Syed Badrul Ahsan

My first encounter with Rabindranath Tagore was on a cold winter’s day in early 1964. He was there as a sketch in pencil, on the mantelpiece of a Bengali home in Quetta. The flowing beard, the penetrating eyes, that sense of gravitas- all of this came alive in that sketch. I asked the host, a colleague of my father

It was thrilling, in our raw undefiled youth, to step into the Department of English back in September 1975. That was the day when a bunch of 'scholarly' young men and glamorous young women first came to know that they had all been taken into first years honours classes.

ONE can hardly disagree with Syed Abul Maksud when he states in his write-up ('Climb not too high'), published in The Daily Star on Wednesday, February 18, 2015, that democracy in Bangladesh now faces the guillotine. One is not sure, though, that the present crisis is the gravest in their history that the people of this country happen to be going through. No greater conflict, no greater period in fear and uncertainty can beat the darkness we waded through in the course of the War of Liberation forty three years ago.