What is great anyway?

It all started with a Facebook post which quoted Churchill and read, “If you are twenty and not a Communist, you don’t have a heart. But if you are forty and still a leftist, you do not have a brain.” That snowballed into a literary discourse on the word great and what constitutes greatness. The funny thing is that Churchill never said anything to that effect.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/07/14/what-is-great-anyway/

https://winstonchurchill.org/the-life-of-churchill/senior-statesman/

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Hope lies buried in eternity!

Most prayers we offer to a higher being invariably end with 'Peace on Earth' or 'Happiness for All'. Prayers like 'Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinaha 'and 'Om Shanti'  assume that everyone can have things their way at one given time, creating a win-win situation. Such a situation can only exist in our imagination.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/06/16/hope-lies-buried-in-eternity/

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Will Dire Wolves Stalk Streets?

Life evolves. The new replaces the old, and fresh ideas overshadow previous ones. What was once an avant-garde style one day may appear unattractive the next. We sometimes feel embarrassed by the clothes we wear and the trends we embrace decades after models showcased them on the catwalk.

Trends come and go constantly. Species become extinct at a background rate of one species per million each year. Human activities, such as habitat destruction and chemical pollution, have accelerated this decline by hundreds or thousands of times.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/05/14/will-dire-wolves-stalk-streets/

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Felix, the philosophical cat!

Just the other day, a visitor to my home made a remark. She observed that my cat, Felix, was staring into the horizon while sitting by the glass window. Felix seemed unfazed by the activities within the house, instead focusing his gaze on the neighbour's gate. In front of the neighbour's compound stood a few stray cats, returning his stare. It resembled a kind of staring competition.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/04/14/felix-the-philosophical-cat/

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Not quite a towering inferno...

We were told to be ready for dinner by 6 p.m., so we had one and a half hours to kill before gathering at the lobby. My varsity mates and I, fourteen of us, on our regular bromance outing, had decided to embark on a six-day tour around Sri Lanka. Colombo was our last stop.

                                     

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/01/14/not-quite-a-towering-inferno/

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How dynamic was ancient India?

Growing up in the later part of the 1970s, kids of my generation were drilled into us that India was a subcontinent of poverty, filth, and pickpockets. Even our history books taught us that it was a land of darkness, living in its myths, superstitions, and cults, waiting to be civilised by the mighty European race and their scientific discoveries.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/12/16/how-dynamic-was-ancient-india/

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The Eternal Sleep of Kumbhakarna

https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/11/14/the-eternal-sleep-of-kumbhakarna/

I reported to Kuala Pilah District Hospital on 11th August 1989. Just having passed out from medical school a year earlier, followed by a year of housemanship training, I was rearing to go. Like Dr. David Livingstone, who explored the interior of Africa to treat the needy (and convert them), I thought I would change the world.

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To Be or Not to Be…

A teacher lost all her life savings, around RM 200,000, to spammers. Over 400 children were rescued from orphanages in two states from sexual predators in Malaysia. Stories like these are not ground-breaking anymore but happen on a daily basis. The worrying trend of late is that these are no isolated incidents perpetrated by individual wackos with ill intents. It is, in fact, a well-organised, well-lubricating establishment with vast tentacles lurking all over the globe. 

https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/10/14/to-be-or-not-to-be-3/

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From Srinagar to Ladakh: A Cyclist’s Diary

https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/08/14/from-srinagar-to-ladakh-a-cyclists-diary/

They say to go forth and explore, to go to the planet’s edge to increase the depth of your knowledge. Learning about a country is best done doing the things the local populace does, travelling with them, amongst them, not in a touristy way, in a manicured fashion in a tourist’s van but on leg-powered machines called bicycles. Itching to go somewhere after our memorable escapade in South Korea, cycling from Seoul to Busan, as the borders opened up after the pandemic, somebody threw in the idea of cycling from Kashmir to Ladakh. Long story short, there we were, living our dream. The plan was to cycle the 473km journey, climbing 7378m ascent in 8 days, between 6th July 2024 and 12th July 2024.

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Don Quixote’s Paradise

It is the year 2074. Yes, the world is still around, and so is the human race. It has been over a century since Malaysia received its mandate to self-rule. Technically, we should be in a utopia with so much sunlight throughout the year and a chirpy tropical climate devoid of depressing, chilling winters or debilitating natural calamities. A potpourri of food options is available 24/7 at our fingertips and delivered to our doorsteps with easy-access drone servers. We should be the happiest people in the world. In reality, however…

https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/05/14/don-quixotes-paradise

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The Elusive Utopia

© Borderless Journal

When I was growing up, the radio was the musical score constantly playing in the background. Blaring between Tamil movie songs and radio dramas were news of the hour and current issue discussions. The things that got imprinted on my impressionable mind as I was transforming from a teenager to a young adult were about violence, wars and bombings. I remember about the war in Vietnam as it was close to home. For every peace talk and the end of war announcement, there would pop up another bombing and a barrage of casualties. My simple mind wondered when the war would end, but it never did. It went on for so long that they had a Tamil film in 1970 named Vietnam Veedu (House of Vietnam), referring to a household forever in family feuds and turmoil....

https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/03/14/the-elusive-utopia/

Belacan

Migrant stories of yore from Malaysia by Farouk Gulsara

Ah Soh with Nand Lal, Saraswati’s son.
(Photo taken circa the early 2000s).
Courtesy: Farouk Gulsara

https://borderlessjournal.com/2023/08/14/belacan/

“There she goes again,” thought Saraswati as she cut vegetables she had never seen in her native country. “Here goes Ah Soh cooking her stinky dish again.”

Saraswati, Ah Soh and the rest of the pack are people commonly called fresh off the boat. They hail from various parts of China and India.

The loud beating of a metal ladle against a frying pan, accompanied by the shrilling Chinese opera over the radio and her shrieking at her children, need no guessing whose kitchen ‘aroma’ is coming from. Everyone knows Ah Soh is frying belacan, a fermented Malay shrimp paste.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2023/08/14/belacan/?

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