KAAL AND MAHAKAAL:  A VISION OF TIME AND THE TIMELESS

The ‘Kaal’ represents death, and death is symbolic of mortality. Mortality can be defined only in terms of time. So, ‘kaal’ represents Time. Everything that is born to this earth, – trees, flowers, plants, birds, animals, and men – are mortal as they possess a definite time span. Even if they are not killed, they disappear at the end of their term.  This finitude is contained in the seed itself,  which grows as per its ingrained potential and then, automatically, a moment comes when the decline sets in.  So far as men are concerned, they are governed by their stars, which determine how, what and when of their life work. 

Being a part of the creation, every living entity is subject to Time, but they are unaware of the fact that, in addition to Time,  they are also being simultaneously governed and monitored by a spatial agency which represents the idea of Timelessness.  It is Maha-kaal,  the symbol of deathlessness, immortality and eternity. This SuperTime or Maha-kaal is like a satellite suspended in the cosmic spheres from where it keeps a close watch on the entire universal movement, keenly observing  how the living objects are conducting themselves. 

The ‘Kaal’ 

‘Kaal’ spares none as the  people are trapped in time. Life is a physical  entity which is played like a film in which a director [time] wants to say something, and that said, the film is over.  However, life represents a confusing web of passions.  The protagonists are afraid of temporal authority [courts etc]  but remain only vaguely aware of the presence of an over-lording agency, which is recording their movements.  

The Uninstructed and the Uninitiated

In general, men show scant regard for the spatial agencies, or even gods, and they never fear they might have to encounter hell. It is a strange peculiarity of these times that hell does not scare anybody.  Men create trouble for themselves, because they come to this earth uninstructed and uninitiated. No one reminds them, that they are on a short visa, controlled by time, [kaal], and when their visa is over, they will have to report back. People are blissfully unaware of the fact that their actions are under double check.  They find it all right if they get good education, good job, rich marriage, and good offspring.  But they have no inkling that all their actions are being recorded, and checked for their genuineness, and if they can succeed in this world with smartness, it will be detected by the spatial sleuths of the Maha-Kaal. 

Maha-Kaal

Time that we encounter in our lives is a limited edition of the SuperTime, the Maha-Kaal. The life that we live on this earth is highly constrained.  But, everything that we do, has a parallel shot in divine spheres, where our actions are under constant gaze of the stars.  Maha-Kaal, the Lord of Eternity and Immortality,  who supervises human operations,  is in possession of the records of our previous incarnations too. Lord Shiva, who is  called ‘Maha-Kaal’, is the ‘Destroyer’ in the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh.  Maha-kaal, the Timeless agency of God, manages the temporal and spiritual being of creation. He looks over the actions of men,  evaluates their life work, and, with the help of Dharamraj, decides the destiny of man. 

Maha-kaal and Man’s Existential Reality

The earthly existence which is trapped in time [kaal] is full of aberrations, and the temporal courts punish people who act amiss on the basis of physical evidence which is not adequate enough to judge what a man has done,  and what is the extent of his error. Whatever actions they undertake, are just parcels of a larger design which is entirely and absolutely inconceivable.  Maha-Kaal, however, takes into account mna’s DNA, and his past ‘karma’, and finally brings up the truth of his actions before deciding his fate.  Ordinary people, if they fear anything, it is death.  They forget that life is only a small parcel of a larger design and Maha-Kaal is the ultimate arbiter not only of our deeds, past and present.  

DR JERNAIL S ANAND

Dr. Jernail S. Anand, with 200 books to his credit [20 epics] is a Chandigarh-based  polymath, and a vital architect of the 21st century ethical literature whose seminal work ‘Lustus: The Prince of Darkness’ challenges the moral complacency of our era.  Founding President of the International Academy of Ethics, and Laureate of Charter of Morava [Serbia], Seneca [Italy], Franz Kafka [Germany, Ukraine, Czech Rep] and Maxim Gorky [Russia],  his name is inscribed on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. He is an Honorary Member of the Serbian Writers Association, Belgrade. Anand has built a poetics that unites ethics, Vedic spirituality, social critique, and the philosophy of meaning. Anand presents an articulated perspective on poetry as an instrument of planetary consciousness. A moral philosopher, professor, and international speaker, Anand has devoted much of his research to the ethical dimension of language, to the responsibility of the individual within a globalised society, and to the relationship between matter, consciousness, and transcendence.

Email: anandjs55@yahoo.com.

Bibliography:

https://sites.google.com/view/bibliography-dr-jernail-singh/home

https://share.google/QtiWrcFr7Sca7v0qC

Nation

The sunflowers of dawn

A different width of periphery

My harmonious velvet memory

Perched on an innocent soul

To remember is to die upon gods

A numberless machine of globe

Poetry is in the blood of the nation

My fragrance soul of happiness

The country song of unity and diversity

I pray upon national anthem

Join me for a cult of culture

Multifaceted game of economists

As I write upon the verses of soul. 

Mom

“Here, beta,” my maasi said as she handed me over a warm glass of water, she was under the wrong impression that I was struggling to deal with the passing away of my mother, just like how she was finding it terrible to not have a sister from now-onwards to daily talk to, after finishing the household work. 

I drank a sip, it soothed my infected throat a bit. I walked over towards the window of  my room, which had been locked since ages. I entered the room and found it sleeping under a blanket of dust. I pulled my old, worn out wooden chair from the study table, and sat at the window. The moment I drank the last gulp, a tear rolled down my right eye. It was as my brain remembered my entire life, and that how I never had a single good memory of my mother. I must forget now how much I hated, since it is immoral to talk bad about the dead. Will this change the fact that she still tortured me, that she never showed me how warm motherhood is? 

I looked all around, the bulb had become dimmer, and the fan had become creakier. 

All the memories started flashing in, every incident of my childhood, or I can say every trauma. Living with her wasn’t easy, it required nodding all the time. 

I was five when she put me in drawing class. Two years passed away, I couldn’t learn anything. That was the first time she had slapped me, I still remember those four fingers on my cheeks. 

By the time I was eight, I was sent off to ballet, although I wanted to be a cricketer. 

“You have to look beautiful, that is what matters for a woman,” she would always say, and there would be silence all over. I would spend hours embodying grace and beauty in myself, and somehow I managed to do it, but it wasn’t of any use. 

My mom would grab my shoulders and cry out loud. “Why are you a slow learner, tell me why?”

“This isn’t what I like,” I would rebel. 

“You are a woman, you must have beauty, beauty and beauty,” she would yell out loud. 

She would every day bring in some or the other pastes which would smell horribly, and she would put them on my face all over.

“It is burning like hell, I am going to wash it,” I would say when she would grab me. 

“No, it will make your dark tone faire. No, I said”.

There would be oil every time in my hair, and she would shampoo them hard, making them soft and straight, and not like a curly nest like her.

It would pain, but I couldn’t do anything. She hated the fact that I was her Xerox copy. 

I couldn’t get any chocolates and cakes, as they would bring acne to my face. I wasn’t allowed to choose what I was going to wear, as she didn’t like my choice. I would always get magazines full of portraits of beautiful models and their tips for looking graceful and radiant when I asked for any comic. I was only allowed to watch cook shows which would teach making modern delicacies, and presenting food in a fancy way. She controlled my life, and all she ever thought was how to make me attractive. She also forced me into being a topper, with me also going to violin and dancing classes every day, not allowed to skip even during my onset of periods.

“I am skipping tomorrow’s exam,” I said one day, too tired from my dance rehearsals. 

“No,” she said. She sat there, making me study half of the whole night. 

I fell asleep on the day of the exam. When she heard it, she slapped me thrice, tightly.

“Why do you cause trouble to your mother? Why aren’t you turning out how I want you to/ You were born to torture me and bring me troubles it seems,” she yelled that day, the whole house in her terror.

“That’s because I resemble you, curse yourself for that,” I said back, too much frustrated, though I accept a daughter can never in her life tell that to her mother, no matter what happens. 

She was hurt, and she cried the whole week. I thought she would stop, but she became even more determined now to make me beautiful. She also did not speak to make, she would enter my room, not speak a word and would sit there, her cold hand pointing me to do whatever she wanted me to do. 

I became a distinguished ballet dancer, and could play the violin really well. Her pulling my long hair twice every week to make them silky and smooth turned out to be of some use, they helped me find my first boyfriend whom I married eventually. 

“No, I will find a guy for you, you can’t marry somebody else,” my mom objected, obviously. 

“Can you please stop interfering in my life,” I burst out wailing that day. “All my life, I lived as you wanted me to live, your will prevailed all the time. Now please, let me take one decision for myself, let me live one day, please,” I begged in front of her. 

As the preparations happened throughout the wedding, she was creating chaos, my mother. In the end, I wore what she wanted, and I looked how she wanted me to. During the last three days, she tried to talk to me, but I was already too mad at her for creating an argument at every function. When I was wedded off, I never called her from my in-law’s place. Also, I had then started working again, and I had no time to talk to her except giving harsh and dry replies if she had accidentally called me once in a blue moon. 

The day I received the phone call reporting her suicide, I had zero reactions, I wasn’t shocked at all. I knew she was mentally sick, and her life’s motto was to take all of us with her to the asylum. 

It wasn’t until I saw her dead corpse that I fell in an abyss, the space of nothingness. I forgot, everything for a second, it felt as if I was the corpse. There she lied hopeless, bald and charcoal on her dark skin, all over her body, after which she hung herself. 

“Where the hell were you lost that she did this to herself,” my expressionless and tear-less self told my father, who stood there as if, as if, what has happened, has happened. 

Suddenly, my flashbacks went away, and right now here I was in this room for what I came here, to read two diaries left for me by my mother, which was her last wish of this life she had written and put in an envelope saying “Only for Riya”, before she departed forever. 

I read through the ten pages she had written, each one slapping my existence to the very core of it. As I completed her diary, I opened the second diary of my father, which my mother had stolen from him and had convinced him by crying for a week that he had forgotten keeping it somewhere. I read all night this long diary of his, full of poems on women, women with silky hair, fair ladies shining bright and ladies smelling of strong perfumes all the time. I saw each mesmerizing beauty’s head-shot he had glued it with love, all the women he lived his life with, except my mother. At first, I thought that this woman’s last wish was also to invade someone’s privacy. Now, it was needed. She was the woman who held her hand out to catch her husband’s love, which was always of some other woman, and it only caught bitterness every time. 

“I tried to make him like me more, as I couldn’t leave him for my kids. Every time I ended to make myself more beautiful, he never saw it, as there was someone much better for him ready at each stage of life. Now, no more”. This was the last thing  she wrote in her diary. 

I sat there trapped in a dark chamber of hatred for her, for my father, and the most for myself. But how could I know this? Every thing made sense now, every dark memory of my childhood lost its hatred. All I could hear was the echoing silence when I never spoke to her for ages, and my dry replies and rough words. 

I took up a pencil, with tears dropping on that page, and wrote after the last sentence of my mother in her diary :

I love you. I wish we deserved you. 

CHILDHOOD IS HAPPINESS
By Thị Lan Anh Tran, Aschaffenburg, Germany
© All rights reserved

Three little children under open skies,
Tiny hands lifting wind-borne dreams that rise.
Smiles so pure, like verses softly born,
Innocence blooming like the grass at dawn.

Butterflies drifting through the endless blue,
With laughing breezes that the world renew.
No weight of future, no worry, no pain—
Only the present, like sun after rain.

A year has passed in whispers light and brief,
Drifting like gentle wings of tender grief.
Carrying joy in a peaceful flight,
Through childhood’s skies of soft and endless light.

Childhood is sunlight at break of day,
A drop of rain that gently fades away.
A song that echoes through hearts so wide,
A world of wonder we keep inside.

And when we grow in the rush of time,
May we not lose those days so fine.
May innocence still guide our way,
And happiness in our hearts forever stay.

TUỔI THƠ LÀ HẠNH PHÚC

Ba em giữa khoảng trời xanh,
Nâng niu cơn gió mong manh ước nguyền.

Nụ cười trong vắt hồn nhiên,
Như hoa cỏ dại bên miền bình minh.

Bướm vàng chao liệng lung linh,
Theo làn gió hát hành trình rong chơi.

Không lo năm tháng xa vời,
Chỉ vui hiện tại giữa đời tuổi thơ.

Một năm thoáng tựa giấc mơ,
Êm như cánh bướm vật vờ bay qua.

Mang theo hạnh phúc chan hòa,
Thả theo ngọn gió ngân nga dịu dàng.

Tuổi thơ là nắng mai vàng,
Là cơn mưa nhẹ khẽ ngang hiên nhà.

Là câu hát vọng ngân xa,
Là miền cổ tích nở hoa trong lòng.

Mai này giữa chốn mênh mông,
Bước qua dâu bể đục trong cuộc đời.

Xin đừng quên một khoảng trời,
Từng là hạnh phúc tuyệt vời tuổi xanh.

Để còn giữ chút trong lành,
Giữa bao biến động mong manh kiếp người.

Để khi tóc điểm sương rơi,
Vẫn nghe hạnh phúc đầy vơi trong tim.

There was a series of roads and they had horse and carriages plus it was winter. I thought they were rugged and had bravery because it was cold and windy. The people and the horses must be of a different and stronger disposition, I thought. And the farm contained so many horses running freely around oh they seemed and were happy, joyous. The dogs didn’t bark at the visitors and I thought, Maybe the dogs are knowing that we are welcome and kind, so they decided to be welcoming and kind. 

The man that took us around was of few words but fair and open, straightforward. He said that things were good and I went from the outside road to the inside property but outdoor. Large wrap around porch. Many windows. No frills though. Old time. Regular building. No decadence and showing off. Just life. Farm life. Inside the buildings some cats watched on from the barn rafters and mostly I saw a black cat that seemed to be sagacious and serene even in movement. Back and forth it went after having appeared suddenly like a spirit. 

I glanced back outside. It was an overcast winter day in a town. I wondered what it would be like to live there or around there. Osho says centuries live contemporaneously and this must be true. I liked the concrete forms and the vastness and the clean cold air. There was an honesty about it all. I wanted to explore more but we were only meant to be there for a short time, a quick visit. 

Going out and saying thanks, following the roads again, there were more horses and fields and of course skies. The world was another world, not a city or town, but just lands and lands and lands. I imagined deer and coyote dens, foxes and cows, or the butterflies of summer and wild beige reeds.

 Out there must be natural magic, in the spring rains, around the summer meadow and its atmospheres, at the autumnal sounds and sights, and maybe even amidst the cold and almost bleak winters with its short days and aloof ways, but days where the horses still run around and have a joyous demeanour about them. 

This month’s issue journeys through Landscapes of the Soul, mapping our inner geographies.

The human soul is a landscape shaped by countless forces: the wounds we inherit, the loves we experience, the places we remember, the losses we endure, and the dreams that carry us forward. Like a physical landscape, the inner world contains mountains and valleys, storms and seasons, deserts of loneliness and gardens of renewal. The works in this collection explore these inner terrains, revealing the many ways people search for meaning, connection, healing, and transcendence.

First, some announcements. Contributor Peter Dellolio has a new poetry collection coming out from New Meridian Arts, Catch Of The Day.

CATCH OF THE DAY is a collection of surreal poems based on the concept of irrational collage or juxtaposition so often found in Surrealism, where totally unrelated and disconnected elements are combined. Each poem is a stanza of lines that are self-contained and bear no logical connection to one another. My hope is that this brings out some of the magical, incantatory powers of language.

If you’d like to order a copy, New Meridian Press invites you to contact them at newmeridianarts1@gmail.com for a discount.

Also, our regular contributor Rui Carvalho invites readers and contributors to submit poetry to the next annual Nature Writing Contest.

Our contest, Nature 2025-2026, is a new opportunity that we, as organizers, create to reach the rest of the world. Every Contest is a challenge for authors participating and to people that make it happen. This year we invite all authors to write poetry about:
(i) Flowers;
(ii) Trees and wind;
(iii) Water;
(iv) Nature Conservation;
(v) Turtles;
(vi) Love for people and nature;
(vii) Hope and Happiness.

Rules and submission information here.

Now for our second July issue, Landscapes of the Soul.

Every soul carries traces of the past, and several contributors look at the wounds we carry from the histories that have shaped us. Srijani Dutta’s poetry reminds us that struggle is an inescapable part of the human existence. Abigail George speaks to the inherited language of addiction, a shared, familial dialect of suffering. Adamu Muhammad Ja’agi suggests that forgiveness can be a powerful act of liberation, allowing a person who has been hurt to reclaim their identity beyond inherited pain. In Aleksandra Soltysiak’s poetry, translated by Olga Smolnytska, memory becomes a haunted and unreliable mirror where love, loss, and truth shimmer between revelation and illusion.

In Naim Al-Musafir’s Voices from There, translated from Arabic into English by Faleeha Hassan, landscapes themselves become keepers of memory. Through magic realism and social history, the story reveals how places preserve the stories of those who have suffered, departed, and returned. Cyril Erchev’s piece reflects the experience of diaspora: a woman out of place in her present world but spiritually still walking the fjords of her ancestors. Sayani Mukherjee explores the emotional geography of homeland, where beauty and trauma exist side by side. Mahesh Paudyal enters the darker regions of memory, examining how disturbing experiences linger within the human mind. Abigail George’s long meditative poem asks how a person survives when love, home, peace, and certainty disappear.

Within the landscapes of the soul, the gardens of love provide shelter and transformation. Türkan Ergör points out that love is an active choice, not just a state of being or a feeling. Chidimma Ewelukwa shows how daily acts of motherly care become expressions of profound emotional connection. David Kokoette similarly honors motherhood as a vocation, emphasizing the devotion, responsibility, and meaning found in nurturing another life. Berdinazarova Jasmina Mirshod qizi celebrates the continued love and care of her father. Bill Tope explores the uncertain landscape of adolescence, capturing the vulnerability of discovering oneself through relationships. The poetry of Barbaros İrdelmen travels through different seasons of human experience, reflecting on mortality, romantic love, and the dynamics of long-term relationships. Hassan Musa Dakasku reflects on the possibilities and responsibilities of friendship.

Eva Lianou Petropoulou celebrates love as essential to both self-understanding and connection with others, while Dr. Prasanna Kumar Dalai expands love into a force capable of reshaping identity, time, and existence itself. Graciela Noemi Villaverde reframes “saving” not as a onetime heroic act, but as a quiet, steady, loving presence that transforms what was dead or broken into something that can still grow. Reema Hamza’s poem highlights how love can transform longing, exile, and devastation into a sacred, defiant act of remaking the world. Kang Young-eun discovers holiness in everyday experiences, transforming bread, wine, evening light, loneliness, and memory into symbols of human connection and spiritual awareness.

The soul is also a place of questioning, conflict, and spiritual discovery. Duane Vorhees explores the self as an internal battlefield where instinct, conscience, and reason compete for control. Elmaya Jabbarova reminds us of the need to choose love and moral behavior and the ultimate folly of cruelty. Mesfakus Salahin presents existence as a pilgrimage guided by love, personal choice, and the search for ultimate truth. Wan Yilong presents a spiritual journey through combined metaphors from ancient Buddhist Pure Land teachings and modern cosmic space opera. Jack Phillips Lowe’s short story presents an everyday vignette in the life of a person who takes medicine for a mental health condition. Mark Young’s poetry explores how we assemble ourselves from the bricolage of our surroundings. Joe Couture’s pieces highlight selfhood built through physical work and wear and tear on the body over time. Sumana Bhattacharjee’s poetry points out how we can find meaning in life’s struggles when we follow our own consciences and trust our inner strength.

The internal battlefield metaphor applies to nations and political entities as much as to individuals, as they also struggle with identity and conscience. Jacques Fleury presents America as a nation continually struggling between its highest ideals and its darkest realities. Aminu Femi Jamiu mourns and marks the loss of young Esther Harrison, a schoolgirl murdered in Nigeria. Yeon Myung-ji’s poetry, narrated by the ancient Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang (creator of the terracotta army found in his grave) highlights how even a person who held absolute power was humbled by death and the limits of his human knowledge. Alan Catlin’s poetic series depicts the waking nightmares of a civilization in decline, where the only honest witness knows they’re floating away from shore and still can’t stop watching. Bilal Al-Masri interviews author Dr. Jernail Singh about a variety of topics, including the moral and social responsibilities of authors in times of institutional injustice and suffering. Stephen Jarrell Williams points to a hinge moment in a civilization, when a society reaches a necessary collapse that leads to a more just rebirth.

Dr. Jernail S. Anand reflects on human weakness and limitation, arguing that imperfection is not something to overcome but something that gives life its depth and meaning. In conversation, Dr. Jernail Singh and Dr. Annie John describe poetry as a spiritual and ethical journey. The poet becomes both witness and seeker, exploring human suffering while reaching toward universal wisdom. J.J. Campbell becomes an observer in his own life, as apathy with wry humor is safer than grief. Priyanka Neogi points out that each of us have different layers and dimensions to our personalities. Nidia Amelia Garcia speculates on the life and wisdom of an old man by observing his photograph. Teresa de Lujan Safar’s piece celebrates the grace, strength, self-possession, and inner dignity of an older woman. With another human response, Thi Lan Anh Tran and Musharraf Hussain celebrate perseverance and inner strength, showing how resilience allows individuals to rise beyond adversity.

As we are part of nature, outdoor landscapes can mirror the landscapes of the soul. Shah Jehan Ashrafi views autumn as a profound metaphor for death, surrender, transformation, and rebirth. The falling leaves become symbols of necessary endings that make new beginnings possible. Mahbub Alam speaks to the cleansing and renewing energy of the Bangladeshi monsoon rains. O’ktamova Sabrina Mahmud qizi describes an ecological analysis of the health of Uzbek humus and soil. Dessy Tsvetskova’s Tree of Life portrays women as a source of creation, memory, resilience, and renewal. Rooted in the earth yet reaching toward the heavens, the tree represents continuity across generations.

Ananya Guha celebrates the beauty of dancing peacocks, offering a moment of wonder and connection with the natural world. Timothee Bordenave explores ideas that benefit both humanity and the environment, suggesting that the health of the planet is connected to the health of the human spirit. Brian Barbeito captures the quiet landscape of winter, reminding readers of the shared rhythms of nature and the reflective stillness that accompanies seasonal change. Dianne Reeves Angel reminisces about long stretches of teen summer fun in the pool and with friends.

Art is one way humanity can join nature in the process of creation. Federico Wardal’s article notes the Egyptian government’s commitment to promoting and showcasing current and historical arts and culture. Andrena Zawinksi explores the artist’s search to create, be recognized, and remain alive through creative expression. Alex Johnson reflects on the relationship between life and art through his encounter with a publicist representing Philip Glass, revealing the irony that reality itself can sometimes imitate artistic structures. Tanja Ajtic’s poem threads watercolor’s quiet disciplines of washes, shades, making use of empty white space, into a metaphor for a life lived in silence, holding back opinions, feeling the world’s eruptions but never speaking of them. Christina Chin’s haiga and illustration create a unified moment of beauty, demonstrating how words and images can combine to form a single imaginative landscape. Cri8or’s vibrant digital artworks add splashes of color and intriguing shapes to the issue. Fhen M. uses ekphrastic poetry inspired by Priamo della Quercia’s Circle of the Falsifiers to explore the destruction caused by dishonesty and the moral landscapes created by truth and deception. Maria Barnes journeys into a darker psychological landscape, using unsettling imagery and music to symbolize the struggle between the conscious self and hidden fears.

The soul also grows through learning and discovery. Ismatova Dilnura emphasizes the importance of books in children’s education, illustrating reading as a gateway to imagination, knowledge, and possibility. Omonova Dinora Anvarjon qizi celebrates the many ideas and life lessons found within books. Navbaxar Mahmudjanovna Karimova points to ways to encourage the creation of new educational knowledge. Amonboyeva Shahnoza examines the changing landscape of education in the age of artificial intelligence. While technology may assist learning, she argues that creativity, imagination, and human connection remain uniquely human qualities. Although, as Ibroximova Hayitxon Mirzoxidjon qizi points out, artificial intelligence may take over in other human endeavors, including accounting. Maxliyo Alijonova highlights the educational work of Uzbekistan’s Ashurali Legacy Academy, demonstrating how institutions preserve knowledge, culture, and intellectual heritage. Akhmetova Nodira Po’lat qizi underscores the importance of digital literacy for modern Uzbek students. Jasmina Ismatullayeva relates the value of study-abroad experiences for students and why she wishes to travel.

Finally, a few works in this collection highlight the depths of truth within ordinary experiences. Travis Park’s brief, image-driven poems transform familiar places into reflections on uncertainty, memory, and human connection. Mykyta Ryzhykh uses the sea and the house as symbols of existence, showing humanity surrounded by immense forces while often feeling isolated and forgotten. Shlok Pandey’s coming-of-age story addresses loneliness, compassion, observation, and the discovery of beauty in everyday life. Naeem Aziz reminds readers that true value often exists beneath appearances, encouraging a deeper understanding of the gifts each person carries.

Together, these works create a map of the human soul. They travel through valleys of suffering, gardens of love, mountains of reflection, and seasons of transformation. They show that every person carries an inner landscape shaped by memory, relationships, struggles, dreams, and hopes.

“Landscapes of the Soul” reveals that humanity is defined not by avoiding hardship, but by transforming experience into wisdom, compassion, creativity, and renewal. Across cultures and voices, these writers remind us that the journey inward is also a journey toward one another. We hope that you enjoy hearing from each other throughout this issue!

STUDYING ABROAD  – A DOOR OPENED TOWARD DREAMS 

«The future begins today», and this wisdom carries a deep meaning. The goals a person sets today determine the results they achieve tomorrow. I am also one of the young people who have set a great goal for their future. I have recently successfully completed the 9^th grade at School No.16 “ JASORAT” in Kasbi district, Kashkadarya region, and I am stepping forward into the 10^th grade with confidence. During this important period of my life, I have started thinking more seriously about my future and the path I want to follow. I believe that every person has a moment or an encounter that changes the way they see life. I experienced such a moment as well.

A foreign teacher who came to our school to teach us became one of the main reasons why my interest in studying abroad grew stronger. This teacher not only shared knowledge about their subject but also introduced us to their country’s education system, culture, traditions and way of thinking. Through their lessons, I realized that the true purpose of education is not only to receive good grades, but also to learn how to think independently, explore new ideas, create innovations, and become connected with the world. From that moment, studying abroad became one of my greatest dreams and goals.

The people who have given me the greatest support on this journey are my parents. When I shared my dream of studying abroad with them, they welcomed my idea, believe in me, and encouraged me to work hard. I deeply understand that the trust and support of parents are among the greatest sources of strength for a child. Their prayers and encouragement motivate me to move forward toward my goals every day.

Today, studying abroad is not only an opportunity for the children of wealthy families, as some people may think. If a person has a thirst for knowledge, dedication, and determination, may universities around the world can open their doors to them. Various scholarships, grants and international education programs are helping thousands of young people achieve their dreams. However, to take advantage of these opportunities, it is necessary to improve English exams such as IELTS and SAT, study school subjects deeply, and continuously work on personal development.

There are many advantages to studying abroad. First of all, students have the opportunity to study with modern laboratories, experienced professors, and advanced educational methods. They can combine theoretical knowledge with practical experience. By studying together with students from different countries, they can discover new cultures, lifestyles, and prespectives. This experience broadens their worldview, helps them enhance foreign language skills, and allows them to build international friendships.

Another important benefit of studying abroad is that it prepares a person for independent life. Managing time effectively, taking responsibility, solves issues freely, and adapting to different environments are valuable qualities that develop through such experiences. These skills become a strong foundation for future success.

Many people think that entering a foreign university is extremely difficult. However, the hardest step is often the first one – starting!. Reading one page of a book today, learning a new English word, or solving one mathematical problems may seem like a small achievement. But these small steps can lead you towards the world’s most prestigious universities in the future. Great achievements always begin with small actions.

I am also following this path today. I am sorting out improving my English skills and preparing to achieve international certificates such as IELTS, SAT, and other qualifications. I know that many challenges are waiting ahead, but I believe that every challenges will bring me closer to my goal. I am not working only for myself, but also to justify my family’s trust, appreciate the efforts of my teachers, and contribute to the development of my homeland in the future.

Dear friends and fellow students! If you also dream of studying abroad, do not postpone your dreams. Start working from TODAY.  Learn languages, read books, participate in competitions, and never stop searching for new knowledge. Believe in yourself despite nobody do not believe to you. Because success do not come overnight, but daily efforts always bring results.

As the saying goes, «Knowledge is the greatest wealth that elevates a person». Dreams become reality only in the hands of those who believe in them and continue working toward them. I want to be one of those people. I strongly believe that my efforts today will become the foundation of my achievements tomorrow, and one day I will study at one of the world’s leading universities and use the knowledge and experience I gain to make a contribution to the progress of my homeland.