All so Messi?

https://borderlessjournal.com/2026/01/14/all-so-messi/

Lionel Messi in Kolkata. From Public Domain

With the amount of information I am bombarded with daily, I often wonder, as one usually does, how all these changes will change society. Are we all going to be empowered, aware, and demanding what is due to us? Will our minds be so open that we can accept that there is more than one way to skin a cat? On the contrary, will we become more aware of the many ways we can be taken for a ride, and so paranoid that we cannot even breathe a breath of fresh air? What if it is contaminated with toxic effluents?

Three recent video clips steered my mind towards this end.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2026/01/14/all-so-messi/

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Your call is important to us?

“All our agents are extremely busy right now; you’ll be attended to shortly. Your call is important to us.” The robotic voice would go, trying to sound like how a hangman would place a hood over your head before pulling the lever.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/12/15/your-call-is-important-to-us/

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Just Passing Through...

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/10/14/just-passing-through/

During my early days of cycling, as I trained during the early hours before dawn, my greatest fear was not the darkness. Beyond fearing fear itself, the next thing that frightened me was the possibility of a head-to-head encounter with a pack of stray dogs that throng the country roads leading up to Genting Peres, the border between the districts of Hulu Langat in Selangor and Jelebu in Negeri Sembilan. ...

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Verify You Are Human!

'Verify You Are Human'

How often have we, as fully realised human beings, found ourselves in the ironic situation of proving our human status to a computer programme? We have ticked boxes to identify zebra crossings, traffic lights, and buses, only to be told we were wrong, as if we did not know what a bus was. It is as if our fingers were too stubby to press the right keys or too daft to understand. And now, we are deciphering distorted words, as only a human could read wavy or cursive writing.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/08/14/verify-you-are-human/

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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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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/

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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