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

Written forty years apart from each other, La Nuit Bengali (Bengal Nights) by Mircea Eliade and Na Hanyate (It Does Not Die) by Maitreyi Devi are yet two sides of the same coin. While some may call them another version of unsuccessful teenage love, the New York Times

Golam Kibria, the Philosophy professor of Ibrahim Khan college, has a reputation of being very student-friendly. He is so popular that the Principal himself is jealous of him. However, he has so far failed to create an excuse and complain against him. Mr. Kibria is a

This water feels good; —so many times had the silvery water of rain

“Tell us a story, Khona apu,” Trina said. “You can’t go anywhere in this rain. I’m sure your flight will be cancelled. The runway has become a river by now!” She giggled. “Don’t give me that worried look! Mohon and I will drive you to the airport the moment the roads

That’s it. Aura looked with slit eyes at the blabbering boy sitting across her. What was wrong with him? Every other afternoon he sat with Aura to prattle on his crush. He went on and on about Rimi with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that made Aura’s blood boil. She

A rough count of the songs collected in Gitabitan in the section titled “Prakriti” or “Nature” reveals that Rabindranath Tagore composed about 16 songs of summer, over 100 monsoonal ones, 33 songs of Sharat or early autumn, 5 of Hemanta or late autumn, and a dozen

In the morning when I grabbed the newspaper, the banner headline arrested my attention – “Poor Poland surrenders to the mighty Nazis.” I started to peruse. While I was going through the breaking news, all on a sudden, a spider distracted me. Surreptitiously, it

When I started reading Anabhyaser Dine (Unaccustomed Days), I did not know much about the author but that also meant I was free from any preconceived image about the writer and in no obligation to subscribe to a preconceived notion.

I teach English at a private university in Dhaka, Bangladesh, having attended universities on three continents. I’m persuaded to think as such that I know what a university is and does. I wish I did! Joe Moran in First You Write a Sentence claims, “A university is a factory

He chose me.

Look at these tantalising equations of life-

Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan (1797 – 1869), popularly known by his takhallus (pen name) Ghalib (conqueror), makes it difficult for writers to sum him up easily or definitively. He himself would probably have taken great and impish delight in that knowledge. In one of his ghazals he suggests (Shahid Alam

Having lived in the world’s pathways for a long, long time

Sultan Abdul Hamid’s ties to the Indian sub-continent are a revelation for those more accustomed to seeing the name of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on main thoroughfares or commemorative stamps. Our knowledge of the Ottomans is usually through the lens of our British authored,

For orchid people like us, a tree from a land called home brings a sweeping breeze of mirth. That breeze dances around us and stirs our leaves of memories. Sometimes it comes in the form of a visual presence, sometimes as a crisp smell of some known delicacies, sometimes, as a familiar

Imagine a Japanese man in Dhaka in the first decade of the twentieth century bent on being employed in the town and ending up marrying a Bengali Brahmo woman, the daughter of a soap factory owner, who has offered him a job. Think of the woman later going to a village near Nagoya with her husband

I know you know

History as an oft-repeated cliché says is written by the victors. While the winners appropriate exclusive rights for their narratives, the vanquished are seemingly marginalised. Or, are they? For better or for worse, they can now have their say, on television at least. Take the case of the Ottoman Empire

Today, 1 June 2019, is the 113th birth anniversary of litterateur Abdul Quadir (1906-84) who was born in the village of Araisidha in Brahmanbaria. As a tribute to him, this essay offers snippets of his life and brings together some relevant anecdotes and reflections, which have literary-historical significance.

By the time James Rennell in the 1770’s, working out of Dhaka, finished surveying all the many rivers of Bengal, most of them had changed course, thus showing as much indifference to cartography as to any other form of human presumption.