RBR

As Ramadan concluded at the end of last month, beckoning the arrival of Eid festivities, there was a lot of buzz on social media regarding “Eid gifts”.

The last two days before the grand Eid day are packed with frenzied fuss about anything and everything.

Tailors typically enjoy star status at this time of the year. Besides your regular tailor, who takes your bespoke orders for dresses; there are tailors for upholstery work, who are no less busy and sought after now.

Subbasi is a Bengali-influenced dialect that is now spoken by original residents of Dhakaiya community

What is hardship food? I had no idea. The thought of what people eat during natural calamities, war, displacement and such, never came to my mind. It is something we do not think about unless we start to live in destitution.

Tracing the roots of Old Dhaka's unique dialect

Food prepared on the streets is nothing new in Dhaka. Darul Kabab of yester-Dhaka saw various kebabs on skewers, or seekh as it is called in Bangla, being grilled over an open fire or coal embers.

Shojon, a Bangla word, when roughly translated means a dear one, or maybe a near one. With the promise to hold your hands in your darkest times -- like a loved one, SHOJON is a mental health service, an initiative of the SAJIDA Foundation.

As I seated myself in the Halda Valley Tea Lounge, seeing the way the welcome drinks were served left me in awe.

I had nothing significant planned for last Friday, and was absent-mindedly saying yes to all sorts of plans my friends were making; completely forgetting an important wedding reception I had to attend that very day.

I would not go near Tetulia simply because I love the tropical weather in Dhaka. For the two months that winter lasts here in Bangladesh, this old city is cloaked in a mild chill. That is enough for Dhaka locals to bring out their monkey caps, mufflers, coats, and whatnot.

Hollowed cane chairs with pillowy cushions in white cotton covers surrounded a cane centre table with a glass top, on which, there would be a brass flower vase, posing with beautiful pink roses or gardenias from the garden -- this was how verandas looked years ago in Dhaka, or casual day rooms. Cane furniture was a timeless and vintage home décor style in Dhaka homes of the sixties.

When our Liberation War broke out, I was just shy of two. I have no recollection of what happened around me during that period.

Snacking on the streets of this city is nothing short of a culinary treat, and if you add the streets of Old Dhaka to the list, then it is an epicurean ball.

The new buzzword in town is ‘inclusive.’ It doesn’t refer only to gender inclusion; rather, from a more relevant and broader point of view, being inclusive makes us learn about disability inclusion, social and workplace inclusion, and parental inclusion, to name a few.

The flow of life is punctuated with ups and downs, and amid this unpredictability, we make friends for a lifetime.  We fall in love; we volunteer even to adopt love.

In a thicket of Mahagony, Segun, and Raintrees, the Jahangirnagar University (JU) campus is a rolling 697.56 acres of topographical beauty. A few kilometres from the main city on the Dhaka-Aricha highway, the JU campus can be your next weekend outing.

My grandmother, whom I fondly called Bubu, used to bring us batashas -- a sugar candy -- from her visits to her homeland in Pirojpur, Barishal. She would tell us it was a tabarak or shinni, which is a sweet gift or grace from her visits to Holy places.

November in the tropics has its own weather mix. From a storm brewing at the Bay to roaring gusty wind, to a scorching sunny day, dewy evening, and foggy dawn -- Dhaka’s weather in this month cannot be explained.

It is duck season, period. Even if winter is nowhere to be seen or felt, the local kitchen markets are quacking up a fat duck show to tease our cravings.