Tumi Kon Kanoner Phulby Tagore andAnjali Loho Morby Nazrul, love songs by the two greats, have been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click hereto read.
One Life, One Love, 300 Children : Keith Lyons writes of Tendol Gyalzur, a COVID 19 victim, a refugee and an orphan who found new lives for many other orphans with love and an ability to connect. Click here to read.
When West Meets East & Greatness Blooms: Debraj Mookerjee reflects on how syncretism impacts greats like Tagore,Tolstoy, Emerson, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi and many more. Click here to read.
Dilip Kumar: Kohinoor-e-Hind: In a tribute to Bollywood legend Dileep Kumar, Ratnottama Sengupta, one of India’s most iconic arts journalists, recollects the days the great actor sprinted about on the sets of Bombay’s studios …spiced up with fragments from the autobiography of Sengupta’s father, Nabendu Ghosh. Click here to read.
Are Some of Us More Human than Others ?: Meenakshi Malhotra ponders at the exclusivity that reinforces divisions, margins and borders that continue to plague humankind, against the backdrop of the Women’s Month, March. Click here to read.
Reminiscences from a Gallery: MF Husain: Dolly Narang recounts how she started a gallery more than four decades ago and talks of her encounter with world renowned artist, MF Husain. Click hereto read.
Baraf Pora (Snowfall) by Rabindranath Tagore,gives a glimpse of his first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Clickhere to read.
Cherry Blossom Forecast: Suzanne Kamata brings the Japanese ritual of cherry blossom viewing to our pages with her camera and words. Clickhere to read.
Two Pizza Fantasies, Rhys Hughes recounts myths around the pizza in prose, fiction and poetry, Click here to read.
An Alien on the Altar!: Snigdha Agrawal writes of how a dog and lizard add zest to festivities with a dollop of humour. Click here to read.
Where it all Began: Sybil Pretious recounts her first adventure, an ascent on Mt Kilimanjaro at the age of sixty. Clickhere to read.
Conversations
Rabindranath Tagore: A Universal Bard.: This conversation between Aruna Chakravarti and Sunil Gangopadhyay that took place at a Tagore Conference organised by the Sahitya Akademi in Kochy in 2011. Click here to read.
Sriniketan: Tagore’s “Life Work”: In Conversation with Professor Uma Das Gupta, Tagore scholar, author of A History of Sriniketan, where can be glimpsed what Tagore considered his ‘life’s work’ as an NGO smoothening divides between villagers and the educated. Click here to read. (Review & Interview).
In conversation with the late Akbar Barakzai, a Balochi poet in exile who rejected an award from Pakistan Academy of Letters for his principles. Click here to read.
Jim Goodman, an American traveler, author, ethnologist and photographer who has spent the last half-century in Asia, converses with Keith Lyons. Click here to read.
InBridge over Troubled Waters, the late Sanjay Kumar tells us about Pandies, an activist theatre group founded by him that educates, bridging gaps between the divides of university educated and the less fortunate who people slums or terror zones. Click here to read.
In Lessons Old and New from a Stray Japanese Cat, Keith Lyons talks with the author of The Cat with Three Passports, CJ Fentiman who likes the anonymity loaned by resettling in new places & enjoys creating a space for herself away from her birthplace. Click hereto read.
Fiction
Aparichitaby Tagore: This short story has been translated as The Stranger by Aruna Chakravarti. Click hereto read.
Hena by Nazrul has been translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read.
Playlets byRabindranath Tagore: Two skits that reveal the lighter side of the poet. They have been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.
Abhagi’s Heaven, a poignant story by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read.
An Eternal Void, a Balochi story by Munir Ahmed Badini translated by Fazal Baloch. Click hereto read.
The Witch, a short story by renowned Bengali writer Tarasankar Bandopadhyay (1898 to 1971), translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Clickhere to read.
I Grew into a Flute: Balochi Folktale involving magic retold by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Give Me A Rag, Please:A short story by Nabendu Ghosh, translated by Ratnottama Sengupta, set in the 1943 Bengal Famine, which reflects on man’s basic needs. Click here to read
Rakhamaninov’s Sonata: A short story by Sherzod Artikov, translated from Uzbeki by Nigora Mukhammad. Click hereto read.
The Magic Staff , a poignant short story about a Rohingya child by Shaheen Akhtar, translated from Bengali by Arifa Ghani Rahman. Click here to read.
Khaira, the Blind, a story by Nadir Ali, has been translated from Punjabi by Amna Ali. Click here to read.
The Browless Dolls by S.Ramakrishnan, has been translated from Tamil by B Chandramouli. Click hereto read.
No Man’s Land: Sohana Manzoor gives us surrealistic story reflecting on after-life. Click hereto read.
The Protests Outside: Steve Ogah talks of trauma faced by riot victims in Nigeria. Click here to read.
Flash Fiction: Turret: Niles M Reddick relates a haunting tale of ghosts and more. Click here to read.
Henrik’s Journey: Farah Ghuznavi follows a conglomerate of people on board a flight to address issues ranging from Rohingyas to race bias. Click hereto read.
Does this Make Me a Psychic?; Erwin Coombs tells a suspenseful, funny, poignant and sad story, based on his real life experiences. Click here to read.
Phôs and Ombra: Paul Mirabile weaves a dark tale about two people lost in a void. Click here to read.
A Queen is Crowned: Farhanaz Rabbani traces the awakening of self worth. Click here to read.
Lara Geyla converses about her memoir, Camels from Kyzylkum, and her journey as an immigrant.
Lara Geyla
A migrant’s journey is never easy – it’s rife with adjustments and changes. Adapting to a country that is totally different from the one in which an immigrant is born, requires adjustments of various kinds, including learning new languages. Migrants also need to find acceptance and friends in the country they move to as did Lara Geyla, when she migrated out of a crumbling USSR to America, pausing by the way of Austria and Italy. She recorded her journey in Camels from Kyzylkum: A Memoir of my Life Journey.
Kyzylkum is a desert located in Uzbekistan. Geyla lived and worked in the desert for twenty years. She learnt that the camels were the hardiest of creatures. Her life’s journey like that of any other immigrant, had been hard. So, at the start of her memoir, she tells us: “I am a camel from Kyzylkum, too. Like a camel, I have adapted and found ways to help myself survive in the desert. As a camel stores his energy in its hump as part of its legendary ability to travel hundreds of miles without food and water, I stored the energy of my spirit to help me stay strong as I crossed continents alone, with two suitcases and $140 in my pocket in my search for a better life.”
Perhaps, this is a resilience that each migrant needs to unearth to settle into a country of their choosing, or sometimes thrust on them due to external factors like war and climate change. Through her memoir, we get glimpses of different parts of the world as she inched her way closer to the country she sought. People helped her along. At one point, when she arrived at the wrong destination for an interview with the American embassy that was crucial to her move to the country of her choice, an Italian taxi driver drove her at breakneck speed to the right address, where after a few questions, she was given the permission to emigrate.
This was in the 1990s. After moving to America, she helped more of her family to move to the country which gave her refuge. She found acceptance in a firm as a programmer/ analyst in Maryland. She lives now in her new home in Florida with her new family and friends and basks in their acceptance and love. In this exclusive, she talks to us of her journey.
Tell us what made you write Camel from Kyzylkum?
I had wanted to write my life story for a long time, as I believed my life journey was filled with incredible places and events. However, while I was working, I never had the time to focus on writing. Even then, I knew that if I ever wrote a book, it would be titled Camel from Kyzylkum. I finally wrote my story during the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020–21, when we were confined to our home.
Where in the Soviet Union did you grow up? What was your childhood like? Tell us about your schooling and a child’s life in the Soviet Union? How was it different from what we find in other countries?
I was born into a Jewish family in Vinnitsa, a city in southwestern Ukraine, not far from the capital, Kiev. At the time, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. Life wasn’t easy for those born into Jewish families in the Soviet Union; being Jewish was considered a nationality, not a religion. In fact, during my time there, we lived under the slogan: “Religion is poison for the people.” Religion was heavily suppressed, and atheism was strongly promoted during my time there. Although I grew up much like other children—playing the same games and attending the same schools—I was aware from a young age that there was a stigma attached to being Jewish. I felt different but didn’t understand why. After 1948, anti-semitism in the Soviet Union reached new heights, particularly during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, when numerous Yiddish poets, writers, painters, and sculptors were arrested or killed. During my time there, antisemitism was consistently supported by the Soviet state and used as a tool to consolidate power.
When I was about 12 years old, my parents divorced, and my mother and I moved to Belarus to live with my grandmother. We all shared the same apartment. Soon after, I was sent to a boarding school, which I hated but had no choice and stayed there until I graduated. I’ve written about all of this in my book.
How was life different from what we find in other countries? That likely depends on the country you compare it to. Despite the many challenges and negative aspects of life in the Soviet Union, one notable advantage was the education system. It was of quite high quality, mandatory, and free.
You moved with your husband to the desert of Kyzylkum. What was it like living in the desert? In tents?
For the first three years, our young family lived in a small settlement belonging to a geological expedition. It really was in the middle of nowhere. The nearest civilized city, Navoi, was 200 kilometers (124 miles) away. Our settlement, simply called Geological Party #10, and it consisted of about two dozen barracks under the blistering sun, set in a barren landscape devoid of vegetation and offering hostile living conditions for humans, plants, and animals alike. The summers were extremely hot. The winters were harsh. At night, the wind became a growling, tumbling mix of sand and snow. I lay awake for hours, listening to the eerie howling outside. It was one of those winds that frayed nerves, made your hair stand on end, and left your skin crawling.
After three years, we moved to Muruntau, a slightly larger geological settlement, but we still lived in barracks. From there, we relocated to Zarafshan, a city in the heart of the Kyzylkum Desert of Uzbekistan, where we finally got our first apartment.
I have written extensively about our life in Zarafshan in my memoir, Camel from Kyzylkum. However, you might find it interesting to read an article by a Canadian reporter who accidentally stumbled upon Zarafshan while exploring Google Earth. He wrote and published the piece online in 2011, In Zarafshan.
What work were you doing there? What jobs did you do in the USSR? Did you go back to university there?
I earned my degree from a geological college in Kiev and worked as a geophysicist in the Kyzylkum Desert, focusing on gold and uranium deposits. Geophysics involves using surface methods and specialised equipment to measure the physical properties of the Earth’s subsurface and identify anomalies. These measurements help to make interpretations about a geological site, detect and infer the presence and location of ore minerals. Geophysical data is then integrated with surface geological observations to develop a comprehensive understanding of a region’s geological structure and history.
My job required me to work in various environments, including the open fields of the desert, open-pit and underground mines, as well as in the office. In fact, the Muruntau gold deposit in the Kyzylkum Desert, where I once worked, was and still is being mined as the world’s largest open-pit gold mine.
You have told us you were part Ukrainian and part Jewish? Judaism is faith — not a geography. So, were both your parents Ukrainian?
I was born into a Jewish family in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. Both of my parents were Jewish and born in the Soviet Union. In my time there, Judaism was not considered a faith but rather a nationality. Nationality was stated in one’s passport. Synagogues were closed, and like most other Jewish families in the Soviet Union, our did not follow Jewish religious or spiritual practices. Instead, we celebrated all Soviet holidays. However, I do remember my father’s family gathering for Hanukkah and giving us, little kids, gifts and money. My husband, however, was Ukrainian, which made our daughter part Ukrainian and part Jewish.
Were you there during glasnost? Did things improve for you after the Perestroika and Glasnost? Please elaborate. How long did you stay after the dissolution of the USSR within your country of birth?
I would like to answer to this question with excerpt from my memoir Camel from Kyzylkum:
“Glasnost was understood as the movement in the USSR towards greater openness and dialogue. In the period from 1987-1991, Glasnost became synonymous with “publicity,” “openness,” and it reflected a commitment by the Gorbachev administration to allow Soviet citizens to publicly discuss the problems and potential solutions of their system.
I still lived in Zarafshan and took an active part in Perestroika and Glasnost—I was not afraid to express my opinions or attend meetings. I truly believed that we could change life for the better. One day I came to work only to find out that agents from the KGB had searched my office. KGB stands for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, which translates to “Committee for State Security” in English.
At the time of Perestroika and Glasnost, books that previously had been available only through the underground distribution in the Soviet Union became legal, and excerpts were printed in many publications. I read a lot, and these books opened my eyes to the bloody recent history of our country—from the 1918 Revolution to the present day, on to all of the misleading, hidden truth, hypocrisies of our government, and the Soviet system as a whole. I realised that all of the concepts and ideas that they had taught us from early childhood were mendacious.”
I left the Soviet Union in October 1989, and as punishment, my citizenship was revoked. The Soviet Union ultimately collapsed on December 26, 1991, by which time I was already living in the United States.
Why did you want to move out of the Soviet Union? Can you give us the timeframe in which you moved out in terms of Glasnost and other events?
The Glasnost period in the Soviet Union was from 1987 to 1991. I left in 1989.
The late 1980s were years of exodus from the Soviet Union. Gorbachev opened the door of the “iron curtain” and everyone who could escape was leaving. I moved from Zarafshan, Uzbekistan, to Gomel, Belarus, in 1988. At that time, every single day platforms at the Gomel railroad station were full of people: families who were lucky to get exit visas, and relatives and friends who came to say their last goodbyes to them.
There was a code word: “to leave.” If you whispered it with a mysterious gravitas, there would be no need to ask further questions.
When I was asked if I would consider leaving, I said “yes” with no hesitation. I did not know what leaving would entail, but I started to go through the process as everyone else did. I apprised the family members, but there was no need or time to have long discussions—it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and the “iron curtain” could be down again at any time. We all knew how challenging and frightening immigration could be, but we had a hope that after all of the suffering, we could build a better life.
How is it you were on the list for visas and others were not given the privilege? Who were the people given the right to leave the Soviet Union?
Under Soviet law, no person could leave the country without the government’s permission, granted through an exit visa. This regulation applied not only to Soviet citizens but also to foreigners, including diplomatic personnel. Emigration policies varied over time and were always challenging to navigate.
In the 1970s, Jewish people in the USSR, often referred to as “refuseniks,” staged hunger strikes to protest the Soviet government’s refusal to grant them permission to emigrate to Israel. These protests highlighted the severe restrictions on their right to leave the country and garnered international attention, becoming a pivotal part of the movement advocating for Soviet Jewry, an international human rights campaign for Soviet Jews.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, liberalised emigration policies allowed many Soviet Jews to leave, with more than half of the Jewish population emigrating, primarily to Israel, the United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia. However, it wasn’t only Jewish individuals departing; anyone who could endure the convoluted emigration process took the opportunity to leave. As a punishment, those who emigrated had their citizenship revoked.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) played a vital role in assisting people leaving the Soviet Union, supporting them on their journeys to new destinations. HIAS continues to advocate for the protection of refugees and ensures displaced individuals are treated with the dignity they deserve.
For me, navigating the bureaucratic barriers of Soviet emigration policies in the late 1980s was extremely difficult, but my Jewish heritage worked to my advantage. After overcoming numerous hurdles, I left the Soviet Union at the end of October 1989. I had two suitcases, $140 in my pocket, and no certainty about my final destination. With my Soviet citizenship revoked, I became a “citizen of the World”.
Why did you choose to move to the USA over all other countries?
When I left the Soviet Union at the end of October 1989, I knew my point of departure but not necessarily my destination. The only identity document I had was an exit visa from the USSR and the train ticket to Vienna, Austria. I held no citizenship in any country and knew very little about immigration laws or processes. My ultimate goal was to reach America because I believed that the United States was the land of opportunity like no other country. During my interview in Austria, I was given the option to select a country I wanted to go to, and I chose the United States.
Other than language, did you have to study further to get a job in the US? How is working in the US different from working in the USSR?
Yes, I wore many hats and attended various schools before landing my professional job in the USA. First, I had to learn English. My journey began with earning a certificate as a nurse assistant. Next, I attended school to become a medical assistant, followed by completing a two-year program and passing the exam to become an X-ray technician. I worked in that role until I later completed a course for computer programming.
My first job in the US, however, was clearing tables at Burger King. I worked as a waitress, cleaned people’s houses, worked in department stores, and babysat young children. I did whatever it took to survive and was never afraid of hard work.
Working in the US was vastly different from working in the USSR, mainly because of the many barriers I faced: learning a new language, navigating cultural differences, adapting to unfamiliar social norms, and constantly acquiring new skills. Despite the challenges, I succeeded. Now, I’m happily retired, enjoying life in a beautiful community in Southwest Florida.
Have you ever returned to Russia after you migrated? How did you find it, especially as the Soviet Union broke up into so many countries?
My husband and I traveled to Ukraine in 2010, by which time it was an independent country. This was after the Orange Revolution1, a series of protests primarily in Kiev in response to election fraud. The revolution, which unfolded between late November 2004 and January 2005, brought significant political upheaval. Viktor Yushchenko was elected president on December 26, 2004, after weeks of turmoil that thrust the country into chaos.
As the informal leader of the Ukrainian opposition coalition, Yushchenko was one of two main candidates in the 2004 presidential election, the other being Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. During the campaign, Yushchenko survived an assassination attempt when he was poisoned with dioxin, leaving him disfigured. Despite this, he persevered and emerged victorious in the re-run election.
When we visited Ukraine in July 2010, the memory of the Orange Revolution was still fresh. We explored many cities, stayed with my childhood friend in Vinnitsia, and visited relatives in Yalta, Crimea. Crimea, sadly, was annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014.
The changes in Ukraine since my time living there were noticeable, but some things remained the same. We especially enjoyed our time in Yalta—a vibrant city filled with cheerful faces, where people celebrated life at this beautiful Black Sea resort.
In June 2018, during a cruise around the Baltic countries, we spent a day in St. Petersburg, Russia. The city and its museums are undeniably remarkable, as they always have been. However, the rude customs control at the port, long lines at the museums, being rushed through the exhibits, and other all-too-familiar experiences immediately brought back unpleasant memories from the past. After this brief visit, I have no desire to ever return to this country.
So, are you writing more books?
I’m considering it. However, finding the time to focus has been challenging. Between our extensive travels, my photography and video projects, marketing my memoir, and other everyday activities, my schedule hasn’t left much room for writing another book.
The first time I visited Rome was in early 1990. I was on a mission to find a better life after escaping the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union. As punishment for my escape, my USSR citizenship was revoked, leaving me stateless, with the status of ‘Refugee of the World.’ I traveled light across continents, with just two suitcases filled with family photos, a few books, spoons, and small pots. I had almost no money in my pocket, but Rome and Italy were still a wonderful discovery and a source of immense cultural enrichment for me in 1990.
During that time, I visited Rome and its historical landmarks such as Vatican City, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Trevi Fountain, to name a few. I also had the most important interview of my life in Rome, at the American Embassy, where I received the green light to go to the USA!
In May of 2024, during our Mediterranean odyssey, we spent some time in Rome. It was a deeply nostalgic and memorable experience for me! Revisiting Rome after so many years brought back a flood of memories and allowed me to see familiar places with new eyes.
I would like to share with you a chapter about my life in Italy in 1990, from my memoir Camel from Kyzylkum:
Italy
My first impression of Italy was that it was quite dirty and noisy. After I got used to the spotless cleanliness of streets and places in Austria, it disappointed me to see trash on the streets and in public places, along with graffiti. For the first time, I saw homeless people sleeping on rags on the marble floor of the subway in Rome. I also noticed how Italians get pretty animated when they talk, compared to very restrained Austrian people. But with time, my opinion about Italy changed—I fell in love with the country, and I grew to love the warmth of Italian people. I came to love Italian bread. The Italian language was like music to my ears, and I even learned how to speak some basics.
For the first two weeks in Italy, we were stationed at the bungalow summer camp south of Rome. It was January, and even during the day it was pleasantly warm outside, but at night it was cold. These bungalow houses did not have heat and were not equipped for the wintertime. I remember I was sleeping in my warmest clothes and even covered myself with a mattress from a spare bed in my bungalow. Nevertheless, I got very sick with a cold, so sick that I thought I would not survive it. During the day I walked to the seafront and sat there for long hours—the warm Mediterranean sun and fresh, salty sea air helped me to slowly recover.
After two weeks in the bungalow summer camp, we were told that we needed to rent apartments for ourselves in the nearby city of Torvaianica, a city south of Rome that was founded in the 1940s and is best known for its beaches. It has a population of about 12,700 inhabitants and extends for about eight kilometers along central Lazio’s coast. The refugee organization, HIAS, gave us money to cover rent and food. I do not remember the exact amount it was per person, but it was just enough for us not to be on the street dying from hunger. Later on, when I was already in the United States and working, I was required to reimburse HIAS for what they’d spent on me. I paid it back gradually, a small amount each month.
There were plenty of apartments available for rent in January. Many of them were at the seaside. Refugees from the Soviet Union usually shared one apartment—a two-room apartment for two families, a three-room apartment for three families. I was alone and in no way could I afford to pay for a room on my own. Someone from the group introduced me to a young fellow who was traveling alone, too. His actual name completely escapes my memory at present, but I’ll call him “Misha.”
Misha was in his early twenties. He was very smart and even knew English. For the first time in his life, he was separated from his parents whom he had left behind in the Soviet Union. Misha and I rented a room in the two-room apartment on the first floor of a building at the seaside. We could sit on the balcony and look at the beach and the Mediterranean Sea in front of us. The enormous wardrobe that was in the room divided our room into two halves to give each of us some privacy. Misha was absolutely unprepared for everyday life. He did not know how to manage the little money we had, how to do grocery shopping, or how to cook food. I felt sorry for him and suggested that he contribute some amount of money for food and I would shop and cook for both of us. Misha was happy to do that.
When I went for an interview for the first time at the American Embassy in Rome, I was asked a lot about places I had worked in the Kyzylkum Desert. They had a detailed map of Uzbekistan on the table and asked me about Zarafshan, Navoi, Uchkuduk. I was surprised; I thought they already knew more than I did.
After the first interview, I had to wait for the second one, a very important interview, after which a decision would be made on whether to allow my entrance to the United States. Many families were denied the entrance visa to the United States without being given any specific reason or explanation. These people had stayed in Italy for six months, for a year, or even longer. They found some jobs to support themselves and their families. Some of them decided to stay in Italy for good. It was an unsettling time.
Every day at 6:00 p.m., all Soviet refugees who stayed in Torvaianica gathered together at the central square of the city. There were a lot of us, and while I do not know the exact number, I remember how the square was filled with a Russian-speaking crowd, to the amazement of the local population of Italians. We were waiting for the messenger, usually a man who would stand in the middle of the crowd and read the list of people who had gotten permission to go to America. Even though I had not yet had a second interview in the American Embassy, these daily meetings were the biggest entertainment of the day and a learning experience—people mingled together, told stories, shared news, and made friends.
Misha always found me in the crowd after the announcing part was over and asked, “What’s for dinner tonight?” It seemed that he was always hungry. Even though I did not want to go home yet, I felt an obligation to serve him dinner. I thought he was acting like a little baby and since I was not his mother, it was bothering me. There was only one time when I sent Misha to the store to get something for me while I was cooking. He returned with an ice cream cake, our money for two weeks of our food ration gone. We divided the cake among all of the people who lived in both rooms of the apartment. This was the last straw for me. I canceled our contract and let Misha be on his own. Our living arrangements in the apartment remained the same, but I did not cook for him anymore. Meanwhile, we got a new tenant in our room. Another woman, approximately my age, joined us. Three of us shared the room up to the time of my departure.
The distance between Torvaianica and Rome was about 40 kilometers (25 miles), and there was bus transportation. I used the bus a few times. The ride was about 50 to 60 minutes. I did not go often, because the bus was usually packed with people and reminded me very much of the buses in the Soviet Union. Also, traveling by bus costs money I could not spare. Very soon I learned I could get to Rome by hitchhiking—every car driven by an Italian man would stop when they saw a young, pretty woman hitchhiking on the road. Several times I even hitchhiked with Misha. When the car stopped, I told the driver that he was my brother. I must say that most of the time Italians were very reckless drivers, and I felt uncomfortable in the car quite often.
I loved my outings to Rome. I enjoyed exploring the beautiful city where every stone has a history. Once or twice a month, all museums in Rome were free and I took advantage of this. Visiting the Colosseum, St. Peter’s Basilica, the museums of the Vatican, including the Sistine Chapel and the Trevi Fountain, to name a few, all became unforgettable experiences and cultural enrichment for me.
On the days when I was not traveling to Rome, I was discovering Torvaianica. Some items and events from my time there will be engraved in my memory forever.
For instance, there was a shoe and leather accessories store across from our apartment. In the Soviet Union, Italian shoes and leather accessories always were part of every woman’s desirable outfit, but they were difficult to get. In the store across the street was everything I could only dream about: elegant leather shoes, hand purses, belts. I visited the store quite often—not to buy, just to look. The store seemed to me big and exceptional. Years later, in 2001, Sparky and I traveled to Italy and visited Torvaianica. We found the beachfront apartment where I lived at the beginning of 1990 and a shoe store across the road. To my amusement, all at once, I saw an ordinary little store where I calmly browsed —it did not give me the excitement that it had in 1990. Perception is everything, and I was a very different person by 2001.
The main drag of Torvaianica with its famous Italian bakeries, restaurants, and shopping sprawled along the Mediterranean coast. On the snuggly, warm Italian evenings of January and February, I liked to stroll the street, window shopping and people watching. Italian people did not like to hold back their emotions—they laughed, they talked loudly, helping themselves with gestures, and I loved the music of the Italian language. I always stopped at the window of one particular bakery to examine all of the wonderful baked goods on display, though I could not afford to buy any. One of these baked goods was filled with a mix of rich semolina and ricotta cheese, and was a shell-shaped pastry called Sfogliatelle; Zeppole was another pastry consisting of a deep-fried dough ball dusted with powdered sugar and sometimes filled with various sweets; there was also biscotti, Venetian cookies, and hot chocolate cake—I could not take my eyes off of these beautiful culinary arts. One evening, the owner of the store, a middle-aged Italian man wearing a white chef’s coat and hat, with a lush body, dark mustache, and kind, laughing eyes, came out carrying a plate with a few biscotti and Venetian cookies and offered it to me to taste. Bewildered by his offer and the fact that he, probably, had been watching me evening after evening in front of his window, I did not have the strength to refuse his marvelous-looking, tasty Italian pastries.
Finally, the day came when I received a letter from the American Embassy in Rome with the invitation for the second and most important interview of my life. As I struggled with the English language then, I clearly understood the date and time of my interview, but I completely missed the location. Besides, I was pretty sure that there was only one location for the American Embassy in Rome and I knew where it was. But I was wrong.
The interview was scheduled for 12:00 p.m. I wanted to be collected and prepared. To eliminate any possibility of being late, I arrived at the American Embassy in Rome at 11:00 a.m. It was a sunny, beautiful, spring-like day; I lost myself for a short time (while waiting) on the fascinating streets of Rome. The sidewalk cafes were full of business people enjoying their lunch hours. I was thinking, “Is there going to be a time in my life when I, like them, can sit leisurely at a sidewalk cafe and have lunch? And feel myself as confident, relaxed, and happy as these people?” I wanted to believe that this time would eventually come in my life.
At about 11:45 a.m., I returned to the American Embassy expecting to soon be called by the guard. There was a good crowd of people waiting, like me, to be called. One by one they went inside until only I was left waiting. It was after 12:00 p.m. I got anxious—I began to wonder why I was not being called. I showed my paper to the guard. He explained to me (mostly by gestures and with some Italian phrases) that my interview was in a completely different location on the other side of the city. I was shocked. First, I had no money to get a taxi. Second, I thought my life was doomed. With this realization, I stood on the curb of the street in the center of Rome and sobbed bitterly. Tears rolled down my face.
Well, the Italian people did not easily tolerate this scene. Soon enough, a taxi stopped by me. The driver got out of the cab and asked me what had happened. Continuing to cry, I showed him my paper invitation for the interview and tried to explain to him that I had come to the wrong location. He looked at the paper and then at me and started vigorously gesticulating, pushing me inside his cab. Even inside the taxi, I could not stop crying. The driver turned around to me shouting some equivalent of “Shut up” in Italian. I became quiet. I realized he was going to drive me to the address where I needed to be. While he was driving, I feverishly thought about how I would pay for my ride as I had very little money in my pocket. But I was wearing a gorgeous silver ring with a gemstone on the ring finger of my left hand. The ring was handmade with an intricate Gothic design and a big, beautiful, pink, tourmaline stone—it was my favorite ring! I bought it during my vacation in Latvia, a country on the Baltic Sea—Latvia was a part of the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1991. I immediately decided to pay for my ride with the ring.
We arrived at the address of the second location of the American Embassy. I paid for the ride with the ring. The grounds of the Embassy were surrounded by a high fence and the gates were closed. I was not sure how I could get inside. However, the gates opened for an incoming cab and I just sneaked through the gates and ran towards the main building. I entered a room full of people waiting to be called for their interviews. My face was red, mascara smeared across my face, and my hair was messed up. Immediately, I heard my name being called. I walked into a smaller room where two men asked me questions. Then one man with reddish hair said to me how he had grown up in Buffalo, New York. He asked me if I knew how severe the winter could be in Buffalo. I said, “Probably not worse than in Siberia.” They both laughed. With this, my interview was over. From that point, I would have to wait for the Messenger at the Torvaianica square to call my name and give me an official paper with “Yes” or “No” written on it.
After two weeks or so, the Messenger at the 6:00 p.m. gathering at the Torvaianica square called my name. I was not nervous; for some reason, I was sure that it would be “Yes”. I calmly opened the envelope—there were dates for my flight from Rome to New York City. It was exciting news for me, and in anticipation of big changes in my life, I started to prepare myself for the trip.
About the Book
Camel from Kyzylkum is an award-winning memoir that chronicles the remarkable journey of immigrating from the Soviet Union during the late twentieth century. It delves into themes of hope, struggle, family, and loss, offering a profound exploration of the human spirit’s yearning for freedom and self-determination. Through the author’s compelling narrative, readers gain a deep insight into life within the Soviet Union and the immense sacrifices and risks individuals undertake in pursuit of a better life.
The memoir traces a gripping path from Ukraine to the Kyzylkum Desert in Uzbekistan, and onward through Austria, Italy, and finally America. Along this journey, the author navigates personal truths and aspirations, illustrating the resilience and determination required to forge a new path in unfamiliar lands.
Camel from Kyzylkum is not just a memoir; it’s a transformative narrative that opens doors to unfamiliar worlds, encouraging readers to broaden their perspectives and empathize with the challenges and triumphs of others. It stands as a testament to the enduring human spirit and the universal quest for identity and belonging.
About the Author
Born and schooled in Ukraine, Lara Gelya spent the next two decades in the Kyzylkum Desert of the Republic of Uzbekistan, working at geological sites and expeditions of the Mining Industry. At that time Ukraine and Uzbekistan were parts of one country — the Soviet Union.
In 1989 Lara left the Soviet Union, lived in Austria and Italy before she, at last, found her way to the United States in 1990. Starting her life from ground zero again, and trying on so many hats, she was able to make a lengthy professional career that led to her eventual retirement on the shores of sunny Florida.
Now, enjoying her retirement, Lara fills her days with enriching activities like writing, creating videos and pictures, reading, gardening, cooking, traveling, and immersing herself in nature or entertainment. Her diverse interests and active lifestyle after retirement show a deep appreciation for life’s pleasures and a continuing curiosity about the world around her.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
No one knew his name nor wished to know it. Only his face attracted those who came into contact with him. So it was said. A face whose huge, glowing eyes were turned both inwards and outwards, simultaneously. A face whose florid complexion, cheery and unfurrowed, bespoke a life of leisure, albeit not one of procrastination; a life of ease, but not sloth. In short, a life of early, unfought for independence.
I met my nameless stranger one fine autumn day in the Andalucian town of Granada, Spain, where he had been residing for several months, visiting the Alhambra Palace every day during those months. We had met in a small, non-distinct eatery, and he was very willing to converse with anyone who had leisure to tete a tete. We fell into lively conversation. Taken aback by his daily visits to the remarkable Palace, I enquired why he spent so many hours there.
“The Palace was built as a sign of religious, political and cultural power,” he began, munching energetically on his paella of rabbit. “But since 1492, that sign has been condemned to utter uselessness, reduced to a mere tourist attraction, however noteworthy. It has become completely useless since its mediaeval abandonment because it’s been drained of its original value.” Here he paused, I imagine, for me to intercede. I didn’t …
“You see, this is what attracts me most to the Alhambra; its utter uselessness for our world today. I do not consider mass tourism as an instrument of usefulness.” I kept silent to goad him on, for the turn of conversation piqued my curiosity. “The Alhambra epitomises all that I have spent my own life experiencing, consciously: the pleasures of uselessness.”
“Is uselessness a pleasure?” I nettled with a sunny smile.
“That depends upon whom it has been bestowed, sir. That depends for whom it has benefitted. The circumstances of my life and will to understand and decipher them, have conspired to draw me now into and outside of myself. My own self has become as useless as the objects that I set my eyes on each and every day as I saunter through the streets, gardens or palaces of wherever I happen to be. I have realised that such an absorption into social uselessness, and thus distance from social use, has constituted my raison d’être. And there lies the pleasure: this mode of existence is a project of life; a pure project of pleasurable uselessness to society and to myself.” His face, alit with integrity, bent low to attack the chorizos cooked in white wine sauce.
“When did you begin experimenting your project?” I asked, sipping my sangria.
“I would formulate it differently: When did uselessness experiment me!” he mumbled, his mouth full of chorizo. “It all began in Africa some thirty or forty years back, during my youthful days wandering through the Sahara desert en route to Timbucktoo. The Blue Men of the Sahara appeared absolutely useless to anyone or anything that we Europeans would call useful.”
“Such as?”
“Well, a roof over one’s head, a shower every hour, a steady, well-paid job, a car and such things … what we Europeans would term as useful, conditioned to adhere to the philosophy of infinite progress; to infinite social and political usefulness. All the Blue Men seemed to require were a few hours of sleep, food, water and the desire to procreate. Needs that all mankind need so as to account for our very presence on Earth. I lived in the desert for over a year, and little by little discovered that this lifestyle suited a possibility of existence, a life not of a desert-nomad mind you, but one of a useless idler, which as time went by, proved possible, be it in the cities of Europe and Asia or in their countryside towns and villages.”
“As I understand it, social success has no meaning for you at all?”
“Not at all. Success only invites humiliation or cruel jealousy, and the pursuit of wealth is a path marked by ruthlessness. I earn my living simply to eat, to dress according to the climate, to have a roof over my head when needed.”
“But a roof over one’s head could be expensive…” I intervened.
“I spend most of my nights out under the stars when the weather is warm. With the coming of winter, I seek refuge in Catholic missions, poor men’s shelters or in the numerous Salvation Army shelters. Any asylum that will not turn me down. As far as any permanent residence, I have taken up lodgings in the homes of generous people for a meagre fee, or have laboured on farms for my food and bed. Do not confuse uselessness with doing nothing. I’m no couch potato; I have done many things, but they do not fit into our social machine of imposed well-being. My life may appear negative to those who hold me in contempt, but my usefulness is as useful to mankind as it is to myself. Don’t forget what one Belgium writer once wrote: ‘It is thanks to a certain number of men who seem useless that there will always be a certain number of useful men.’”
“Who wrote that?”
“I forgot. But what difference does it make?” He wiped his mouth delicately, smacking his lips. He proceeded: “I imagine you probably believe me to be a social parasite or a social zero as Balzac once wrote, useless even as a human being. But read Friedrich Nietzsche on this point,” and he quoted: “’Thevalue of a human being does not lie in his usefulnes; for it would continue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful.’”
“Quite an imposing thought,” I acknowledged, sitting back. “But you must admit that you have been useful to the kind people who hire you on or who lodge you, even for a small fee.”
He snorted: “Perhaps. But I cannot speak on their behalf, only mine.” I noted that he wiggled out of that one quite ingeniously. His face shone with a strange light. An aura of mystery gradually covered it like a gossamer veil. The light suddenly went out.
“I’m sure your effort to separate yourself from the social body must be a terrible struggle,” I pursued without irony. “I believe that to be estranged from the social body is commensurate with being estranged from one’s own self. Am I right in assuming this?”
“Perhaps, but not from the individuals of those societies. I am not a misantrope. This being said, solitude, fasts and meditation have prepared me for outer trials and tribulations, which I believe, without vanity, to have overcome.” He began picking his teeth with a very long fingernail.
“And God?” I rebounded, eyeing him steadily. His lips broke into an artful grin.
“He has been my only Friend since the beginning, sir. And why is that? Because we have been useless to each other since our initial communion.” He stood, evidently undesirous to develop this rather paradoxical statement. I let it drop …
We slipped outside and my nameless companion suggested that we have a quick jaunt through the ‘Arab Market’ in Zacaten. Indeed, the weather was warm, that Autumn weather which I have always found so stimulating in Granada; Granada, perched high in her mountainous refuge like an eagle in her lofty nest. My strolling companion strolled into my reverie.
“Look at the sky, a bluish turquoise which reminds me so much of the domes of the mosques in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. That turquoise which solicits silence and contemplation.”
“So you’ve visited Uzbekistan?”
“More than visited, my friend. I lived there for five years studying under the spiritual guidance of the Nakishbendi Brotherhood, a Sunna movement founded by the Shah Nakishbend, and which has survived the anti-religious crusade of the Soviet Union. With those kind and learned monks I learnt the virtues and powers of silence, contemplation, discipline, simplicity and periodical talks.”
“In what language did you speak to them?” I ventured, a bit intrigued by this singular experience.
“In Uzbek, of course!” he responded dryly. “I also learned to read Arabic.”
“But are silence and talks not contradictory?”
“Not at all, sir. Clusters of roses certainly grow silently, but good soil, air and pure water are needed for their basic growth. If accompanied by a soft, melodious voice, they grow better. Roses heed to that voice as silence heeds to constructive talks. It was during the alternating passages of silence and talks that our spiritual guides opened our eyes and senses to the uselessness of worldly matters, and since then, this uselessness has become my second nature, even my first! Mind you, this discovery has nothing to do either with self-love or atomistic individualism. As I said, I have relations with people, albeit brief; and although I keep aloof from community aggregation and national gatherings, I have never spend my life gloating in an ivory tower. No sir, I live for wanderlust not social or individual hubris! The lust for wandering … And when one wanders one cannot but converge with people, learn from them. This does not necessarily mean that I derive an extraordinary pleasure from communicating with them. To tell the truth, I prefer my own company, if I may say so …”
“But you surely feel a responsibility towards others?” I pursued, more and more fascinated by this nameless chap, who by now had led me into a marvellous little garden out of whose spouting fountain splashed tinkling sprays here and there.
“Responsibility?” he chortled, as we sat down enjoying the perfumed scents of honeysuckles and roses. “Responsibility is only towards oneself. My words or gestures will be felt by others. Would you harm or humiliate your fellow man? Uselessness does not mean selfishness or egoism. In fact, it disciplines you to an awareness of others, an awareness those who whole-heartedly believe in social relevance will never come to understand for they must belong to a community, club or ideology in order to give pride and reason to their usefulness. They discredit the experience of uselessness. Don’t get me wrong, I do not live in a fantasy world like those who tout infinite progress or community spirit. These are abstract schemas for me. My Way is to strive to overcome anger, hate and jealousy within my own sphere of existence. This entails peeling away the veils that dim the lucidity of reality; my reality of being useless to the devastating machine of the useful well-being of mankind.”
“I would then conclude that your manner of living may be called cynical or indifferent?”
He was mortified by my question. “Cynical? A cynic questions then condemns derisively the circumstances that emerge before him or her; I neither question nor condemn. I simply carry on from place to place, experimenting novel circumstances, accepting them as if they had always been mine. Indifference? Well, if you mean stepping back and out of the world’s commerce, and not to take either that commerce or oneself seriously, then I am indifferent. The crisis of many individuals today is that they take themselves much too seriously, much more seriously than the seriousness of their work or vocations. And when this self-seriousness is struck down or dethroned a dreadful sense of uselessness seizes them, causing depression, or worse, suicide. My uselessness to myself and to others is more serious than myself. I am in the world but not of it!”
As we sat in silence, I gradually felt myself transported to another dimension of time and space. Scenes of my own life flashed before my eyes, lively colourful scenes and gloomy ones. I could not resolve whether this nameless fellow fascinated or revolted me. My own life had been ensnared in a web of social irresponsibility and imposed representations. I had become one of the many cogs in the slow and steady vast social wheel that turns and churns, and I sensed that mine had become worn-out and useless. I had so yearned to be of some use to society … But now? Yes, now? How could I restore my previous enthusiasm that had long been abandoned? I had to admit, though, that this man’s experiments heightened my ardour to … to do what? Was he sent to me like some mentor? He suddenly stood and bid me a good day with a whimsical smile, as though he had been reading my thoughts.
Before leaving, however, he said: “Tomorrow I shall have a walk in the gardens of the Alhambra. Please join me, I’m sure we have much to discuss. Meanwhile, let silence be your companion until that walk.” And he disappeared into the milling crowd.
Waking early the next morning, I resolved to meet my new and somewhat eccentric companion at the beginning of the long avenue that leads to the Gate of Justice. An avenue lined with sentinels of cypress and other trees, within whose morning freshness ran a warren of narrow paths.
We met at precisely eight o’clock. With a sort of fraternal benevolence, he took my arm and we strolled upwards past the Gate of Justice, the pompous palace of King Carlos the Fifth, paid our tickets and entered the palace proper, almost religiously, under the storied vaulted corridors, by the pencilled ornaments and tiled walls of arabesque blue, over the smooth, shiny marbled floors.
“Have you read Washington Irving?” he asked in a quavering voice, as if not to disturb the mediaeval palace denizens.
“Yes, a marvellous story-teller and keen observer,” I replied softly.
“You know he led a life of ridiculous usefulness until sojourning within the walls of this soporific fairyland. Gradually Irving fell under the pleasant and industrious spell of uselessness.”
I stopped walking.
“How so? That’s contradictory!”
“Is it?” he beamed, smiling that wide, wicked, whimsical smile. “Yet so it was. He learnt through daily experience that this whole palace of enchantment lies under the layers of absolute uselessness. Layers and layers of poetry, conversation, lyrical jousts and insignificant gestures which disappeared as quickly as they were conceived. Nothing! Nothing remains of that imagined uselessness. And that is precisely why he wrote his Tales of the Alhambra[1] ; it was out of the need to express his useless life within these lyrical stones.”
My sauntering companion fell silent. Only our footfalls could be heard weaving in and out of the slender colonnades, intermingling with the chanting fountains. The blue ceramic shone on the walls like a mirror reflecting the azure …
“I see your point, I think. Before dusk, at times I watch the sun glide from East to West over the Palace walls, the dark greys slipping into ochre reds, soon to be daubed, as the sun sets, by the overglow tones of chestnut, roan and dun.”
“Yes!” he whispered excitedly. “That is perfect uselessness. It serves absolutely no purpose to anyone … even to yourself. For, unlike Irving, who snapped his experiment in uselessness, succumbing to the desire of writing it down for all and sundry to share, I presume that in your case you have no urgency to express any posthumous glory?”
I shook my head thoughtfully, then asked: “You don’t feel the desire to keep a diary?”
“Write? A diary? What for — to satisfy my blotted ego seeking a useful outlet? These are vain insinuations, my good friend. No, it is quite enough to feast my sovereign eyes, to feed my independent emotions on this marvellous honeycomb frostwork and these fine, mullioned windows[2]. These artifices are as useless as the ephemeral poetry and conversations that rang euphoniously within the hallowed halls and courts. And indeed, why should we, mere strangers to this mediaeval marvel, impose an artificial usefulness to it all? Why should we break into lyrical extravagances of the budding rose or the flight of the owl? Into flights of phantasy poeticising upon the Towers above us where verses of love spilled forth their honied fragrances into a void of mute forgetfulness? None of that for me, sir. Within these courts and gardens I have come to the inevitable conclusion that my Destiny lies in perfect uselessness; namely, in my refusal to reanimate the beauty or the ugliness that has crossed my path for the past fifty years in Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa. I decline to spoil the uselessness of beauty and ugliness, to encumber my spirit and soul by searching for a ‘proper use’ for such human emotions and achievements.”
We had walked through the remarkable Court of Lions and were now entering the gardens of Lindaraxa, Sultan Boadil’s[3] wife. We sat down inhaling the gay scents of roses, oranges and lemons.
He sniffed the air, then murmured: ”A vague of indescribable awe was creeping over me,” here hepaused, lifting his eyes upwards: ”Everything began to be affected by the working of my mind, the whispers of the wind among the citron-trees beneath my window had something sinister…” My companion had chanted this broken sentence in a sort of drawn-out litany. “Yes, something sinister, indeed,” he ruminated to himself. “That point of inspiration led Irving from absolute uselessness to the search for putting uselessness to use. I enjoy reading Irving, but will never convert a ‘something sinister’ to a million-copy, world-wide read book.”
The sun rose higher and higher coating the pink tongues of dawn with a purplish blue. I turned to him: “Still, I cannot see how we as humans can escape from being useful Beings!” He looked at me, his facial features had suddenly hardened, or perhaps it was due to the effects of the shadows off the sun-lit fruit trees.
“Does my speaking to you now fulfil an emotional need? Was our conversation a psychological issue to such a profound hoarding of uselessness?” I asked.
He laughed so loud that a few puffy-eyed guards turned their heads in our direction. “Dear fellow, you have hardly understood our morning jaunt. We are simply idling our time away as uselessly as possible, as useless as a leaf dropping from that citron-tree, as a person who labours all his life to survive, a hermit in his remote cave, a desert-dweller, a traveller without name or record. How many of those intrepid souls took refuge in monasteries of the East and there left no trace of their earthly footfalls? They experienced true uselessness …”
“Even to God towards whom they must have addressed their prayers?” I enquired. He raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“That is neither for you nor me to answer, my friend.” He stood, shook my hand and left the gardens back through the Palace halls.
I felt a bit put out by his prompt and unexpected departure. It were as if he had abandoned me to unravel that last enigmatic thought of his. A silly feeling of course, but one that clung to me like the scents of the roses, oranges and lemons. My mind slowly became dull, my body numb. Had the nameless wanderer put me under a magical spell? The redolence and balminess of the gardens added to my discomfiture. At the same time, however, I understood that idleness is not a state or a condition which I could bear or champion as he does. I rose, heavily. Enough of this palatial beguiling and futile jaunting. That man, whoever he is, taught me a sound lesson: a person is born into our world to accomplish a particular use, one that is his or hers alone. There is no doubt in my mind about this.
I dragged myself from the gardens back to my hotel in the Old Market at Zacatin, an effort that enlisted all my emotional and physical strength.
I must confess that during the following days, in spite of my firm resolution towards usefulness, I idled my time away seeking out that nameless idler, tramping from street to street, garden to garden, restaurant to restaurant. Every morning I rose early and scoured the halls, courts and gardens of the Alhambra.
He had vanished into thin air, as the saying goes …
*
A few years later back in Amsterdam, my eye caught sight of a book entitled The Denizen of theUnderworld : The Art of Uselessness. I bought it out of some urgent curiosity that I could and still not explain rationally. The first sentences read : ”I am without shame, without guilt, without bad conscious. I truly prefer my cave swimming with mermaids, dwarves labouring at the furnaces, fairies hunting out medicinal plants. Here I breathe the air of pure uselessness, shielded against the charm and seduction of use.”
The author of the book had an odd name — Vigilius de Silentio — a name that might have fitted the face of my nameless companion whom I had met so many years ago in Granada. On second thoughts, though, that name could have fitted any face.
To tell the truth, the book bored me to death …
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[1] Washington Irving, edition Edilux, Granada, Spain.
[2] A vertical element made of wood or stone that divides a window in two. It is applied in Islamic and Armenian architecture.
[3] The last Sultan of Muslim Spain, exiled to North Africa.
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
In Dylan on Worm’s Head, Rhys Hughes describes a misadventure that the Welsh poet had while hiking as a tribute to him on Dylan Thomas Day. Clickhereto read.
Munaj Gul gives an in memoriam for a photographer from Balochistan. Clickhere to read.
Musings of a Copywriter
In ‘Is this a Dagger I See…?‘, Devraj Singh Kalsi gives a tongue-in-cheek account of a writer’s dilemma. Click here to read.
Notes from Japan
In A Golden Memory of Green Day in Japan, Suzanne Kamata tells us of a festival where she planted a tree in the presence of the Japanese royalty. Click here to read.
Perhaps when Dylan Thomas wrote these lines, he did not know how relevant they would sound in context of the world as it is with so many young dying in wars, more than seven decades after he passed on. No poet does. Neither did he. As the world observes Dylan Thomas Day today — the day his play, Under the Milkwood, was read on stage in New York a few months before he died in 1953 — we have a part humorous poem as tribute to the poet and his play by Stuart McFarlane and a tribute from our own Welsh poet, Rhys Hughes, describing a fey incident around Thomas in prose leading up to a poem.
May seems to be a month when we celebrate birthdays of many writers, Tagore, Nazrul and Ruskin Bond. Tagore’s birthday was in the early part of May in 1861 and we celebrated with a special edition on him. Bond, who turns a grand ninety this year, continues to dazzle his readers with fantastic writings from the hills, narratives which reflect the joie de vivre of existence, of compassion and of love for humanity and most importantly his own world view. His books have the rare quality of being infused with an incredible sense of humour and his unique ability to make fun of himself and laugh with all of us.
Nazrul, on the other hand, dreamt, hoped and wrote for an ideal world in the last century. The commonality among all these writers, seemingly so diverse in their outlooks and styles, is the affection they express for humanity. Celebrating the writings of Nazrul, we have one of his fiery speeches translated from Bengali by Radha Chakravarty and a review of her Selected Essays: Kazi Nazrul Islam by Somdatta Mandal. An essay from Niaz Zaman dwells on the feminist side of Nazrul while bringing in Begum Roquiah. Zaman has also shared translations of his poetry. Professor Fakrul Alam, who had earlier translated Nazrul’s iconic ‘Bidrohi or Rebel‘, has given us a beautiful rendition of his song ‘Projapoti or Butterfly’ in English. Also in translation, is a poem by Tagore on the process of writing poetry. Balochi poetry by Manzur Bismil on human nature has been rendered into English by Fazal Baloch and yet another poem from Korean to English by Ilwha Choi.
Ratnottama Sengupta this month converses with a dancer who tries to build bridges with the tinkling of her bells, Sohini Roychowdhury. Gita Viswanthan travels to Khiva in Uzbekistan, historically located on the Silk Route, with words and camera. An essay on Akbar Barakzai by Hazran Rahim Dad and another looking into literature around maladies by Satyarth Pandita add zest to our non-fiction section. Though these seem to be a heterogeneous collection of themes, they are all tied together with the underlying idea of creating links to build towards a better future.
In focus this time is a writer whose prose is almost akin to poetry, Rajat Chaudhuri. A proponent of solarpunk, his novel, Spellcasters, takes us to fictitious cities modelled on Delhi and Kolkata. In his interview, Chaudhuri tells us: “The path to utopia is not necessarily through dystopia. We can start hoping and acting today before things get really bad. Which is the locus of the whole solarpunk movement with which I am closely associated as an editor and creator…”
On that note, I would like to end with a couple of lines from Nazrul, who reiterates how the old gives way to new in Proloyullash (The Frenzy of Destruction, translated by Alam): “Why fear destruction? / It’s the gateway to creation!” Will destruction be the turning point for creation of a new world? And should the destruction be of human constructs that hurt humanity (like wars and weapons) or of humanity and the planet Earth? As the solarpunk movement emphasises, we need to act to move towards a better world. And how would one act? Perhaps, by getting in touch with the best in themselves and using it to act for the betterment of humankind? These are all points to ponder… if you have any ideas that need a forum on such themes, do share with us.
We have more content which has not been woven into this piece for the sheer variety of themes they encompass. Do pause by our content’s page and browse on all our pieces.
With warm thanks to our wonderful team at Borderless — especially Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous art — I would like to express gratitude to all our contributors, without who we could not create this journal. We would also like to thank our readers for making it worth our while to write — for all of our words look to be read, savoured and mulled, and maybe, some will evolve into treasured wines.
The Kuala Terengganu Skyline. Photo courtesy: Ravi Shankar
The lighting was subtle but magnificent. The transparent minarets glowed red, green, pink, and blue in turn. We were at the Masjid Kristal on the island of Wan Man at Kuala Terengganu in the state of the same name in northern Malaysia.
Majid Kristal
The mosque is among the most photographed monuments in the Islamic Heritage Park, and we could easily guess why. This is the first intelligent mosque in the country with an IT infrastructure and wi-fi connection. We were glad we came. The reflection of the mosque lights on water was enchanting. Getting around KT — as Kuala Terengganu is lovingly called by the locals — could sometimes be tricky without your own vehicle. Ride hailing services may not work optimally in the peak hours of the evening. We were informed by one of the cab drivers that Maxim is the most popular e-hailing app in the city.
The population in KT loves to eat out and in the evenings the restaurants are usually crowded. We were staying at the Intan Beach Resort at Pantai Batu Burok and the eating places by the beach were always crowded. The beach is popular with locals with several attractions and rides during the evenings. There is a three-kilometre walking path by the side of the beach. As we stayed right by the beach, we could enjoy early morning strolls on the soft sand.
Panti Batu Burok: Photo Courtesy: Ravi Shankar
The Kuala Terengganu state museum was huge and is located on over 23 acres of land. The museum was officially opened in 1996 and was designed by a well-known Malaysian architect, YM Raja Dato’ Kamarul Bahrin Shah, who also happens to be related to the royal family of Terengganu. The building is designed in traditionally Malay style and the outer façade was left undecorated. There are nine different galleries, and these include the Royal gallery, the historical gallery, the textiles gallery, the Islamic gallery, the handicrafts, the natural resources, the shipping and trading and the marine resources galleries.
Tha Batu Bersurat. Photo Courtesy: Ravi Shankar
The ‘Batu Bersurat’ (lettered stone) is the museum centrepiece and of great significance to the state. The stone is estimated to be 700 years old and mentions the position of Islam and the application of Islamic laws in the state. The stone is written in the Jawi script using Arabic characters. Jawi script is still used in Terengganu though in many areas Malay is written mostly in the Roman script. In the museum grounds, there is a good collection of different old cars and other vehicles used by the King and Chief Ministers of the state.
The Islamic Heritage Park is a major attraction located on the island of Wan Man. The park has small scale replicas of famous global Islamic monuments. Among the monuments represented are the mosques at Medina and Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Dome of the rock in Jerusalem, the Taj Mahal in India, and a mosque in Aleppo, Syria. The national mosque of Malaysia and mosques in Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, China, Tatarstan, Uzbekistan, and Iraq are also on display. Replicas of these famous monuments were displayed in the vast gardens of the monument. I liked this concept, and the monuments were well maintained except one or two that may require more attention.
The Floating Mosque. Courtesy: Creative CommonsDetails of the Floating Mosque. Courtesy: Ravi Shankar
The sun was hot, and I had to drink copious amounts of water. In the evening, my friend, Binaya, and I went to the floating mosque situated in Kuala Ibai Lagoon near the estuary of Kuala Ibai River, 4 km from Kuala Terengganu Town. The mosque combines modern and Moorish architecture, and is a white structure situated in five acres of land. There is also a floating mosque in Penang.
The next morning, we went to the Science and Creativity Centre. The centre is housed in a huge, modern building. There are multiple galleries to explore. I was fascinated by the stainless-steel exhibit showing the structure of DNA, the blueprint of life. The encounter with the dinosaurs was the highlight of the trip. The dinosaurs were colour coded in red (dangerous), yellow (exercise caution) and green (safe). Tyrannosaurus Rex was the highlight. Raptors, allosaurus and other dinos filled the hall with their cries and screams. The Stegosaurus had scales on the back. When I was young, I was a big fan of Phantom comics created by Lee Falk and Phantom had a stegosaurus as a pet. The inflatable dome on the top floor had a delightful cosmic show and you can see the universe projected above your head. The museum had plenty of things to see and do and is a big hit with children.
Photo Courtesy: Ravi Shankar
The Masjid Sultan Ismail Chendering has delicate artwork and is built entirely in white. The simple design and the beautiful artwork had me mesmerised. The mosque has a long history. The small Lebai Zainal Mosque which could accomodate150 people was first built near the current location of the mosque before being replaced by the Raja Chendering Mosque and then replaced again by a new mosque which is the Sultan Ismail Mosque.
Photo Courtesy: Ravi Shankar
Soon it was time for lunch. There are plenty of food options near our hotel. I enjoyed nasi kerabu, a Malaysian rice dish, in which blue-coloured rice is eaten with dried fish or fried chicken, crackers, pickles and other salads. The blue colour of the rice comes from the petals of Clitoria ternatea flowers, which are used as a natural food colouring.
In the evening, we went to see the Abidin Mosque which is Terengganu’s old state royal mosque built by Sultan Zainal Abidin II between 1793 and 1808. The Royal mausoleum is located next to the mosque. Istana Maziah, the official palace of the Sultan of Terengganu is located close to the mosque at the foot of the mountain, Bukit Puteri. The palace is the official venue for important functions such as royal birthdays, weddings, conferment of titles and receptions for local and foreign dignitaries. We wanted to climb Bukit Puteri, but the place was under renovation and closed.
We continued along the waterfront to the Shah Bandar jetty. A cool breeze was blowing, and many people were strolling along the promenade. We were moving toward the Kuala Terengganu drawbridge constructed in 2019 inspired by the London drawbridge. We waited for the sky to darken so that we could see the lights on the bridge.
Photo Courtesy: Ravi Shankar
Buses from KL take the highway to Kuantan and then bypass the town. The journey continues to the town of Paka and then takes the coastal highway through Dungun. Some parts of this state reminded me of my home state of Kerala in South India. Plenty of coconut trees were seen. Coconut trees grow so well in Kerala and in many areas along the west coast of India.
The expressways in Malaysia are well-designed and maintained. Traveling on these are usually a smooth experience though they get very crowded during major holidays when people leave Kuala Lumpur for their hometowns and villages. KT is about 400 km from KL and takes around eight hours by bus. Malaysia’s northern state on the East Coast can be a good getaway. The town and the state has culture, history, natural beauty, delicious food, and serene beaches. The islands off the coast were still closed. Redang island was mentioned to be one of the most beautiful islands in the world. Hopefully, we will visit these during our next trip. God willing, we shall!
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Dr. P Ravi Shankar is a faculty member at the IMU Centre for Education (ICE), International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He enjoys traveling and is a creative writer and photographer.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Vanitas Still Life, painting by Evert Collier(1640 –1708). Courtesy: Creative Commons
Back home in Madrid, having abandoned Adamov Plut to his posthumous fate, I was a bit surprised that neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported anything about the murder, not even a paragraph, or as the French so imagitively put it, an entre-filet ! I soon realised, due to this journalistic silence, that the time had come for me to give a full account of my relation to Mr Plut ; that the time had come for me to expose, publicly, by way of this revelation, his ‘mysterious murder’.
My information is of the surest sources for the simple reason that it was I who had Mr Plut murdered ! Yes, I ! And for reasons that shall be shortly disclosed. A mysterious man he might have been; however, his methods of acquiring priceless books and other inestimable valuables can hardly be called mysterious: Mr Plut was a vulgar thief, a scoundrel, an ingenious trickster whose singular flair caused much grief to many individuals, enraged those whose trust had been flouted.
It was in Istanbul, where I was invited to sojourn with an Armenian merchant, that I witnessed Mr Plut’s dupery. And if my naive friend fell for his crooked smile, I certainly didn’t swallow his high tale of returning to pay him for the two illuminated manuscripts my friend had graciously offered the blighter on condition that he be held accountable for them. His thick, coarse lips translated a smile that held contempt and disdain towards those who trusted him. So infuriated and insulted did I feel on behalf of my friend that that I reacted on a lightning urge and decided to follow him. I said nothing of this to my disbelieving companion, but left immediately in pursuit of my game — and game it was — for I, to tell the truth, had nothing more substantial to do at the moment and felt disposed for a good hunt.
I said that Mr Plut was a genius. Yes, in his own way. However, genius has its limitations. His arrogance and haughtiness knew no bounds, although he knew that his foul doings had attracted the attention of police and Interpol. Some may surmise that a certain paranoia drove him to invent individuals tracking him down like a wild boar or moose. No, no one was tracking him down except me, and that as subtlety as possible. In Uzbekistan, I actually chatted with him over a cup of coffee on two occasions disguised as a professor of Slavic philology, dressed in a quilted chapan robe and silk embroidered tubeteyka cap. There we sat in Samarkand, sipping our thick beverages in the vaulted bazaar at one of the storied cafés that dot the town. He was all smiles, obsequious and gold-toothed. I had the impression that I was dealing with a child or a mentally-dwarfed man whose sense of reality lacked all discernment or sagacity. I concluded that he had come into quite a bit of money, and never having had to work for a livelihood, traipsed about the world at his leisure, buying or stealing books, cheating people out of their invaluable collections. So self-indulgent and confident was he that he never saw through my masquerade as we conversed in broken Russian.
It was at that café where I learned about his fabulous treasure, as he called his book hoard. Only an idiot would have divulged this information to a perfect stranger, but as I said, Mr Plut’s contemptible demeanour caused him to fall into the most infantile traps. Traps that I began laying out for him, and that would lead to his downfall. For I had begun to design my own plan to relieve the rogue of his fabulous possessions, all the more so since he also let slip that his parents had passed away, and he had inherited the house. How I would make his treasure mine and ‘disinherit’ the owner still remained vague in my mind.
We departed as ‘friends’, as two strangers seeking an answer to the mystery of their existence. Or so I made him believe. Mr Plut appeared to me a dying species, a worldly aesthete, in spite of his extreme vulgarity and ponderous gait, whose debonair demeanour masked a loathing for his victims, a bent for the lowest duplicity, a gratification in spinning the most treacherous stratagems in order to allay his desire to prevail.
Mr Plut slipped out of Uzbekistan without my knowing it. He probably used his Russian passport, one of the four of five in his possession. I felt a twinge of misgiving. Had the fat fellow got on to me? After many enquiries, I finally discovered that he had crossed into China at the Xinjiang border, and was hastening towards the Yunnan. Why ? I hadn’t the faintest idea …
His brief sojourn in the town of Lijiang enabled me to catch up with him. My Chinese was fluent enough not only to query his whereabouts in that lovely town, but more important still, to learn of his new ‘purchases’, once I had questioned the director of the Dongba Museum of Culture. Mr Plut had planned to gone there to acquire several Naxi pictographic sacred books, which he did from a rather corrupt priest with whom he had been corresponding for some time, using a special code so as not to be unmasked by the Chinese authorities of the Centre. The director only learned of this a week after the unlawful negotiations had occurred, and three or four very valuable Dongba liturgical books had been stolen. It goes without saying that the rapacious priest was severely punished.
I immediately left Lijiang much to my displeasure for it was indeed a quiet, pleasant place, and set out in hot pursuit of the marauder. I followed his all too familiar scent through Nepal into North-western India to the Zanskar region where he put up for a while at the Phuktal Gompa[1], a strange spot to make a halt. But a perfect hideout to gain time in order for planning his next move, whilst at the same time inveigling in the most repulsive manner his generous hosts.
The monastery is nestled in the most remotest of valleys, ensconced within a cliff of tuft of fairy chimneys, crags and honey-combed spires which bulge black and red against the background of sandy, dazzling ash and cinerous tones of hemp. I had trekked there from Lamayuru in twenty days, and as I was to learn, Mr Plut had arrived there three days ahead of me, but by way of Padum. To gain the main entrance of the gompa, the pilgrim had to climb a steep path, keeping his or her right shoulder to the seventeen chortens[2] that mark the steep climb towards the vaulted entrance. I had shaved my head, grown a long beard and donned a woollen chuba tightened around my waist with a long colourful sash. It kept me warm, for in spite of it being Summer, the nights were very cold, and my cell had only a small wood-burning stove to keep me warm.
I spent three weeks at the monastery, sleeping on a ratten matting, eating skieu, tsampa and chappatti, drinking steaming salt-buttered tea off a chopsey — a low, small table — reading or gazing out of the little window that offered me a full view of the dusty, treeless courtyard below, where monks would mutter their mantras, and beyond into soundless nights whose stars were generally veiled.
Without Mr Plut’s slightest suspicions, I assisted at all the ceremonies, mornings and evenings, even vigils, while in the afternoon, I would venture out into the monastic complex, twisting and turning in the warren of lanes, under the low archways and high ladders, at times pursuing my promenades upon the rather precipitous mountain paths. As to Mr Plut, he hardly left his cell, and when we did cross paths, he most probably took me for a Buddhist pilgrim. Once or twice I sat near him in the prayer hall in the meditation grotto, but he never attempted to communicate with me, albeit he did not seem very deep in prayer or contemplation. He was probably scheming his next miserable move. His face had become terribly pale and flabby. His darting, black eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into their sockets. Unable to sit cross-legged on the low benches at the back of the prayer hall, he sat ‘western style’, staring off into the clusters of chanting monks, tilting his huge, bobbing head every so often to the banging drums, blowing ox-horns and tinkling triangles. Observing him from afar, I sought to sound his soul, to wring out his innermost thoughts, to extract from his evident lassitude and apathy his flight from both his victims and himself. But Mr Plut was a sphinx. Would he rise out of his own ashes when his hour came ?
I left the good monks three days after his departure, a hasty one indeed. And they were furious! The scoundrel had stolen several pustuks[3] and thangkas, and failed to pay for the prayer masks that he ‘purchased’. They implored me to find the culprit, inform the police and recover their stolen property. It was perhaps the beseeching words of the infuriated monks, after having received such incomparable hospitality from them, that my plans to have the thief killed began to germinate ! The theft was not only gratuitous, it exposed the very ugliness of the man’s heart, blackened by greed, cynicism and remorselessness. It would only be a matter of time before he tasted a soupçon of his own medicine.
Meanwhile the cat would play with the mouse, a rather fat mouse at that ! I boarded the cargo ship that took the fugitive from Karachi to Oakland via Japan. On the long, monotonous voyage across the Pacific, my ominous shadow crossed his at the most unsuspecting moments. Attired as a Pashtun merchant, bearded, long-haired and turbaned, Mr Plut sensed an onerous presence whenever he laboriously carried his huge body across the decks. How many times had my eyes penetrated his anguish, his torment, his pangs, not of compunction, but of incomprehension. He scented a sleepless menace pressing him. Fear inflamed his dark, beady, mirthless eyes like the burning incision of the trenchant knife.
Oakland … Sacramento … Reno … Tombstone … Boulder … Santa Fe … Saint Louis … Chicago … New Orleans … Birmingham … Miami … Atlanta and finally New York. Yes, New York, where the curtains would finally fall on this tragic fat figure. Where upon the stage of 8 million walk-ons, and against the backdrop of the grottiest of hotels, the last act of Mr Plut’s abominable performance would be played out.
His infatuation with Louis Wolfson amused me, as well as his grandiose project to write twelve stories in twelve different languages signed by twelve different authors. I found all this quite pompous and pathetic. A real exercise in self-indulgence to say the least. All this information I culled when I ‘accidentally’ met him in the ill-lit corridor of that hotel on Water street in downtown Manhattan. In New York, I played the role of a French researcher in mediaeval literature, a field that he completely ignored, in spite of possessing several manuscripts of Anglo-Norman stamp, apparently purchased (so he said ?) from a London book-seller. I pretended to be interested, taking the opportunity to study him closely. Besides, he was such an inveterate liar how could one believe anything he said ? He lied to curry favour and win confidence, only to swindle and steal from the naive and simple-hearted. Better to observe his eyes, his gestures, his bouncing from one tongue to another. These were all genuine signs of his distorted psychological make-up. To play my part well, I sported an immaculate white suit, orange tie, a pair of silver-rimmed glasses and spanking new alligator shoes. I had shaved my beard and moustache and had my hair cut very short, leaving a few gossamer wisps which touched the tips of my ears and fell bouncily on my forehead.
Every day I followed his Humpty Dumpty gait as he waddled to and from the public library, in and out of Central Park. And it was there, in Central Park, that I noted two blond-haired rough fellows slouching on a bench, eating the remains of fried chips or chicken sandwiches, cursing and making gross signs at the passers-by, drinking beer and spitting. They were seated at the same bench daily — the bench that Mr Plut walked by every day. They seemed to know him because they would hoot at him, call him names and ask for money. Fatso passed by without even a glance at them.
One Saturday, I decided to approach the two ruffians. They sized me up with obvious contempt, and made it perfectly clear that I was intruding on their ‘territory’. I sat down none the less, and exposed my scheme to be rid of Mr Plut once and for all, explaining how the culprit had cheated and robbed so many people. The two burly blokes, former marines in the Green Beret (or so they vaunted!) listened attentively as I unfolded my plan: Three thousand dollars for each if they would simply walk up to his room in the early morning hours, the night porter always being asleep, knock at his door and kill him, however, without any blood shed or theft of his belongings. It must be a murder without reason, without any sign of bestial violence. One of them suggested strangulation. Yes, excellent idea. It would thus be a ‘clean’ murder.
And so it was, very professional at that I must say. They were paid off, as agreed. And I left New York two days later, as planned, a very satisfied man indeed …
This all happened five years ago. Now … well, here is where my account ends and my confession begins. For you see, Mr Plut was never really murdered ! Those two ‘ruffians’ were in fact F.B.I. agents who had been trailing me since disembarking in California. To tell the truth, Interpol and local police had been following me since the Istanbul affair. How and why they began doing so I cannot say. During my trial neither the judge nor the prosecuting attorney afforded any information as how the F.B.I. learnt of my scheme, nor why they had decided, at one point in time, to cooperate with Plut. What was I convicted of ? What was my indictment ? As to my appointed lawyer, a young short-sighted clerk more than a seasoned lawyer, who could be easily cajoled by the ‘evidence’ against me, pliantly manipulated by the prosecutor, after he had taken the floor and had made an absolute fool of himself. He let out a sigh of relief when the judge pronounced a sentence of fifteen years instead of twenty-five! The wigged judge, a grotesque figure studded with huge warts, yawned throughout my lawyer’s deplorable speech for the defense, as well as during my feeble plea. There was no jury either to lament or to applaud his verdict. It was a trial held at ‘huis clos’[4], military style. I buried my face in my hands. As expected, my lawyer made no effort to appeal.
Had Plut sensed my innermost aversion towards him ? Or seen through my many disguises ? He was a clever man, and probably had hired detectives to learn why I was following him. The hotel room murder was staged. Plut lay recumbent on the floor, waiting for me to steal his papers so that I would be indicted for premeditated murder (although there was no murder!), of paying off hoodlums to commit this murder (although they were F.B.I. agents!) and the theft, which indeed it was (but fifteen years for that?) of his household papers, keys, and other official documents concerning his inheritance … and that vile short story of his.
So here I sit in my rancid smelling cell in Madrid, having been arrested at the aeroport on my arrival some five years ago, writing out this confession. I do not to repent mind you, I have no intention of atoning for my doings, nor avowing my sins. These words wrenched from my pen seek to vent the animosity and hatred I harbour towards that fat impostor who had the cheek to write me a letter from the Seychelles revealing how he had got on to me since Uzbekistan, and how our little cat and mouse game had amused him greatly : “You thought me a fool, deary, but I sawthrough your pusillanimous scheme in Samarkand ; that was some outfit, but you forgot the galoshes ! Not to mention your pilgrim weeds at Phuktal which truly charmed me, and your blazing orange tie in New York. Come, come, what French professor would ever sport an orange tie with a badly tailored, cheap white suit ?” The vicious irony underlining these sentences, along with a soupçon of cynicism caused me to gag. The blighter added in a post-script that he had sold all his books for a fabulous sum of money, and had retired from the world’s wearisome fair. In the envelope I found a photo of him sipping coconut juice, lying on the golden sands of a crescent-shaped beach under groves of swaying palm trees and an indigo blue sky. I laughed bitterly, and yet, in spite of my nettled nerves, pinned up the blasted photo in my lonely cell, a sort of souvenir of our enshrouded relationship …
One day at the prison library, browsing idly through a dull, detective story, I thought of Plut’s or Hilarius Eremita’s story The Enchanted Garden, which I had taken and read to amuse myself on the aeroplane to Buenos Aires. Had anyone ever published such ridiculous trash? To my horror, the answer came three days later whilst I rummaged through a new batch of literary magazines, some of which contained short stories in English, French and German. And there it was — The Enchanted Garden, by Hilarius Eremita, Plut’s pen name. I couldn’t believe my eyes — someone had published that rubbish ! Plut indeed had the last laugh, adding insult to injury, salt to my festering wounds.
I savagely tore out the pages of his story from the magazine, went to the toilet, ripped them into tiny pieces and flushed the filth down the bowl. So much for hiss ‘first of the twelve’ ! I shan’t be punished for it, no inmate in this prison reads any language besides Spanish, and that with a dictionary … I’m sure it was Plut who sent me that magazine to drive the knife deeper into my wounded pride. The miserable rat !
So here I sit at my iron table, staring at Plut’s photo as he sips his coconut drink under the blue skies and swaying palm trees whilst I sip my wretched thin noodle soup with strips of hard, nervy beef under a cracked, peeling, dirty grey prison ceiling …
[2] The Tibetan word for stûpa, a Buddist shrine which initially housed the relics of the Buddha.
[3] Books used for Buddhist ceremonies written in Tibetan.
[4] Behind closed door without any public participation or observers. It is a French legal term.
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
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Adamov led an introverted life. Perhaps because everyone, both friends and foes, thought he was ugly. In fact, he himself, when looking in the mirror that hung lopsided on his peeling wallpaper drew the same conclusion. An ugliness that drove him deeper into his own world, and which would lead him to become the foremost collector of books in the Kalmak region of the Caucasian mountains, and even beyond … This intense activity, which began at a very early age until his violent, and I may add, mysterious death in a dingy New York City hotel room, took him to the four corners of the earth, buying, bartering, stealing manuscripts, first published books, political pamphlets, rare essays. He even possessed, heaven knows how, an incunabulum[1]: a Lutheran Bible! Adamov also acquired, as a picturesque pastime, miniatures of Mughal, Kangra and Rajput stamps, Tibetan thankas, Buddhist prayer masks, mediaeval Chinese scroll paintings. It was said that he amassed more than 25,000 books at the humble two-storey lodging of his home village in the mountains of Daghestan ! But this, I will not confirm …
In short, books became his very existence, his raison d’être. His trusty companions and faithful, consoling friends in his many moments of maniac depression. His book-hunting transformed Amadov into a detective, snooping out the scent of an affair, flaring the odour of yellowing pages, crispy to the touch, invigorating to the smell, pleasing to the eye.
For Adamov, it was not just a question of tracking down a book like a hunter hunting his prey, but of locating the author’s place of residence, his or her favourite haunts. He would spend weeks, months in cities and towns, even after having procured his book, following the daily footfalls of those illustrious or obscure writers. If the writer happened to be alive, he would trail him or her from his or her home to a restaurant, a hotel, a library or book-shop, but never like a sleuth. If caught red-handed, this might have caused him some embarrassment. Adamov was afraid of direct confrontation, especially if it involved the law. To tell the truth, Adamov had no real intention of meeting an author, however famous. He reckoned that authors never measure up to their books, so why waste time actually meeting them? What would they talk about anyway: the birds and the bees? The weather?
It was during those moments of utter dolefulness on the road that Adamov recalled his childhood with a faint smile: He recollected rummaging through the dilapidated homes of his village in search of maps, pamphlets, books, picture cards or any scribblings that caught his eye, classing them in files either by theme or by date of their finding. For example, in 1960 he found 345 miscellaneous documents; in 1961, only 127. He had such a wonderful childhood, in spite of the periodic bombings from above, parental scoldings or beatings, visits from the neighbouring village militia that demanded money, food or young blood for the ’cause’ … A ’cause’ which he never adhered to, nor was ever recruited for, given his frail body and nervous disposition …
Finally he left his home village in search of bigger game, although he promised his parents that he would always keep in contact with them by his book trade; that is, every book purchased, after having read it, would be sent to their two-storey home … A home which became legally his after their deaths in the 1970s …
In 1974 we find our book-hunter in Amsterdam, lodged at the Van Acker Hotel, Jan Willem Brouuersstaat 14, just opposite the Concertgebouw, the famous concert hall, where he had been listening to Beethovan’s symphonies during that delightful month of May. It was in that hotel, in his room, that he arranged an appointment with a Dutch book dealer, a pasty-faced, unscrupulous dwarf, who negotiated hard for his wares. He clutched in his chubby, wrinkled arms an XVIIIth century first edition of Dom Bedos’ L’Art du Facteur d’Orgue[2], that Adamov had been tracking down for years. And finally, there it lay in the hands of that despicable dwarf who wanted more than 7,000 guilders for it! Adamov knew this was an illegal purchase, being classed as patrimonial property, probably having been stolen from the National Library by this slimy sod, but he had to possess it ! They haggled over the price for hours and hours well into the night. Following a rather violent squabble, the dwarf suddenly clutched at his chest, gurgled a few irrelevant syllables, and fell stone dead at Adamov’s shoeless feet. He wretched the priceless treasure from the still clutching arms of the dwarf, slipped on his shoes, checked the street from his window, then the corridor from the door, noiselessly. Adamov quickly packed his meagre belongings (he always travelled light), locked the door behind him and silently crept out into the soothing blackness of the street. In his flight, he threw the hotel door key in a rubbish bin, then made a bee-line for the bus station, where at six o’clock in the morning he was already headed for Berlin, and without wasting a moment, on a train for Istanbul where he was expected by an Armenian seller (or reseller ?) who possessed several Armenian illuminated manuscripts of mediaeval stamp, costly indeed, but since he paid nothing for Dom Bedos’ invaluable treasure, after an hour or two of desperate haggling, bought two manuscripts. The Armenian threw in two or three miniatures from Herat and Tabriz in the hope that his client would return for the other four illuminated manuscripts … Adamov never did: He was murdered sixteen years later …
Now the incident in Amsterdam caused our book-hunter much discomfiture; not any pangs of conscience mind you; Adamov felt no grief over the sudden death of that dwarf. He feared rather police enquiries about the death, and the overt fact that he fled from his hotel without assistance to him, and without paying the bill to boot! The police might accuse him of the dwarf’s death … As to the manuscript, that posed no particular problem since the dwarf had undoubtedly had it stolen or had stolen it himself. Wherever he went now, the hunter would have to look over his shoulder, staying at the grottiest hotels imaginable to avoid the police or their hired henchmen, travelling on night-buses or trains or on cargo ships when crossing oceans or seas.
The Amsterdam incident happened three years ago. Since, Adamov had eluded local police and Interpol not by any Arsène Lupin[3] tactics or strategies, but perhaps by some lucky star or a guardian angel, if the readers are inclined to believe in these wardens of the wanton. But still our book-hunter remained on the qui-vive[4]! Since that unfortunate (or fortunate?) incident, Adamov had been seen in Georgia, Armenia, Iran and Uzbekestan, where he spent over a year, illegally (his visa having expired after three months!), in Bukhara haggling over a XIVth century publication of Hoca Ahmet Yesevi’s Hikmets (Strophes of Wisdom)in the original Chagatai language, a language that he learned to read in three months.
How he slipped out of Uzbekistan is anyone’s guess. He probably bribed the custom officials. In any case, we find traces of him in the Yunnan, at Lijiang, southern China, bargaining hard for three colourful Naxi pictographic manuscripts from a Dongba priest, manuscripts which the Chinese government absolutely forbade to be taken out of the country, but whose exorbitant estimated price on the black market, a cheery sum of 25,000 yuan, persuaded the wily priests to take the risk. Besides, the priest could always imitate the three XVIth century manuscripts : it was all a question of time and patience … And he had both! Who would ever know? Adamov sensed the abysmal greed of his vender, and promised him 10,000 yuan more if he would relinquish two more of the forbidden scriptures, but payable in two days since he would have to wire back to Daghestan for the money. The plucky priest, all agog, smiling a wicked smile, handed the two booklets over to him without hesitation. Adamov never returned. He disappeared, travelling quickly through Nepal to the Himalayas via Sikkim, Ladakh and Zanskar, where, at last, at the Phuktal monastery he sojourned for five months, reading a first edition of James Hilton’s LostHorizons whilst ploughing through the Hungarian philologist and Tibetologist, Alexander Csoma’s Tibetan-English Dictionary. Before he bid farewell to his kind and generous hosts, he had filched six illuminated prayer books in Tibetan, two festival masks and a thangka[5]. By the time the good monks noticed the theft, the incorrigible thief had trekked to Kaylong, bussed it to Manali, finally arriving in Karachi, where he boarded a cargo ship for Japan, then on to Oakland, California.
Aboard the cargo the thief had time to mediate upon his book-hunting existence. He admitted it wasn’t particularly glamorous — abandoned parents, a dead dwarf, stolen patrimonial property, false passports and bribery of officials. Nevertheless, these unsavoury moments of his hunting never dampened his enthusiasm. His lust for sweet-smelling tomes, his craving to possess, at any cost, more and more of them. To tell the truth, Adamov had become completely obsessed by his collection. Oddly enough, the more he accumulated the uglier he became ! In fact, he not only became uglier, he became fatter … Adamov had no qualms about this ponderous load; indeed, it enveloped him with a sort of pompous aura, whose fleshy freight he swaggered about the decks of the ship like some august, stately sultan. It added to the mystery of his past, present … and future. A future that had little cheer and much disquiet. He was running out of money, for he refused to sell what he bought. Even the many stolen books he dreaded to forswear. How many times had he asked himself why he hoarded such a vast treasure without really capitalising on his assets, without developing a trading-network throughout Asia, without, at least, rereading his precious volumes two or three times, sniffing their illuminated contents, inhaling the strange forms of their letters and signs, touching ever so lightly, again and again, the brittle paper of their pages or the calfskin vellum of their covers … To these questions he had no clear answer. He felt trapped in a conundrum, out of whose meshes Adamov, the hunter, gradually fancied himself the hunted!
But by who? The few passengers aboard hardly looked at him, much less spoke to him. He ate his meals with two or three burly fellows, perhaps Koreans, who beyond a good morning, afternoon or night, never pronounced a word to him, nor amongst themselves for that matter.
So he churned these thoughts over and over in his head as the days went by on the never-ending Pacific Ocean. What he needed was a project. Yes, a project that would offer him a meaning to his collecting … to his cherished collection. He resolved to go to New York City once disembarking at Oakland. Why New York City? Because Adamov had read about a Jewish New Yorker, named Louis Wolfson, who spoke many languages and wrote in French because he hated his mother speaking English to him. An odd chap indeed, but this is what he read. The idea fascinated him. The fact that Wolfson was still alive, in spite of the many sojourns in psychiatric wards and clinics. It was his book : Le Schizo et la Langue[6]that he would find and read. This posed no real problem, having been edited and re-edited since 1970. Yes, this book would put him on the trail of something enormous … Something worthwhile. Adamov looking out to sea gazed complacently into his future. A piercing crimson glow hollowed out a widening hole amidst the thick, grey clouds … He spun on his heels. The hunter sensed a pair of eyes bearing down on him. Yet, when he searched out the deck and the bridge high above him there was not a soul in sight. He sighed, padded his paunch, and casually shuffled off to his cabin as the swells lifted the ship high into the crests of the grey sky, only to drop with tremendous speed into the black, oceanic valleys below …
Six months later, Adamov had reached New York City on a greyhound bus from Atlanta, Georgia. He took up his lodgings at a sleezy hotel on the Lower East Side, Water Street, number 9. It wasn’t long before Adamov, weaving in and out of the 8 million New Yorkers day after day, night after night, had purchased a cheap 1970 edition of the aforesaid book by Louis Wolfson, with a preface by Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher of some renown in Europe. He pored over this odd book as if he himself had written it. His fascination over such a contemporary edition unnerved him. This Wolfson grew on him like a drug-addiction — not for his writing, which indeed proved rather drab, but to the singularity of his method to achieve a written work through strenuous exercises of self-neglect and utter detachment from maternal infringement. The schizophrenic maniac had managed to create his own sphere of reality through the myriad experiences of listening to such diverse languages as Yiddish, French, Russian and German on his make-shift Walkman whilst strutting through the streets, sitting in parks, at the table when eating with his obnoxious mother, ensconced in the public library as he read or wrote in all the languages he knew … except English, that accursed language that his mother tortured him with like a sadist would when ripping out fingernails! That language which he hated as much as he hated his mother …
Adamov bought a Walkman and had recorded Persian, Arabic and Mongolian on it, which he listened to as he strolled about the same streets that Wolfson had strolled. Or, he sat in the same New York Public Library where Wolfson had sat for hours and hours until closing time. He couldn’t give a biscuit where Wolfson was now living, probably locked up in some clinic for the alienated in a straitjacket. He had nothing personal against English. However, these dippings into ‘alien tongues’ hour after hour, day after day, lifted him out of the ‘New World’ into one of his own making … his own created polyphonic world. His excitement grew as he shifted from Wolfson’s book to the many languages that he repeated over and over again …
It was more or less at this time that I penetrated Adamov’s world. I, too, had my grotty lodgings at the same hotel, a room right next to his. At night I heard his wild, inflamed exclamations about things I hardly deciphered. However, one day we met in the low-lit, begrimed corridor as he dawdled to his room. He had shaved his head and let grow a beard down to his chest. He wore a skullcap of pure white. Adamov’s black, beady eyed bore into mine with some suspicion at first, but my soft spoken, causal demeanour put him immediately at ease. I introduced myself, and he invited me into his room for an evening chat …
It was the first and last discussion I had with this odd fellow, and it lasted well into the night. The oddness lay not so much in the subjects that we touched upon, but the dream-like atmosphere that Adamov somehow created. There he sat enthroned behind his reading and writing table near the unclean window like Genghis Khan himself, stroking his beard, turning the pages of Wolfson’s book that lay before him, his pudgy fingers smearing coffee grinds on page 40, heavily marked with pencilled notes ! He would address me in English, then after several minutes switch to Spanish and Italian with the utmost ease, an ease that I echoed since I was well versed in those languages. My host appeared to be pleased by this hollow echo in the night. After a drink or two of some cheap red wine, Adamov would burst into a soliloquy in Turkish, afterwards slipping into Russian, German, Dutch and French, attempting to throw me off the chase, to deviate my beating. And in this, I must confess, he thoroughly succeeded. Oftentimes the sly polyglot began a sentence in Russian and finished it in Chinese or Tamil, a feature that linguists call ‘code-switching’. I was flabbergasted …
But what really stupefied me was this strange man’s ability to alter his speech patterns and accents. Now he would impersonate, linguistically, an American from the deep South, now one from New York City. Now a Frenchman from Paris, now from Marseilles! When he fell into speaking Spanish, he conversed ever so casually with a Mexican ‘gaucho’[7] accent, only to follow up with a ‘caballero’[8] one from Barcelona or Madrid … All these inflections and modulations left me swooning, to say the least. At length, at four in the morning, I rose and retired to my room, having learnt absolutely nothing of importance about this amazing creature. In short, I felt more ignorant of this man than before I ever laid eyes on him …
Everyday Adamov spent over ten hours at the public library. It was there that his great project suddenly took form, looming larger and larger in his excited mind. Why not write stories myself ? Why not write stories in many languages and not just read or listen to them ? Yes, different stories written in different languages, signed by invented names! Twelve stories – fiction, each bearing a style of its own, a flavour and texture of its own, yet signed by twelve different writers. Adamov grew more and more agitated, fidgeting in his chair much to the annoyance of two elderly readers opposite him, poring over a William F. Buckley essay and Eric Lux’s 1991 edition: WoodyAllen: A Biography.
But what languages could he choose? French, Spanish, English, Turkish, Italian and German … Any. How about Russian and Chinese? That would make eight. “I can get on all right with Tamil and Persian … and Armenian?” Adamov paused, collecting his thoughts. What would be the twelfth language ? His own ? Never. It was his mother’s tongue, and besides who would ever read it? But was being read all that important, vital to his existence? No. This project was beyond a reading public … beyond mankind’s expectations of what writing and literature meant to him.
By this time, Adamov’s eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets. The two elderly readers rose from their chairs and left with many a smirk and sneer. What did he care? Still, he needed one last language: “I got it, I’ll invent a language from all the languages I know! That will be my twelfth story; a story to end all stories …”
He mapped out his plan of action mentally. Our future short-story writer shot out of his chair and made a bee-line for his hotel. He would put his plan into action that very night … He set to work at his reading and writing table, having decided to begin the Twelve with English, the language that Wolfson loathed! He cringed under that delicious stroke of inspiration. Let the bugger loathe all he might! Adamov could love his book, but he harboured no devotion towards its writer. Besides, he was residing in an English-speaking country and there he wanted to write in English. He would write French in France or Belgium, Spanish in Spain or in Latin America, Turkish in Turkey, and so on.
Hours went by as Adamov pressed on and on, burning oil of the midnight lamps, filling sheets of cheap notebook paper as quickly as his imagination spiralled out. Coffee after coffee kept pace with his hand, à la Balzac, amidst the screaming police sirens, the bickering of pimps and their whores below his window, rubbish bin cans crashing on pavements as stray cats or vagrants rummaged through their contents. Through the thin walls of his room he heard coughing, sneezing, cursing, snoring and sleep-talking.
As the sun broke through the thick, colourless skies of a New York City morning, Adamov, thoroughly exhausted, threw down his mighty writing tool. He had finished the first of the Twelve: The Gardenof Enchantment, signed Hilarius Eremita …
Just at that triumphant moment a sudden hammering at his door rocked him out of his reverie. He rose sluggishly and shuffled to the unlocked door. As he grasped the knob the door burst open in one forceful thrust. Two hooded men seized Adamov by the throat, pinned him against the wall and strangled him with their bare hands. The ponderous writer slid limply to the floor, mouth ajar, eyes open in tragic astoundment. The hooded men fled, vanishing into thin air, as the expression goes …
Hearing hurried footsteps, I waited until they had died down, then tip-toed to his room. For some unknown reason his premeditated murder, for premeditated murder it undeniably was, did not surprise nor move me. I swiftly, however, rushed to the writing table : Nothing had been touched ! I gathered all his papers then returned briskly to my room …
And this was how I was able to salvage from the malevolent hands of Adamov, or Hilarius Eremita, the story called, The Garden of Enchantment …
When I think back on this whole affair there is no shadow of a doubt that the hunter had become the hunted for reasons that we shall never really know. In light of that, I departed from New York City the day after the murder on a flight to Buenos Aires, then on to Madrid …
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[1] A book printed on a Gutenburg Press before 1500.
[3] Famous French ‘gentleman’ robber who steals from the rich to give to the poor, and in doing so, always outsmarts the police, but without ever shedding any blood. Arsène’s adventures were written by Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941).
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
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With Christmas at our heels and the world waking up slowly from a pandemic that will hopefully become an endemic as the Omicron seems to fizzle towards a common cold, we look forward to a new year and a new world. Perhaps, our society will evolve to become one where differences are accepted as variety just as we are fine with the fact that December can be warm or cold depending on the geography of the place. People will be welcomed even if of different colours and creed. The commonality of belonging to the same species will override all other disparities…
While we have had exciting developments this year and civilians have moved beyond the Earth — we do have a piece on that by Candice Louisa Daquin — within the planet, we have become more aware of the inequalities that exist. We are aware of the politics that seems to surround even a simple thing like a vaccine for the pandemic. However, these two years dominated by the virus has shown us one thing — if we do not rise above petty greed and create a world where healthcare and basic needs are met for all, we will suffer. As my nearly eighty-year-old aunt confided, even if one person has Covid in a remote corner of the world, it will spread to all of us. The virus sees no boundaries. This pandemic was just a start. There might be more outbreaks like this in the future as the rapacious continue to exploit deeper into the wilderness to accommodate our growing greed, not need. With the onset of warmer climates — global warming and climate change are realities — what can we look forward to as our future?
Que sera sera — what will be, will be. Though a bit of that attitude is necessary, we have become more aware and connected. We can at least visualise changes towards a more egalitarian and just world, to prevent what happened in the past. It would be wonderful if we could act based on the truth learnt from history rather than to overlook or rewrite it from the perspective of the victor and use that experience to benefit our homes, planet and all living things, great and small. In tune with our quest towards a better world, we have an interview with an academic, Sanjay Kumar, founder of a group called Pandies, who use theatre to connect the world of haves with have-nots. What impressed me most was that they have actually put refugees and migrant workers on stage with their stories. They even managed to land in Kashmir and work with children from war-torn zones. They have travelled and travelled into different dimensions in quest of a better world. Travelling is what our other interviewee did too — with a cat who holds three passports. CJ Fentiman, author of The Cat with Three Passports, has been interviewed by Keith Lyons, who has reviewed her book too.
This time we have the eminent Aruna Chakravarti review Devika Khanna Narula’sBeyond the Veils, a retelling of the author’s family history. Perhaps, history has been the common thread in our reviews this time. Rakhi Dalal has reviewed Anirudh Kala’sTwo and a Half Rivers, a fiction that focusses on the Sikh issues in 1980s India from a Dalit perspective. It brought to my mind a family saga I had been recently re-reading, Alex Haley’s Roots, which showcased the whole American Revolution from the perspective of slaves brought over from Africa. Did the new laws change the fates of the slaves or Dalits? To an extent, it did but the rest as fact and fiction showcase were in the hands that belonged to the newly freed people. To enable people to step out of the cycle of poverty, the right attitudes towards growth and the ability to accept the subsequent changes is a felt need. That is perhaps where organisations like Pandies step in. Another non-fiction which highlights history around the same period and place as Kala’s novel is BP Pande’sIn the Service of Free India –Memoirs of a Civil Servant. Reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha, the book explores the darker nuances of human history filled with violence and intolerance.
That violence is intricately linked to power politics has been showcased often. But, what would be really amazing to see would be how we could get out of the cycle as a society. With gun violence being an accepted norm in one of the largest democracies of the world, perhaps we need to listen to the voice of wisdom found in the fiction by Steve Davidson who meets perhaps a ghost in Hong Kong. Musing over the ghost’s words, the past catches up in Sunil Sharma’s story, ‘Walls’. Sharma has also given us a slice from his life in Canada with its colours, vibrancy and photographs of the fall. As he emigrated to Canada, we read of immigrants in Marzia Rahman’s touching narrative. She has opted to go with the less privileged just as Lakshmi Kannan has opted to go with the privileged in her story.
Sharma observes, while we find the opulence of nature thrive in places people inhabit in Canada, it is not so in Asia. I wonder why? Why are Asian cities crowded and polluted? There was a time when Los Angeles and London suffered smogs. Has that shifted now as factories relocated to Asia, generating wealth in currency but taking away from nature’s opulence of fresh, clean air as more flock into crowded cities looking for sustenance?
Humour is introduced into the short story section with Sohana Manzoor’s hilarious rendering of her driving lessons in America, lessons given to foreigners by migrants. Rhys Hughes makes for more humour with a really hilarious rendition of men in tea cosies missing their…I think ‘TrouserHermit’ will tell you the rest. He has perhaps more sober poetry which though imaginative does not make you laugh as much as his prose. Michael Burch has shared some beautiful poetry perpetuating the calmer nuances of a deeply felt love and affection. George Freek, Anasuya Bhar, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Dibyajyoti Sarma have all given us wonderful poetry along with many others. One could write an essay on each poem – but as we are short shrift for time, we move on to travel sagas from hiking in Australia and hobnobbing with kangaroos to renovated palaces in Bengal.
We have also travelled with our book excerpts this time. Suzanne Kamata’sThe Baseball Widowshuttles between US and Japan and Somdatta Mandal’s translation of A Bengali lady in England by Krishnabhabi Das, actually has the lady relocate to nineteenth century England and assume the dress and mannerisms of the West to write an eye-opener for her compatriots about the customs of the colonials in their own country.
While mostly we hear of sad stories related to marriages, we have a sunny one in which Alpana finds much in a marriage that runs well with wisdom learnt from Kung Fu Panda. Devraj Singh Kalsi has given us a philosophical piece with his characteristic touch of irony laced with humour on statues. If you are wondering what he could have to say, have a read.
In Nature’s Musings, Penny Wilkes has offered us prose and wonderful photographs of the last vestiges of autumn. As the season hovers between summer and winter, geographical boundaries too can get blurred at times. A nostalgic recap given by Ratnottama Sengupta along the borders of Bengal, which though still crossed by elephants freely in jungles (wild elephants do not need visas, I guess), gained an independence from the harshness of cultural hegemony on December 16th, 1971. Candice Louisa Daquin has also looked at grey zones that lie between sanity and insanity in her column. An essay which links East and West has been given to us by Rakibul Hasan about a poet who mingles the two in his poetry. A Bengali song by Tagore, Purano shei diner kotha, that is almost a perfect trans creation of Robert Burn’s Scottish Auld Lang Syne in the spirit of welcoming the New Year, has been transcreated to English. The similarity in the content of the two greats’ lyrics showcase the commonalities of love, friendship and warmth that unite all cultures into one humanity.
Our first translation from Uzbekistan – a story by Sherzod Artikov, translated from Uzbeki by Nigora Mukhammad — gives a glimpse of a culture that might be new to many of us. Akbar Barakzai’s shorter poems, translated by Fazal Baloch from Balochi and Ratnottama Sengupta’s transcreation of a Tagore song, Rangiye Die Jao, have added richness to our oeuvre along with one from Korean by Ihlwha Choi. Professor Fakrul Alam, who is well-known for his translation of poetry by Jibonanda Das, has started sharing his work on the Bengali poet with us. Pause by and take a look.
There is much more than what I can put down here as we have a bumper end of the year issue this December. There is a bit of something for all times, tastes and seasons.
I would like to thank my wonderful team for helping put together this issue. Sohana Manzoor and Sybil Pretious need double thanks for their lovely artwork that is showcased in our magazine. We are privileged to have committed readers, some of who have started contributing to our content too. A huge thanks to all our contributors and readers for being with us through our journey.
I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful transition into the New Year! May we open up to a fantastic brave, new world!
Borderless 