From Kazi Nazrul Islam’s The Autobiography of a Vagabond

Dear friend, are you sure you want to listen to this? I am a person with a harsh exterior and a soft heart. When you insist that I have to tell you my story, I feel very emotional and stressed out.
29 May 2020, 18:00 PM

Nazrul’s Nonfiction Prose and the Question of Human Emancipation

Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976)—one of the greatest Bengali poets—has by now been fully assimilated into the literary canon and even into public discourse in Bangladesh.
29 May 2020, 18:00 PM

The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan

The Other Side of the Divide by Sameer Arshad Khatlani journeys through the precarious landscape of people who live on both sides of the divide — the divide caused by the line drawn by Radcliffe in 1947 to split the subcontinent into Pakistan and India. The angst, the wounds linger on through even pandemics like COVID 19.
22 May 2020, 18:00 PM

Story of a Rajpath

It is I, a “rajpath” as they say. I had to suffer the same fate as Ahalya who was cursed into becoming the unfeeling being that she was.
22 May 2020, 18:00 PM

Rabindranath Tagore and Jatragan

Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861-1941) childhood and adolescent memories of stage performance involve both Jatra and theatre.
15 May 2020, 18:00 PM

The Poet of Hope and Faith

Let me begin my speech in this birthday webinar organized by the High Commission of India in Dhaka to commemorate Rabindranath Tagore’s 159th birthday by referring to his last public address, Sabhyater Sankat or Crisis in Civilization.
15 May 2020, 18:00 PM

Reflections

In 1980 while I was pursuing PhD in the U.S.A. I stumbled into the world of philosophy. Beyond my engineering studies, I devoted myself to my new-found passion. Since that time, I have been maintaining a diary. The following episodes are based on selected journal entries.
8 May 2020, 18:00 PM

Friends Forever in a Happening Place!

There were six of us, bosom buddies who had studied together in the same school and college, friends for years—“good” boys. And there were the same number of them, if not more, from the same Dhaka school and college—“nice” girls.
8 May 2020, 18:00 PM

A death robbed of its solemnity

Ha, there you go, this is how you suffer:
24 April 2020, 18:00 PM

The love birds of Pabna

If only I had stopped her from drinking!
24 April 2020, 18:00 PM

Viral Miseries

I always knew that life is unpredictable. But between February and April this year, I started to discover what it truly means to live an unpredictable life.
24 April 2020, 18:00 PM

A Man with A Cane

The man walks Bending on his cane, picking
24 April 2020, 18:00 PM
17 April 2020, 18:00 PM

Reminiscence

Afreen is in the third grade. She is shy, quiet and keeps to herself. Being the shortest one in class, she has to stand in the front of the line everyday at the morning assembly. She often gets bullied by classmates for her below-average height. The fact that she’s extremely skinny too doesn’t help.
17 April 2020, 18:00 PM

Love, Love Again…

Perhaps, the time has come to Love, Love again
10 April 2020, 18:00 PM

Shanti, the playboy of satkhira

Based on a true story (‘...poets, as everybody knows,
10 April 2020, 18:00 PM

Baishakh at the Wake of Covid 19

It all started with someone responding to a Facebook post on Coronavirus—wishing that all the problems would be over before the
10 April 2020, 18:00 PM

Nationalism, Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism: Tagore’s Ambiguities and Paradoxes (Part II)

Like nationalism, Tagore’s perspectives on patriotism are also characterised by certain paradoxes and ambiguities; he was a fervid patriot, yet he openly denounced and deplored the sentiment of patriotism.
3 April 2020, 18:00 PM

The Hunt

The crunch of snow beneath our pads was cracking like the breaking of bones between our teeth. The tundra, echoing for miles, a vast white desert, and our breath is the only warmth in the barren winterscape.
3 April 2020, 18:00 PM

Oborodh Awake!

The keepers of law
27 March 2020, 18:00 PM