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

PM Tarique Rahman to confer awards at Amar Ekushey Book Fair 2026 opening ceremony

Just as Bengali women played an important role in the Liberation War, they also played a fearless role in the movement for the Bangla language before it, participating alongside men as fellow warriors.

 The Filter erases dialects, swaps backdrops, whitens skin, lifts pitch—an algorithm that functions as both beautician and censor.

As evening sets in and the stars begin to appear in the dark sky above the village, a sharp series of pops and bangs pierces through Xiaohui’s peace.

A chipped teacup, warmed in my hands, Is love when you stir in the honey, unasked,

In cold evenings, when the forecaster predicts a scatter of hail to fall

Even after the organisers and Bangla Academy offered a 55 percent subsidy on stall costs, a significant number of publishers maintained their decision to not participate.

In addition to today’s transnational corporations and the global explosion of their advertisements, the works of William Shakespeare and Karl Marx keep teaching us a great deal about the relationship between money and language.

After a workday full of tabs, pings, and “oh just a quick call,” your brain usually wants one of two things: something soft enough to sink into, or something sharp enough to cut through the fog. These 5 do both, in different ways, without asking you to optimise your rest.

Arundhati Roy, celebrated Indian writer, essayist, and activist, has recently been at the centre of a controversy surrounding the Berlin International Film Festival regarding comments on the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

He made poetry a refuge for beauty and a weapon against tyranny

Because of colonialism and the westernisation of our education systems, many of us grow up learning history from a narrow angle not knowing about the scholars who shaped knowledge in other parts of the world. We often learn about modern science without learning where many of its ideas first came from. As a result, the lives and works of Muslim scholars from the past remain unfamiliar, even though their contributions helped build the world we live in today.

Sometimes it sneaks up in ways you do not expect, like in the quiet chaos of a city street where rain drips off umbrellas, and the smell of frying snacks mingles with wet asphalt.

There are a few old trees with wide trunks—I do not know their names—just beside my library. I never forget to have a quick look at the leaves during coming and going to the library.

Using a hashtag is activism In a world of biterature.

My brittle nails become the sharpest knife Under the light of obscure scrutiny

As the calendar turned to February 2, 2026, marking what would have been the 111th birthday of Khushwant Singh, the silence from his iconic Sujan Singh Park residence feels particularly loud. Singh was more than a writer; he was a cultural weather vane who pointed toward honesty even when the winds of political correctness blew the hardest.

The God of the Woods caught my attention while I was excavating for my next read on Goodreads.

“There is no place on earth where women are safe,” declares Inés, the protagonist of Isabel Herguera’s animated film Sultana’s Dream (2023).

It is a winter day in a small town at the far eastern edge of the Himalaya, in the Chinese province of Yunnan. The province is known for its mild climate.