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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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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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/

Ideas transcend borders!

Monalisa No Longer Smiles (2022)

An Anthology of Writings from Across the World

Editor: Mitali Chakravarty

My father had an uncanny ability to read faces. No, he does not identify people's medical risks, personality traits or even the prediction of their future. He could tell a person's origin, caste and creed. He was proud of his achievement and held steadfast to the idea that caste division is a necessary tool for society to progress. 

He would choose where he ate and sometimes refuse invitations to people's homes or even functions of people with questionable status in the caste hierarchy. 

My mother tried to knock some sense into him that the whole world had moved on and things had changed. But he was having none of it. She even reminded him about Periyar EV Ramasamy's speech when he visited Malaya, to leave all the bad discriminatory habits they acquired in India and move forward. But no! He was unmoved and reasonably contended with his way of pigeon-holing people. 

I convinced myself that things would change when I grew up. People would become more learned and open-minded. I assumed that religion would take a back seat as science was slowly answering all the loose ends of knowledge then. 

How wrong I was. 

In the 21st century, the present turned out to be a far cry from what I perceived the future to be. People are congregated in factions. They found ingenious ways to divide and subdivide tribes so that one would dominate the other. Religion has made a comeback in a big way. Fundamentalism has taken root. Putting aside the science and symbolism behind worship and beliefs, believers are more focused on the ritual and blind following of the herd. 

The space between the haves and the have-nots is ever-widening. Materialism has crept into all crevices of our lives, and the future does not look bright. 

Against this gloomy background, this anthology tries to make its readers that there may be hope if we try. 

Borderless Journal, Editor Mitali Chakravarty's brainchild, is hopeful that the world will indeed be one whose borders will be torn down and where everyone will live as one. There would be no discrimination against people by caste, politics, or creed. There would be no wars to show the dominance of one over the other. 

Trying to recreate past glory and relive past grandiosities is no use. In God's creation, everyone is supposedly created equal, so why is there a clan of oppressors and oppressed, the powerful and the weak. Through art, literature and storytelling, this anthology, from its interviews with famous moviemakers, thinkers, poets and writers, from its fiction, 'Monalisa No Longer Smiles' and 'Borderless Journal', through its editor, Mitali Chakravarty, tries to create a possible world where borders do not matter. Ideas transcend borders. 

https://borderlessjournal.com/our-anthology/

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Humbled by a Pig!

It was the stare between two worlds; one of the modern domesticated kind who had a fight-or-flight response limited to his autonomic nervous system versus one who had to fight to stay alive and keep his place in the hierarchy of the pecking order of the jungle.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2023/06/14/humbled-by-a-pig/

Samar on Men Matters Online Journal

Samar 

Farouk Gulsara 

"Is it just me, or are the days getting hotter by the day?" I ask myself as I get into the shower for the third time today. The temperature outside must be ball-parking at 40 degrees Celsius, surely. I am living up to the title my ex-wife used to call me: a cold-blooded sadist. Cold-blooded, yes, as my core body temperature is less than the outside temperature. Sadist, just say I do not turn the other cheek. I live by the mandate that everyone is given one chance in life. 

All these people who condemn others who splurge on themselves with niceties in life can go to hell. They talk about lowering greenhouse gases and lowering carbon footprints. All these are to prevent an uncertain catastrophe that may not happen to a future generation that gives rat's ass to their ancestors, i.e., besides remembering them on Cheng Beng or offering prayers on Deepavali morning. I have one life. I want air conditioning. I cannot live without the room temperature set way down low. ....

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Book Review: Inside the Twisted Mind of Rifle Range Boy

http://literaryjournal.in/index.php/clri/article/view/297
CLRI

Contemporary Literary Review India

Brings articulate writings for articulate readers. eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 6, No 1: CLRI February 2019 | p- 181-187

     

Book Review on Farouk Gulsara’s Inside the Twisted Mind of Rifle Range Boy

Prof Shiv Sethi

‘Inside the Twisted Mind of Rifle Range Boy’ is a melange of profound thoughts penned down by Farouk Gulsara. Hailing from a family where everybody perceives that there is only a single way to deal with the things either black or white whereas the writer is inclined to have an altogether contrary viewpoint. As he advances in the years and grows mature, he becomes aware of the harsh reality that the family of his parents has innumerable blood-curdling tales to narrate because they had witnessed the seamy side of life during the turbulent times of early Malaya.

Farouk Gulsara makes the most of that opportunity and begins to write his own blog known as �Rifle Range Boy�. There is no denying the fact that we the people very conveniently bend rules and regulations to cater to our own whims and fancies. Brahmins are normally considered as the propagators of vegetarianism, but the Brahmins dwelling around the Bay of Bengal and Kashmir have not set such prohibitions for them and they place fish on their platter as their staple diet. Thus, Man is basically a bundle of contradictions. The writer renders twelve years of his services as a Government employee. But he is badly disillusioned and thinks of himself as an idiot for his unwavering commitment to work when he observes that others are being paid lucratively without toiling hard. The varied cultures, diverse civilizations and religion have dovetailed with one another and everything has become a religious event. Indian mythology and festivals have been cherished with unshakable faith, but no one is keen to give heed to the similarities among these different fiesta.

The author appears to be deeply agitated at heart when people question him over his ethnicity or look upon him as an Indian Malaysian. His parents belonged to Malaysia and so does he. Though he has never even set a foot on the Indian soil and evidently specifies in the book that he has no intention to visit India. For he is least interested in beholding the spectacle of poverty ridden people for that he need not pay visit to india. He can have that repulsive glimpse in his own backyard. And a big No to temples , as God is omnipresent for him. Farouk Gulsara has his distinctive views about Hinduism, India, and Bollywood. He holds Late Shammi Kapoor in derision by equating him with a fat monkey, but makes frequent usage of Manoj Kumar’s dialogues for reference in another anecdote. He sheds light on the various cuisines of India, but he has no desire to try Indian food because the menu of Malaysia comprises a vast variety of umpteen delicacies and he is fully content with his life in his native land and its foods. The author poses to be a sentimental fool whereas a discerning reader will take this with a pinch of salt.

The downside with the book is that at some places it is marred with prolixity, superfluousness and repetition and one of chapters has been translated into French which is beyond the ken of most of the readers. Undoubtedly,we aspire for perfection in life contrary to that our life has many imperfection and some of which we can never do away with. We whine, we cringe, we fret and fume, we grumble, we demand and we assert our rights but eventually the reality dawns upon us and we come to terms with the fact that we are mere pawns in the hands of the mighty forces of destiny. Here I am aptly reminded of a famed Victorian writer Thomas Hardy who gives much credence to the philosophy of Determinism and Fatalism.
The writer of this book also throws a flood of light on the legal system of Malaysia and its economic state of affairs. Here we come across several stark similarities between India and Malaysia. In both the nations in the name of development poor people have to bear the brunt of displacement and are bound to lead nomadic existence. The education system is in a shambles and they still require interpreters just like their ancestors required some five decades ago. The so-called modern-day parents are shown dancing to the tune of the snake charmers' flute blinded with abominable superstitions.

They are unbothered for the dreams and aspirations of their children and in a way suffer from peter complex.
To lend a concrete shape to one's pent-up thoughts has not been very popular practice in literature with no specific genre. But soon the writer listens to his inner voice and gets convinced that many roads do indeed lead to Rome, and there is a divine power up there righting the wrong, but still, we have a host of instances of misdeeds committed by the Church and a long lost legacy of the renowned figures. We as humans are capable of inspiring a person to an extent only. Beyond that it is entirely up to his genes or nature whether he succeeds in reaching his place in space on time or not. If a person fails to measure up to certain expectations, it does not signify that he is a failure. We all have to be stretched in order to grow.
In our pursuit to growth and edification rigorous discipline is of paramount importance. Which caste one belongs to does not matter at all. As the author alludes that Hindus would resort to hard penance either through self-imposed starvation, self-flagellation, self-piercing, and observe countless other rituals and customs before Mahatma Gandhi proposed Satyagraha. It is all deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche. The author narrates different stories of the people who arrive in his life and to whom he is all available to lend a helping hand and offer his shoulder to cry on and achieve their Aristotelian cathartic bliss.
The writer is exasperated with the fact that the little cherubic children will be unable to fully bloom into the majestic swan that they always hanker to be. The Asian attitude to life believes in producing a generation of studious book worms only. Nobody bothers if the children have earned enough of life experiences and optimal professional qualifications coupled with the sufficient emotional maturity to match with. Once the formal degrees and material comforts begin to rolling, people here get a semblance of contentment and start believing that now everything will fall in place. Alack! the modern folk dwell in an illusion or a shambolic world. Much to the writer’s chagrin, they are heading towards a cultural bankruptcy as they have lost their connect with their moorings.

With great power comes great responsibility. Information is the power and the unquenchable thirst of mankind for knowledge seems insatiable. Some theories are accepted as pure Gospel; while others are debatable. The Government lies to people in the name of National Security, and it creates more curiosity and restrictions to self-expression. In our daily lives too, we see many able bodies leading miserable life.
The world is fraught with hatred and fissiparous tendencies around us. Even amongst apparently homogeneous societies, there is suspicion and desire to dominate over the other. There is West, East, North, and South, Hindus, Christian, and Muslims, the fair skinned and the dark-skinned, indigenous people and immigrants, moderates and conservatives, all exist with their dichotomous ideologies. The list goes on. But still, people flock together and put their resources during the disasters like earthquakes and tsunami. It reflects the humanity is not fully dead yet.

Farouk Gulsara makes use of the allusions of Arnold Schwarzenegger to Steve Jobs and Lord Shiva. Though he does not provide any solutions about the different worldly problem, but only offers his opinions, and twisted thoughts of his deviant mind. Therefore, this works emerges as a refreshing and eye-opening read. The language is lucid. The narration is flawless. The author also takes recourse to Hindi and Malay languages at many places in the book. . His spontaneous thoughts spread all over the canvas of the book. There's no dull moment and It is an unputdownable work.


Title: Inside the Twisted Mind of Rifle Range Boy Author: Farouk Gulsara
Publisher: Inside The Twisted Mind of Rifle Range Boy 
Available: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=MwxDDwAAQBAJ

Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 6, No 1: CLRI February 2019 | Page 186

Book Review on Farouk Gulsara’s Inside the Twisted Mind of Rifle Range Boy Prof Shiv Sethi

Prof. Shiv Sethi (Reviewer)

Prof. Shiv (Ph D, M Phil, four times MA) is the Head of the Department of English language and Linguistics at Dev Samaj Post Graduate College For Women Ferozepur for the last 17 years.
His research articles have been published in various journals of international repute including The Tribune, The Hindu, The Hindustan Times, The New Indian Express, The Deccan Herald, The Hitavada, and The Daily post and in several newspapers of neighbouring countries like Nepal and Pakistan. He has presented his papers at various universities in India and abroad. He is a guide for research scholars for M Phil thesis.

Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 6, No 1: CLRI February 2019 | Page 187