As we commemorate Begum Rokeya Day, Oborodh Bashini stands not as a relic of a bygone era but as a living blueprint for modern resistance. The stories she told are specific to a time, but the structures of silencing they represent are hauntingly familiar.

In a wilting summer swelter of 1797 in London, a name was born twice–mother Mary Wollstonecraft wound the clock of daughter Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin)’s life, for the very first time.

Students at the University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh (ULAB) crowded into a packed classroom on a winter morning on Sunday, November 30, awaiting the start of a program that would be part interview, part poetry reading. “Meet the Poet: Shaheen Dil—In Conversation with Dr Mushira Habib” organised by the Department of English and Humanities was an hour-long dive into the life and work of poet Dr Shaheen Dil, a Bangladeshi writer and retired academic, banker, and consultant living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Fiction has long chronicled that women have always worked more than what is counted, felt more than what is acknowledged, and lost more than what anyone will ever quantify.

There is always a subtle tension when a story migrates across cultures. Some narratives travel with the lightness of wind, reshaping themselves almost effortlessly inside new imaginations, while others arrive heavy with the weight of the worlds that first produced them.

If the girls we read about could speak today, their voices would be both sharp and unflinching.

My readings of the two books—the subject of this write-up—happened to be on two momentous occasions, set two decades apart in utterly contrasting ways.

Translation is risk, and poetry is the highest form of risk

My nani’s nickname was Bokul—like the flower. In English, it’s called the Spanish Cherry or Mimusops elengi, though no translation quite captures its softness.

The bus stop was empty as usual, I sat waiting for a sight of one. Then he came. A man in a faded red shirt with a bag hanging on his back, running as if the devil himself had taken out a lease on his shadow.

When moon fades into dawn and when I pass away with it / Will you think of all that I was?

1 and 3/4 cups of sugar, 2 cups of i-love-you

It was actually a bit of a relief to sit on the terrace of the Gezira Pension and have a quiet breakfast before plunging back once more into the traffic of Cairo in search of a carriage to the museum.

In the psyche and schema of the average transnational Bangladeshi, rape is visible and legitimate only when it takes spectacular forms—violent, brutal, deadly.

For educators: My go-to text on 1971 is Jahanara Imam’s Ekattorer Dinguli. It’s a deeply personal and powerful memoir that I believe every student should engage with to truly feel the emotional and human cost of the war. The way she documents her experiences, especially the loss of her son, is heart-wrenching and offers a perspective that transcends history—it becomes deeply relatable and unforgettable.

I fell asleep to the chatters of cicadas on a quiet summer night

A long stretch of time / passed in prison

The night after the story got published, Jamal stormed to my home at around 11 PM, drenched in the rain. That was the first and only time Jamal raised his voice against me

The large green pond of Dhanmondi Lake was probably the first source of natural water that I had witnessed. It sheltered a huge number of people who have lived,

Women and the earth have to tolerate a lot.  –Kaajal (1965)