William Dalrymple's 'The Anarchy': Risky business and the company that never left

The book starts with the origin of the word loot, a slang word for plunder. It was imported into the English language while the East India Company and its officers pillaged—for more than 100 years—Bengal, Mysore,
10 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Wild Wild East

In the 1950s, giddy with the glory of a blood-soaked independence, Bollywood churned out films that were high on “Nehruvian nationalism”.
10 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Forest Teaching

[for Samuel on his 15th birthday]
5 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Maruful Islam’s Anisuzzaman

I can never use the past tense verbs in your case
5 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Our Anis Sir: A Tribute

In the space of just a few months, Bangladesh has become a land of vanishing greatness.
5 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Editor’s Note

Two kinds of spaces are shrinking around us as we speak—one for books and creativity, as it starves from a lack of revenues, and another for our physical existence in the public sphere, caused by the coronavirus.
3 June 2020, 18:00 PM

The absence of climate change in fiction and other great derangements

The book explores our inability at the level of literature, history, and politics to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.
3 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Recommended reading for World Environment Day

As Abida Chowdhury addresses in her piece on The Great Derangement, narratives that engage with the natural world are scarce. Here are some books, both
3 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Isolation is personal and political in Olivia Laing’s ‘The Lonely City’

Ever since social isolation began in an attempt to contain the Corona virus, the internet has flooded with references to the American realist painter Edward Hopper, especially his iconic work, ‘Nighthawks’ (1942).
3 June 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

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

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 Man with A Cane

The man walks Bending on his cane, picking
24 April 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