Creative nonfiction / Growing up with a new nation: The Dhaka we once knew

I am a phenomenon.  Like a whirlwind  I’ll twirl till I can  change the world. 

I found it, the same coat, tucked away in a cardboard box, except years have passed and our worlds are different.

Last year, a friend showed me how a certain portal kept flagging his grad school application essay as written by AI.

On June 6 and 7, 2026, at Goethe-Institut, Dhanmondi, Zine Mela Dhaka 2026 was held, organised by Sister Library (Dhaka) and Colors Publishing. The two-day event brought together independent artists, writers, and creators to celebrate self-publishing, artistic expression, and community engagement.

7 Park Lane is the domestic domain described as “etched in memory like a beloved sepia photograph […] It was a world apart from the disciplined confines of Loreto Convent, Darjeeling.” Zeenie spent the years 1946 to 1951 at the hill-station, returning for her winter break.

When the MasterChef favourite Kishwar Chowdhury and writer Samai Haider caught up to talk about Chowdhury’s debut cookbook Smoke, Rice, Water (Hardie Grant Books, 2026), the conversation quickly morphed into something much larger than publishing deadlines and recipe testing.

Not every story ends with rejoicing. Not all questions are answered within one lifetime. Not everyone will get to fulfil their dreams. All my protagonists are incomplete until the end. And the end itself offers no catharsis. It’s the same darkness that was present when the reader met them the first time. I write about the world and the people within it the way I have experienced the world.

The evening opened with ensemble recitations of “Charyapada” and “Banglar Mukh”, creating a bridge between the earliest known examples of Bengali literary expression and contemporary poetic voices. Through carefully choreographed vocal performances, the productions highlighted the evolution of Bengali language and literature across centuries.

By twenty-four I could make my voice sound sunlight-warm over the phone. No trembling.

Satrapi offered a deeply personal account of life under Iran’s Islamic regime while creating a story that resonated with readers worldwide

At a pivotal historical crossroads, the evocative novel Chaashabhushar Sontan has stirred a profound reflection within the socio-economic and cultural landscape of Bangladesh.

We have long heard stories about the late military ruler H M Ershad and his deep desire to be recognised as a poet.

This year, both Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha came as they should, celebrated across many countries.Yet while joy filled some homes, in others it arrived with a heavy heart.

In 1970s Azimpur, the two Eids and Durga Puja were the punctuation marks of our year—days when stairwells, verandas, and a single playground turned many flats into one home.

While many rush back to their village homes to spend Eid with family, others finally begin to exhale. Exams are over, friends are free, relatives are home, and the city itself seems to soften into celebration. Once the moon has been spotted, there is a strange kind of ease to it all. It comes with cattle trucks rumbling through narrow roads, hay scattered beside apartment gates, and children trying not to grow attached to goats they have already named. And somewhere between all our own scrambling over how to spend that final night before Eid, it feels fitting to let a few literary characters inherit the chaand raat moments many of us already know so well.

Pias Majid, born in 1984, is a gentle yet prominent voice among Bangladesh’s poets of the 2000s generation.

One thing the season of sacrifice whirrs though the air is the reminders of the story behind it. The intention behind the willingness, the grief behind the bravery and the miracle of God’s mercy.

Nazrul’s “Rebel Poet” identity is too constrained to limit him within a single frame. Nazrul’s poetry moves, shifts beyond even its historical significance. They take rebirth, vertebrate, enter speech, then public conscience, and Nazrul returns as chant—becoming the primary language of people’s struggle for rights, carrying an unyielding spirit in every movement when people most need him.

Raja Rammohun Roy was a trailblazer in South Asian and, arguably, Asian culture, literature, journalism, and education. He is often described as the “Father of Modern India,” the “Prophet of Indian Nationalism,” a pioneer of the Bengal Renaissance, and a founder of Asian Anglophone literature.

Famously known to Bengalis as the rebel poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam in most of his poems and verse-lyrics raised a strong voice against every form of oppression the British colonisers, representing the capitalist West, systematically unleashed on their subjects in India.