book highlights numerous heart-stirring accounts of the extraordinary resilience and compassion of everyday people. These ‘unity in diversity’ stories emerge from small acts of kindness that transcend religious, social, and economic boundaries.

It remains to be debated by future historians whether the colonial masters can be blamed for shattering the land that spanned the Arabian Gulf to Southeast Asia. Given the insatiable appetite of human greed for land, wealth and power, are these sequelae inevitable anyway?

[1] https://samdalrymple.com/project-dastaan

[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Simon-Commission

Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.

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Stories

Old Harry’s Game

By Ross Salvage

It’s twelve o’clock on one of those autumnal spring days. The clouds hang expectantly, waiting to pour their copious contents on unsuspecting recipients; gone are the mare’s tails of the morning’s optimistic outlook. Unaware of the drama above, small children are playing in the enclosed space marked for the younger generations and their mums, one moment laughing, the next moment mopping skinned knees and bumped heads where the children’s end of the world cries are calmed not by nuclear disarmament but a well-placed wet wipe.

It’s twelve o’clock and Harry turns up for work. His metal grey dank and weary coat covers a series of layers of varying shades of dirty brown garments, thankfully mostly hidden from view. His wild and far-flung white hair frames a moth-eaten face, pockmarked and gnarled like tree bark. The hair at the crown of his head has long gone and is replaced by a scarred and spotted pate which it seems has witnessed much violence.

It’s a seasonal thing for me and Harry. Spring rekindles the relationship we’ve never had. I’ve noticed over the past three years that he is fading. The walk has become a shuffle, and every movement is considered carefully.

A few passers-by acknowledge his existence, but most avoid his gaze and he mindlessly watches them hurry past. A busy, well-turned-out lady stops and gives Harry a sandwich. He acknowledges the gift and pushes the contents of the cardboard container into his mouth in one go. The lady’s face is hidden from view, but I imagine there is a look of scorn aimed Harry’s way.

Cheek’s bulging, Harry moves between bins. Not much there yet, he’ll wait until the hour’s up and people with eyes bigger than their bellies will be ditching excess produce. He comes my way and slowly stops in front of me. I take out the extra tuna sandwiches I bought and offer them in his direction. He takes them and nods. He repeats the process of putting a whole sandwich into his mouth at once. The other he pockets for now.

“Any change?” He splutters as pieces of half chewed bread sprinkle the floor.

“No Harry, I don’t do money, you know that.”

He’ll get tired soon and rest. He won’t have any trouble getting a seat. If the benches are full, he merely stops in front of one and stares intently at an individual. This is Old Harry’s Game. It’s not long before they remove themselves. Then within a minute, he will have the bench to himself. If this fails, he just conspicuously starts scratching his crotch. Sure enough, in a wink of an eye Harry is laid out flat on the bench and the former occupants scattered around the park. However, today, he lands on my bench, with a thump.

“You can scratch your balls all you like Harry, I’m not moving.”

Harry reaches down and lifts his left trouser leg to reveal a large patch of red and yellow skin. He looks up at me and his face breaks from the usual inscrutable pose to one of pain and panic.

“I think it’s infected.” And just like that, Harry is no longer the surly tramp that inhabits my lunch spot, but someone in need.

“Do you want my help?” Harry nods.

Fifty minutes later myself and Harry are ensconced in the back of an ambulance. The ambulanceman asked Harry a few questions and I find out more in thirty seconds than I have in the last three years about Harry the tramp. He’s Harry Denton and he’s been on the street for ten years. He’s sixty-two, has one son somewhere, but he hadn’t seen him for a long time.

Thankfully St Andrew’s hospital was quiet for a change on that Tuesday morning. Doctor Sukhra got Harry to lie down. She was diminutive and ordered, and Harry didn’t argue. She seemed immune to the smell that emanated from her patient and I’m guessing he wasn’t an isolated case of ‘Homeless man turns up at Accident and Emergency’.

“Are you a relation?”

“I’m Gareth, A friend…sort of.”

“Now Mr Denton tell me all about this wound.”

It turns out he’d had it for weeks, cut it getting through some wire fencing. She attempted to cut the trousers, but Harry wouldn’t have it, so he rolled the leg up.

“Well, that’s one of the best examples of advanced gangrenous infection I’ve seen. I’m going to call Mr Archer down to look at it. He may be able to save that leg by treating the infection with antibiotics. You’ve left things late sir.”

The next few days I visited Harry. We didn’t talk really, there was no bonding as such, and I mostly ended up playing on my phone. Eventually, Mr Archer came around and broke the news that I’m pretty sure Harry didn’t want to hear.

“Right, Mr Denton. Unfortunately treating that leg hasn’t worked and if you don’t want to die from that infection, we are going to have to amputate that leg just below the knee. You’re damned lucky the infection hasn’t spread further.”

I think my lasting memory from that moment was Harry’s silence. There was a sigh and the shake of a head, but otherwise nothing. The operation would take place on Tuesday, at one o’clock.

“I’ll be back on Tuesday evening,” I assured Harry. It seemed not to register, and I left the hospital once again not sure if I had visited anybody. It was a fraught couple of days, and I was annoyed that my neat and tidy life had been taken over by a tramp.

Monday finally crawled into Tuesday, and at five o’clock I left my desk and headed to St Andrew’s. I picked up some Lucozade from the hospital shop, which somehow seemed little compensation to someone who had just had his leg cut off. I stood outside the ward for a bit, taking longer than usual to apply the hand gel and eventually with a conscious deep breath I went in. I got to Harry’s bed and stood there quizzically. There was a stranger lying in it. I checked I’d come to the right cubicle as they pretty much all look the same, and sure enough this was the correct one. I turned to the nursing station. Perhaps they had moved Harry to another ward following the operation. I was then escorted to an empty private room. The nurse closed the door behind us.

“You’re Harry Denton’s friend, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I clutched my Lucozade bottle a little tighter.

“I’m afraid Mr Denton didn’t make it. He suffered a heart attack whilst in surgery and never regained consciousness. I’m sorry. We have his belonging here, which aren’t many. We incinerated the clothes he came in.”

I was presented with a small parcel. Enclosed were a few coins, a small knife, tin opener and two sealed envelopes. I looked at the nurse.

“Do you know any of his relatives?” I shook my head.

“I’m sorry he didn’t pull through. Would you mind leaving your details at the desk, as you’re the only contact we have for him.” I did so, and left the hospital stunned. At home, I examined the two unopened envelopes. One addressed to me, the other to his son. What struck me was the quality of the handwriting. Neat, cursive and rather elegant. I opened my envelope.

Dear Gareth,

       Thank you for taking the time to look after me. I lost my wife several years ago, and myself and my son became estranged. We didn’t get on without her. Could you send the other envelope to him? It’s the last address I had. The money is for my funeral. Keep any that is left over. Thank you for the sandwiches.

         Harry

Also in the envelope was a cheque for four thousand pounds. So, I made the arrangements. God knows where he got the money from. I sent notification of the time and date of the funeral to Harry’s son, but no acknowledgement came back.

So, on a cold, wet April day, the vicar and I stood over Harry’s grave. The rain drove under my umbrella and my only black suit began to get damp at the knees. The Reverend Allison read the ‘Lord’s my Shepherd’, and we both cast some dirt onto the coffin. The vicar’s umbrella holder signalled to the grave diggers and Harry left the world, buried by an old stone wall in St Michael’s churchyard overlooked by a yew tree. A good spot I thought. Stephen Denton unfortunately didn’t appear, so it was just left to the three of us to say goodbye.

I don’t know if there is a heaven, but if there is I hope it has benches just like the ones in the park, where my tramp friend can play Old Harry’s game to his heart’s content and outrage old ladies on a regular basis. I think it made him happy.

Ross Salvage is a retired teacher who came late to writing. He has written comedy sketches for two review shows (Newsrevue-London and The Treason Show-Brighton). Three monologues can be found on YouTube (Spaghetti Bolognese for One/ Being Greta Thunberg/ Keeping Mum) and he has had two plays performed at the Dolman Theatre, Newport UK. The last one (Drawing the Line) was a winner in their one act play competition. Tea at Five, his first play, has been performed on stage and radio. Ross is currently seeking publication of his children’s novel, Octavius Blood and the Blood Oath.

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Tags Brighton, Greta Thurnberg, London, Newsrevue-London, Ross Salvage, The Treason Show-Brighton, UK.

Poetry

Be Good to me on Sunday

By Stephen Druce

BE GOOD TO ME ON SUNDAY


I don't need your devotion --
your attention -- or to listen,
connect with my emotions --
or to tell me I'm forgiven,

I don't need your affection
or to feel your tender touch,
I don't need your protection --
your support -- to be my crutch,

I don't need adoration --
all your compliments and thanking,
your true appreciation --
all your patience -- understanding,

I don't need all the accolades --
your gratitude -- respect,
your sympathy -- your serenades --
your charming intellect,

I don't need all your lavish gifts
and all your good advice,
don't save me in a snowdrift -
I don't need your sacrifice,

I don't need your agreement 
or to see my point of view,
just be good to me on Sunday --
and be good to me on Monday too.

Stephen Philip Druce is a poet and surrealist from Shrewsbury in the UK. He is published in the USA, Hungary, India, Canada, Ireland, the UK and South Africa. Stephen has also written for London theatre plays and BBC Radio 4 extra.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Tags BBC, Canada, Hungary, India, Ireland, Shrewbury, South Africa, UK., USA

Celebrating Humanity

Can Old Acquaintances be Forgot…

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date December 30, 2025
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Our January 2025 Cover: Art by Sohana Manzoor

It has been a strange year for all of us. Amidst the chaos, bloodshed and climate disasters, Borderless Journal seems to be finding a footing in an orphaned world, connecting with writers who transcend borders and readers who delight in a universe knit with the variety and vibrancy of humanity. Like colours of a rainbow, the differences harmonise into an aubade, dawning a world with the most endearing of human traits, hope.

A short round up of this year starts with another new area of focus — a section with writings on environment and climate. Also, we are delighted to add we now host writers from more than forty countries. In October, we were surprised to see Borderless Journal listed on Duotrope and we have had a number of republications with acknowledgement — the last request was signed off this week for a republication of Ihlwha Choi’s poem in an anthology by Hatchette US. We have had many republications with due acknowledgment in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and UK too among other places. Our team has been active too not just with words and art but also with more publications from Borderless. Rhys Hughes, who had a play performed to a full house in Wales recently, brought out a whole book of his photo-poems from Borderless. Bhaskar Parichha has started an initiative towards another new anthology from our content — Odia poets translated by Snehaprava Das. We are privileged to have all of you — contributors and readers — on board. And now, we invite you to savour some of our fare published in Borderless from January 2025 to December 2025. These are pieces that embody the spirit of a world beyond borders…

Poetry

Click on the names to read the poems

Arshi, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Snehaprava Das, Ron Pickett, Nziku Ann, Onkar Sharma, Harry Ricketts, Ashok Suri, Heath Brougher, Momina Raza, George Freek, Snigdha Agrawal, Stuart Macfarlane, Gazala Khan , Lizzie Packer, Rakhi Dalal, Jenny Middleton, Afsar Mohammad, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Rhys Hughes

Translated Poetry

The Lost Mantras, Malay poems written and translated by Isa Kamari

The Dragonfly, a Korean poem written and translated by Ihlwha Choi

Ramakanta Rath’s Sri Radha, translated from Odiya by the late poet himself.

Identity by Munir Momin, translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch

Found in Translation: Bipin Nayak’s Poetry, translated from Odiya by Snehaprava Das.

For Sanjay Kumar: To Sir — with Love by Tanvir , written for the late founder of pandies’ theatre, and translated from Hindustani by Lourdes M Surpiya.

Therefore: A Poem by Sukanta Bhattacharya, translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta.

Poetry of Jibanananda Das, translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam.

Tagore’s Pochishe Boisakh Cholechhe (The twenty fifth of Boisakh draws close…) translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty.

Fiction

An excerpt from Tagore’s long play, Roktokorobi or Red Oleanders, has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

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

A Lump Stuck in the Throat, a short story by Nasir Rahim Sohrabi translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Night in Karnataka: Rhys Hughes shares his play. Click here to read.

The Wise Words of the Sun: Naramsetti Umamaheswararao relates a fable involving elements of nature. Click here to read.

Looking for Evans: Rashida Murphy writes a light-hearted story about a faux pas. Click here to read.

Exorcising Mother: Fiona Sinclair narrates a story bordering on spooky. Click here to read.

The Fog of Forgotten Gardens: Erin Jamieson writes from a caregivers perspective. Click here to read.

Jai Ho Chai: Snigdha Agrawal narrates a funny narrative about sadhus and AI. Click here to read.

The Sixth Man: C. J. Anderson-Wu tells a story around disappearances during Taiwan’s White Terror. Click here to read.

Sleeper on the Bench: Paul Mirabile sets his strange story in London. 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.

Persona: Sohana Manzoor wanders into a glamorous world of expats. Click here to read.

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

Sandy Cannot Write: Devraj Singh Kalsi takes us into the world of advertising and glamour. Click here to read.

Non Fiction

Classifications in Society by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

The Day of Annihilation, an essay on climate change by Kazi Nazrul Islam, translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.

The Bauls of Bengal: Aruna Chakravarti writes of wandering minstrels called bauls and the impact they had on Tagore. Click here to read.

The Literary Club of 18th Century London: Professor Fakrul Alam writes on literary club traditions of Dhaka, Kolkata and an old one from London. Click here to read.

Roquiah Sakhawat Hossein: How Significant Is She Today?: Niaz Zaman reflects on the relevance of one of the earliest feminists in Bengal. Click here to read.

Anadi: A Continuum in Art: Ratnottama Sengupta writes of an exhibition curated by her. Click here to read.

Reminiscences from a Gallery: The Other Ray: Dolly Narang muses on Satyajit Ray’s world beyond films and shares a note by the maestro and an essay on his art by the eminent artist, Paritosh Sen. Click here to read.

250 Years of Jane Austen: A Tribute: Meenakshi Malhotra pays a tribute to the writer. Click here to read.

Menaced by a Marine Heatwave: Meredith Stephens writes of how global warming is impacting marine life in South Australia. Click here to read.

Linen at Midnight: Pijus Ash relates a real-life spooky encounter in Holland. Click here to read.

Two Lives – A Writer and A Businessman: Chetan Datta Poduri explores two lives from the past and what remains of their heritage. Click here to read

‘Verify You Are Human’: Farouk Gulsara ponders over the ‘intelligence’ of AI and humans. Click here to read.

Where Should We Go After the Last Frontiers?: Ahamad Rayees writes from a village in Kashmir which homed refugees and still faced bombing. Click here to read.

The Jetty Chihuahuas: Vela Noble takes us for a stroll to the seaside at Adelaide. Click here to read.

The Word I Could Never Say: Odbayar Dorj muses on her own life in Mongolia and Japan. Click here to read.

On Safari in South Africa by Suzanne Kamata takes us to a photographic and narrative treat of the Kruger National Park. Click here to read.

The Day the Earth Quaked: Amy Sawitta Lefevre gives an eyewitness account of the March 28th earthquake from Bangkok. Clickhere to read.

From Madagascar to Japan: An Adventure or a Dream: Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia writes of her journey from Africa to Japan with a personal touch. Clickhere to read.

How Two Worlds Intersect: Mohul Bhowmick muses on the diversity and syncretism in Bombay or Mumbai. Click here to read.

Can Odia Literature Connect Traditional Narratives with Contemporary Ones: Bhaskar Parichha discusses the said issue. Click here to read.

A discussion on managing cyclones, managing the aftermath and resilience with Bhaksar Parichha, author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage, and Resilience. Click here to read.

A discussion of Jaladhar Sen’s The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas, translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal, with an online interview with the translator. Click here to read.

A conversation with the author in Anuradha Kumar’s Wanderers, Adventurers, Missionaries: Early Americans in India . Click here to read.

Keith Lyons in conversation with Harry Ricketts, mentor, poet, essayist and more. Click here to read.

Tags Afsar Mohammad, Ahamad Rayees, Ajit Cour, American, Amy Sawitta Lafevre, Anuradha Kumar, Arshi, Aruna Chakravarti, Ashok Suri, Balochi, Bangkok, Bangladesh, Bauls, Bengali, Bhaskar Parichha, Bipin Nayak, Borderless Journal, C Christine Fair, C.J.Anderson-Wu, Chetan Dutta Poduri, Chihuahuas, Cyclones in Odisha – Landfall Wreckage and Resilience, Devraj Singh Kalsi, Dhaka, Dolly Narang, Duotrope, Erin Jamieson, Fakrul Alam, Farouk Gulsara, Fazal Baloch, Fiona Sinclair, Gazala Khan, George Freek, Gigi Baldavino Gosnell, Harry Ricketts, Hatchette, Heath Brougher, Hindutsani, Holland., Ihlwha Choi, India, Isa Kamari, Jaladhar Sen, Jane Austen, Japan, Jenny Middleton, Jibanananda Das, Karnataka, Kashmir, Keith Lyons, Kiriti Sengupta, Kolkata, Korean, Kruger National Park, Lizzie Packer, London, Lourdes M Supriya, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Madagaskar, Meenakshi Malhotra, Meredith Stephens, Mitali Chakravarty, Momina Raza, Mongolia, Munir Momin, Nandu, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao, Nasir rahim, Nazrul, Niaz Zaman, Nziku Ann, Obon, Odbayar Dorj, Odia, Odiya, Onkar Sharma, Pandies, Paritosh Sen, Paul Mirabile, Phillipines, Pijus Ash, Punjabi, Radha Chakravarty, Rakhi Dalal, Ramakanta Rath, Randriamamonjisoa Sylvie Valencia, Rashida Murphy, Ratnottama Sengupta, Red Oleanders, Rhys Hughes, Roktokorobi, Ron Pickett, Roquiah Sakhawat Hossein, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Sanjay Kumar, Satyajit Ray, Snehaprava Das, Snigdha Agrawal, Sohana Manzoor, Somdatta Mandal, South Australia, Sri Radha, Stuart MacFarlane, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Suzanne Kamata, Tagore, Taiwan, Tanvir, The Lost Mantras, The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas, UK., US, Vela Noble, Wanderers Adventurers Missionaries: Early Americans in India, White Terror

Essay

250 Years of Jane Austen: A Tribute by Meenakshi Malhotra

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date December 15, 2025
No Comments on 250 Years of Jane Austen: A Tribute by Meenakshi Malhotra

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is a great writer. The world created by her in just six novels continues to regale generations of readers with tales of love, marriage and money, a sentiment which would be reiterated by substantial numbers of her fans all over the globe. We could well echo Evelyn Waugh on the comic writer P. G. Wodehouse: that his (Wodehouse’s) inimitable world could never grow stale….that he has made a world for us (readers) to live in and delight in…

Jane Austen(1775-1817) has acquired a kind of cult status in the last couple of centuries. Such is her reputation that it has helped birth a veritable Jane Austen industry, replete with museums, memorabilia and mementos. There have been numerous novels and films inspired by Pride and Prejudice and Emma and many films (and remakes and adaptations) based on her novels.

16 December 2025 marks her 250th birth anniversary. Many museums in the UK and the USA have showcased exhibits which give viewers delightful glimpses into her life and writing. Her novels, full of wit and satire, provide an insightful commentary on the social hierarchies, as well as the quirks and oddities of her milieu.Their plots and themes are woven around women and the necessity of marriage, money and the determining power of money.With considerable irony and subtlety, she turns the mirror on how manners are a function of morality and good sense and not just a matter of appearances. Rarely didactic or preachy(with Mansfield Park as the only exception), her novels convey in perfectly nuanced and measured prose, how difficult and crucial it is for women to find the right spouse and space.

As the youngest daughter of a poor clergyman, mostly educated at home, Jane Austen was well aware of the value of an independent income and a home of their own. After the death of her father, she, her sister Cassandra and mother, rather like the Dashwood women in her novel Sense and Sensibility, had to move around as they were dependant on the financial support of her brothers, especially her wealthy brother, Edward. The pain of this unequal fortune and frequent shifts, which Jane and her sister Cassandra may have experienced, is expressed by Elinor and Marianne in the novel where they have to practice small economies and learn to scale their expectations according to their situation.

Austen led a largely sheltered and sequestered existence, surrounded by her family, bound to family duties which “might have been the more expected of a dependent spinster aunt such as she was.”[1] Many intelligent women, like Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennett’s friend in Pride and Prejudice are shown to accept inferior matches to escape from spinsterhood and the expectations of their natal families. The absence of livelihood opportunities for women in her day and the lack of any income of her own would have proved irksome to Austen and provided her with a further impetus to “write her way into some money,” as she wrote in a letter to her brother, Captain Francis Austen, in July 1813. Further, in another letter to her niece Fanny Knight, she writes that “single women have the propensity to be poor which is one very strong inducement for women to marry.”

Her novels often do not always reveal the full measure of Jane Austen’s remarkable achievement: how she, constrained by genteel poverty, “the lack of a room of her own”, and writing materials which had to be put away often to attend to obligatory family commitments, wrote her novels based on such close observation of, and acute insight into contemporary life. Her eye for detail is such that it invites frequent references to her own words: “A little bit of ivory, two inches wide, on which I work with a brush so fine as to produce little effect after much labour.” This modest disclaimer and “little effect” have, however, fascinated generations of readers and inspired hosts of writers.

That Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary is being celebrated and commemorated all over the English-speaking world perhaps comes as no surprise but it still leaves us with some questions. What is the relevance of her novels now? Are her novels relevant to present-day political realities, in addition to their astute observations on graded social hierarchies? Can we view her as a feminist? Does she merit inclusion and study in universities of the global south at a time when there is a strong drive to decolonise English, the language of the erstwhile colonial masters?

In her book Jane Austen: The Secret Radical, Helena Kelly writes of the subversive and radical potential and intent of Jane Austen’s novels. Kelly goes a step beyond Marilyn Butler’s 1987 Jane Austen and the War of Ideas that had suggested that Austen leaned on the conservative Burkean side when challenged by new-fangled Jacobinism with its ideas of equality and brotherhood, coming from France which disturbed hierarchies, ideas and values long held to be sacrosanct in traditional English society. Kelly suggests that far from being conservative, insulated from contemporary political concerns, Jane Austen held radical and possibly subversive views which she did not express openly but which are clearly configured in the world of her novels. In doing so, she made the novel a meaningful art-form and a vehicle for the expression of ideas around love, marriage and additionally also of debates on slavery, female education and emancipation.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in the want of a wife.”[2] This famous ironic opening sentence of Austen’s has captured attention and elicited many critical commentaries. It’s a brilliant masterstroke where Austen underlines the mindset of young women and their anxious mothers on the lookout for eligible bachelors. Articulated like a truism, it seeks to facetiously universalise a partial truth. The omniscient authorial tone and tenor encompasses the dominant themes of Pride and Prejudice in the opening statement itself. Marriage, women’s responses, men’s reactions, social rank and wealth — all the principal subjects of Austen’s writing are near universal themes. In her novels, Austen communicates the constraints within which women function and the limited or literally the only ‘choice’ available to them. Having experienced financial instability and economic dependence, she had a clear understanding of the constraints experienced by women in early nineteenth-century England.

The happy ending that we see where Elizabeth Benett indeed becomes “mistress of Pemberley” symbolises the moment when some women, having acquired a certain status, become custodians of the home and the private sphere. Some feminist historians like Gerda Lerner, however, have pin-pointed this moment as one where the economic marginalisation of women is complete, in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, and they are pushed back from the public sphere.

Even as women were participating in print culture and taking their place as readers and writers, they were increasingly relegated to the private sphere. The tendency to relegate women to the private sphere and making them responsible for the entire range of domestic tasks of nurturing and care-giving and thereby sustaining the edifice of domestic life is something that persists even now. The fact is that women’s participation in the paid economy and public sphere has added to their ‘double’ burden in the 21^st century.

Many critical voices have pointed out that Jane Austen’s writings do not directly mention the political situation, philosophical debates or religious discourses of the day centering on questions of social equality, justice, economic questions or the rights of man. Yet her fine crafted depiction of socio-economic relations, the dynamics of human relationships shaped and moulded by the struggle for wealth or power or status exposes the political reality, social hierarchy and the economic structure in society which shaped and informed all social transactions.

While the position of women may have improved in some spheres, there are still glaring gaps when it comes to women’s access to equality or justice. Changes in the last two centuries have gone beyond superficial tokenism. There are still miles to go in our march towards equality. It is in this larger context where there is a grudging acceptance or disavowal of women’s rights that the Jane Austen heroine’s negotiations with patriarchy remain relevant.

They demonstrate a mode of assertion, of agency in the face of inequality and in socially disadvantaged situations, which sustain an illusion of female empowerment and wish-fulfilment. It is this vision of romance, which, informed by a comic and somewhat ironical view of life, consolidates the exercise of female agency and makes the reading and re-reading of Jane Austen’s novels a rewarding and enriching experience. Her astute delineation of human delusion and human folly holds up a mirror to her society that often impels recognition on our part and remains forever relevant. Her perceptive analysis of the warp and weft of her society remains almost unmatched.

To recall Auden’s well-known lines on Jane Austen:

…yet he (Byron) cannot match the shock she (Austen) gives me;
Beside her, Joyce is as innocent as young grass. I feel truly uneasy, my mind unsettled,
Watching the English middle-class spinster
describe the power of money to attract love,
so plainly and soberly revealing
the economic foundations that sustain human society.

W.H.Auden’s lines on Jane Austen and the unlikely comparison with the prince of notoriety, Lord George Byron, never fails to instruct or entertain us. Such is the mark of great literature which leaves its imprint decades and centuries after its inception.

[1] Juthika Patankar, Wire, November 2025

[2] Pride and Prejudice

Meenakshi Malhotra is Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory. Her most recent publication is The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.

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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Interview

Harry Ricketts: Mentor, Poet, Essayist…

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date December 15, 2025
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Keith Lyons in conversation with Harry Ricketts, a writer and mentor who found himself across continents and oceans

Harry Ricketts has authored thirty books and mentored many writers, including Keith Lyons. Photo Courtesy: Robert Cross

Harry Ricketts is a New Zealand poet, essayist, and literary biographer whose work has gained recognition for its wit, lyricism, and insight into memory, identity, and everyday life. He has published widely across poetry, biography, and literary criticism, and his writing blends formal elegance with accessibility. After studying at Oxford University, he taught in the UK and Hong Kong before moving to New Zealand in the early 1980s. A respected teacher and mentor, Ricketts has shaped both the literary culture of New Zealand and the broader English-language literary world through his poetry, essays, and guidance to emerging writers. His works include a major biography of the British India-born journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer Rudyard Kipling, The Unforgiving Minute, Strange Meetings: The Poets of the Great War, and his most recent books, the memoir First Things, and the poetry collection Bonfires on the Ice. His How to Live Elsewhere (2004) is one of twelve titles in the Montana Estates essay series published by Four Winds Press. The press was established by Lloyd Jones to encourage and develop the essay genre in New Zealand. In his essay, Ricketts reflects on his move from England to New Zealand. In this interview, he brings to us not only on his writerly life but also his journey as a mentor for other writers.

KL: Tell us about your early life?

HR: My father was a British army officer, and we moved every two years till I was ten: England, Malaysia, two different parts of England, Hong Kong, England. My first words were probably Malay. From eight to eighteen, I went to boarding schools in England; apart from the cricket and one or two teachers, this was not a positive experience.

KL: How do you think moving around affected you, and your sense of self and being in the world? Does that transience shape your perspective and writing now?

HR: I think constantly moving around gave me a very equivocal sense of belonging anywhere and also a strong sense of needing to adapt (up to a point) to wherever I found myself. I was an only child, and friendship became and remains incredibly important to me. Perhaps this hard-wired sense of temporariness has contributed to my trying to produce as many different kinds of books as possible, but eventually you discover what you can and can’t do: I can’t write novels.

KL: How has your sense of ‘home’ evolved in your work over the years?

HR: As above, but I’ve lived in New Zealand for more than forty years, so that must count for something. My second wife, Belinda, was a Kiwi; for thirty years, she was a lovely person to share the world with. I’d say I like to live slightly at an angle to whatever community I’m in.

KL: How did books and poems come into your life, and what do you think have been influences on your later work?

HR: My mother was a great reader and read me Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne etc as a child. When I was seven, I had measles and had to stay in bed for a fortnight. I read Arthur Ransome’s Peter Duck and then I couldn’t stop. Books were a protection and a passion at boarding school. As for poetry, at school we had to learn poems by heart which I enjoyed and later recited them in class which was nerve-wracking. When I was fifteen – like many others – I fell in love with Keats, then a few years later it was Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, C.P. Cavafy ….. I was also listening to a lot of music, particularly singer songwriters like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson, Joni Mitchell.

Everything you read and listen to is an influence. My mind is a lumber-room of things I’ve read and listened to, things other people have said, things that have happened to me and to others, places I’ve been, love and friendship – and all that crops up in my poems in one way or another. Plath and Hughes were a wrong trail. It took me a while to work that out. Well into my twenties, I couldn’t stand Philip Larkin, but not now. I like witty, melancholy poets.

KL: Your first book, People Like Us: Sketches of Hong Kong was published when you were 27. How did that come about.? What satisfaction did you get from seeing your name in print?

HR: People Like Us is a mixture of short stories and song lyrics. Hong Kong, as I experienced it in the 1970s, (still very much a British colony) was a heterogeneous mishmash of styles, and I tried to mimic that mishmash in the pieces I wrote. I was pleased when it got published but it wasn’t much good.

KL: Can you describe your writing space?

HR: I have a small study, but since Belinda died two years ago, I’ve shifted to the kitchen table. She wouldn’t have approved, but the kitchen is light and airy and the stove-top coffee-maker close by.

KL: What is your writing process from start to finish?

HR: I do a lot of drafts. First thoughts can almost always be improved. A friend likes to say, ‘It’s not the writing; it’s the rewriting’, and I agree. But some poems have come quite quickly. When I’m writing prose, I often play music, but not when I’m working on a poem.

KL: What usually sparks a new poem for you: an image, a phrase, or a rhythm?

HR: It can be anything really. I’m usually doing something else entirely – writing an email or some piece of prose or just walking around – and something will interrupt me. It’s often a phrase which for some reason acts like a magnet, attracting another phrase or an images or an idea. It might be something I’m reading; this has happened with English poets like Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin, James Fenton, Hugo Williams and Wendy Cope and New Zealand poets like Bill Manhire, Fleur Adcock and Nick Ascroft. Occasionally, I’ve written a commissioned poem: for a friend’s wedding, say.

KL: How do you balance experimentation with accessibility in your work?

HR: I don’t think like that, but I do try not to repeat myself if I can help it. However, several poems of mine have had successors; so I wrote a poem in the mid-1980s about my six-year-old daughter Jessie called ‘Your Secret Life’, imagining her as a teenager and me waiting up late for her to return home, and my latest collection contains a ‘Your Secret Life 5’, written when she was forty. I’ve found myself writing a few poem-sequences recently, including one about an imaginary New Zealand woman poet. That was quite new for me.

KL: How do your roles as poet, biographer, and critic feed into each other?

HR: Constructively, I hope. I think you can always get prose out of yourself if you sit there long enough (fiction writers might disagree), but not poems. Some initial reverberation/interruption has to happen, some ‘spark’, as you put it. It’s all writing, of course, and writing is a habit. You have to keep doing it, otherwise that part of you switches itself off or attends to other things.

KL: Looking back across more than thirty books, what evolution do you see in your writing life, and what themes do you keep on coming back to?

HR: I think lots of writers (except the very vain ones) suffer from versions of ‘imposter syndrome’ and have problems with their personal myth — that they are a writer. I’ve got a bit more confident that I am a writer and in particular that I can write poems. Getting published helps a lot with the personal myth: something you’ve done is now out in the world. Once you publish a book, though, you lose any control you had over it. People may love it, hate or, worst of all, ignore it. But that’s just the deal.

I prefer the term preoccupations to themes. I’m preoccupied with people, places, trying to make sense of the past, happiness, the role of luck, life’s oddities, incongruities and ambiguities….

KL: You often talk about ‘gaps’, doubt, and ambiguity as central to your work. How do these function in your poetry today?

HR: To measure gaps, to be in doubt, to see the ambiguity in things: that just seems to me to be human. Poems can be acts of discovery or at least partial clarification. They can also simply preserve something: an experience, a moment, a realisation, some sense of those we love.

KL: You describe teaching as a kind of midwifery: helping writers bring out what is already within them. How did you arrive at that approach?

HR: Decades of teaching suggest to me that encouragement is more likely to help someone tell the stories they have it in them to tell rather than giving them a hard time. Writing can be a bit like giving birth and, for some, having support and encouragement is more helpful than trying to do it all on your own. Of course, in the end you do have to do most of it on your own.

KL: What advice did you find yourself giving students most often, and does it still hold true for you?

HR: I have taught poetry courses, but over the last twenty-five years I’ve mostly taught creative non-fiction. I often quote Lytton Strachey’s comment that ‘Discretion is not the better part of biography’ and then add: ‘Nor the better part of autobiography.’ I also suggest that mixed feelings are more interesting to write out of and about than clearcut ones. If you’re writing about someone else, pure admiration tends to produce hagiography, pure dislike a vindictive portrait – all warts, rather than warts and all. Serious doesn’t mean earnest; you can be serious and funny at the same time.

KL: What is the best advice you’ve received as a writer?

HR: The best advice it would have been helpful to be given (but no one did) would have been: ‘Don’t eat your heart out trying to be a kind of writer you aren’t (say, a novelist). Try to find out what kind of writer you are and pursue that as hard as you can.’ Chaucer knew: ‘The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.’

KL: Which authors do you most often recommend to students or emerging poets?

HR: I mostly suggest they should read as widely as they can and that they should read as a writer.

KL: What writers are you returning to most these days?

HR: I often go back to Montaigne’s essays and Orwell’s and Virginia Woolf’s. Poets I often reread include: Derek Mahon, Hugo Williams, Thomas Gray, Wendy Cope, Fleur Adcock, Edward Thomas, Andrew Marvell, Seamus Heaney, Lauris Edmond, Anne French, Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, Philip Larkin …

KL: What responsibilities do reviewers have to writers, and what responsibilities do they have to readers?

HR: Reviewers have an obligation to be fair-minded towards their subject and to write something as worth reading (ie well-written and enjoyable) as any other piece of prose.

KL: How can reviewers give criticism that is honest yet constructive?

HR: They should try to understand what the writer was aiming at (rather than the thing they think the writer should have been aiming at) and judge the work accordingly. This is easier said than done. Writers rarely remember the positives reviewers say, and rarely forget the negatives. Reviewing is hard, if you’re trying to do a good job. In a small country like New Zealand, there’s only one-and-a-half degrees of separation, which makes puffing and pulling your punches a tempting prospect.

KL: What kind of legacy do you hope to leave through your poetry and teaching?

HR: Whatever legacy you might leave (and few writers or teachers in the scale of things leave any) is not up to you. But of course writers hope people will positively remember something they’ve written and that their work will continue to be read after their death. When I think of the teachers who have matter to me, I think of them with immense gratitude and I hope some of my pupils might feel something of that, too.

KL: Is there a question about your work that you wish people asked more often?

HR: Interesting question, but I don’t really have an answer. Perhaps ‘Why, given that you also write plenty of poems in free verse, do you still think that there are possibilities in fixed poetic forms like the sonnet, villanelle and triolet?’ I could talk about that for a long time.

KL: If your life was a movie, what would the audience be screaming out to you now?

HR: Keep going! Well, I’d like to think they might.

KL: What’s next for you? What are you working on now?

HR: I’m threequarters of the way through a second volume of memoirs and about to write about a particularly difficult part of my life. I want to finish that and then a third volume, if I can. And write more poems.

*This interview has been conducted through emails.

Click here to read Harry Rickett’s poem.

Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’sEditorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.

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

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