Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne…
The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) by Chaucer, Prologue
This is the month Asia hosts sprays of new years across multiple regions. Many of these celebrate the fecundity of Earth, spring and the departure of bleak winter months. Each new year is filled with hope for the coming year. The vibrant colours of varied cultures celebrate spring in different ways, but it is a welcome for the new-born year, a jubilation, a reaffirmation of the continuity of the circle of life. Will the wars, especially the shortages caused by them and felt deeply by many of us, affect these celebrations? Had they impacted the festivals that were celebrated earlier? These are questions to which we all seek answers. We can only try to gauge the suffering caused by war on those whose homes, hopes, families and assets have been affected other than trying to cope with the senselessness of such inane attacks. But, in keeping with TS Eliot’s observations on Prufrock, most of us continue our lives unperturbed and as usual.
Some of us think and try to dissent for peace and a world without borders with words – prose or poetry. To reinforce ideas of commonalities that bind overriding divides, we are excited to announce a poetry anthology mapping varied continents with content from Borderless Journal, Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems. We are hugely grateful to Hawakal Publishers for this opportunity and to Bitan Chakraborty for the fabulous cover design. We invite you all to browse on the anthology which is available in hardcopy across continents.
Our issue this month is a bumper issue with the translation of Tagore’s Roktokorobi (Red Oleanders) by Professor Fakrul Alam. It’s the full-length play this time as earlier we had carried only an excerpt. The play is deeply relevant to our times as is Somdatta Mandal’s English rendition of his story, ‘Daliya’, set in Arakan. We also have also translated Tagore’s response to the idea of mortal fame and deification in poetry. Kallol Lahiri’s poignant Bengali story about the resilience of an ageing actress has been brought to us in English by V Ramaswamy. Isa Kamari brings us translations of his Malay poems exploring spirituality through nature.
Our poetry section explores myriad issues – some with the help of nature. We have a vibrant selection of poems from Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, A. Jessie Michael, Mahnoor Shaheen, John Grey, Fazal Abubakkar Esaf, Malaika Rai, Tony Dawson, Pramod Rastogi, Debra Elisa, Ananya Sarkar, Jim Murdoch and George Freek. In one of his four poems, Charles Rammelkamp reflects on the impacts of global warming. David Mellor explores the impact of bombing. Ryan Quinn Flanagan brings us an ekphrastic poem which leaves us smiling. Snigdha Agrawal explores a battle of kitchens on YouTube with a touch of humour and Rhys Hughes dedicates a poem in memory of Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), which too brings a smile to the lips.
But what really grips are the fables that Hughes will be sharing with us over four months. He calls them Rhysop Fables, after the ancient ones from Aesop’s with the ancient author himself being mentioned in one of the short absurdist narratives this time. In fiction, our regular fable writer, Naramsetti Umamaheswararao explores a modern-day dilemma, that of social media intruding into the development of children. Jonathon B Ferrini glances at resilience and mental disability while, Sangeetha G looks into societal attitudes that still plague her part of the world. Oindrila Ghosal gives a story set in Kashmir.
From Kashmir, Gower Bhat shares a heartfelt musing on being a first time father. Mohul Bhowmick writes of Eid in Hydearbad (Hari Raya in Southeast Asia) — echoing themes from Kamari’s poems — and Anupriya Pandey ponders over the quiet acceptance of mundane life that emphasises social inequities. Jun A. Alindogan brings home issues from Phillipines. While we have stories about Vietnam from Meredith Stephens, Suzanne Kamata muses about Phnom Penh, mesmerised by Cambodian dancers.
Farouk Gulsara writes of his cycling trip from Jaipur to Udaipur bringing to life dichotomies of values and showing that age can be just a number. Chetan Poduri reinforces gaps created by technology as does Charudutta Panigrah, a theme that reverberates from poetry to fiction to non-fiction and much of it with a light touch. Devraj Singh Kalsi sprinkles humour with his strange tale about hiring a bodyguard.
Keith Lyons has brought in Keith Westwaters, a soldier-turned-poet who seems to find his muse mainly in New Zealand. We have also featured an author who overrides borders of continents, Marzia Pasini. Her book, Leonie’s Leap, has a protagonist of mixed origin and her characters are drawn out of Russia, India, Bulgaria and many other places.
We have variety in book excerpts. Scott Ezell’s Journey to the End of the Empire: In China Along the Edge of Tibet is a non-fiction about the author’s rather unconventional trip while the other excerpt is a historical fiction, Tarana Husain Khan’s The Courtesan, Her Lover and I. In book reviews, Mandal travels back a to the last century to the times of Octavio Paz (1914-1998) as she writes of Indranil Chakravarty’s The Tree Within: The Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz’s Years in India. Meenakshi Malhotra has discussed Radha Chakravarty’s second poetry collection, In Your Eyes A River: Poems and Rabindra Kumar Nayak has written of the prolific Bhaskar Parichha’s latest book, Odisha – 500 Years of Turmoil, Mayhem and Subjugation. Parichha himself has reviewed Ashoke Mukhopadhyay’s No. 1 Akashganga Lane: The First Novel about the Gig Workers of Kolkata, translated from Bengali by Zenith Roy. The review rsuggests a fascinating story that hovers on the lives of the ‘invisibles’ — the people who continue to ‘help’ the middle classes in South Asia lead a comfortable life. Acknowledging societal gaps is perhaps the start of raising consciousness so that a move can be made towards bridging them and eventually, closing them.
This rounds up our April issue. Do visit our content’s page and explore the journal further.
Huge thanks to the wonderful team, especially Sohana Manzoor for her art. They help bring together the colours of the world to our pages. Huge thanks to contributors who make each issue evolve a personality of its own. And heartfelt thanks to readers who make it worth our while to write.
Wish you all a wonderful month ahead!
Mitali Chakravarty
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