I have had the opportunity of living for some time in Conrad’s fictional places, namely Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo) and Malaysia’s eastern province Sarawak’s adjoining country in Borneo Island, Brunei Darussalam.

A poem by Syeda Erum Noor.

journalist and litterateur, breathed his last at his village home in Dhalghat under Patiya upazila of Chattogram yesterday, aged 86.

Many of us still remember the year 1998 when Chitra Nadir Paare (Quiet Flows the Chitra) was released in Dhaka; with Afsana Mimi’s smiling face on the big posters around Dhaka University campus, the film became the talk of the town.

Yes, you have no reason to trust me: I am not your elder, I am not from your tribe;

 A hood of iron thread Drawn over face,

Fitzwilliam Darcy. You know who we are talking about.

In Dhaka University: the Convocation Speeches, a volume compiled with an introduction by Serajul Islam Choudhury in 1988, we read that DU was established by the British as a "splendid imperial compensation" for the Muslims of East Bengal (Choudhury, 26). They had wanted the current rulers of India to make up through it for the loss they felt they had suffered because of the reunion of Bengal in 1911.

I have described this disturbance as I saw it happen, an unedifying affair, confused and inconclusive, as a symptom rather than a causative episode of the growing friction between East and West Pakistan.

DU. How those letters conjure up a sense of awe and bittersweet memory. Always in the vanguard of political, progressive movements… Language (1952), Constitution (1962), Democracy (1968/69) and Independence (1971)… but distinguished too, for its intellectual environment and academic excellence. Dacca University's endless graffiti marked corridors were a daunting place for me, a teenager and a female, in the politically momentous years of the late 1960s.

“About a hundred years ago, our ancestors used to live in the Porir Desh.”

Listen to the swish of the waves. Feel the breeze whisper caresses. See the mangroves stretch

What is the sadness that with

The Emperor wrote a lonely note. In exile, he wept for a grave in his Native land. Colonials

It can often feel hopeless to be an activist seeking social change on an issue where most people seem opposed or at best indifferent to it. However, according to a new book by Professor Cass Sunstein,

Late nights calls are risky, reckless.

Now that I am old and have time,

Home? Of course, I have a home! In fact I have two—one is a conventional brick-veneered house in a suburb of a Victorian country town in Australia.

The map I dream drawing every day, Bangladesh, is yours.

N. S. Vinodh’s newly published book A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo is the outcome of a fortuitous event. In March 2018, the author was taken for an unscheduled visit to the tomb of an Indian Ambassador, in Cairo’s “City of the Dead.”