The first experience of the great river Padma is nothing less than overwhelming, and slightly terrifying. I first came to face the mighty river as a young lad in my teens sometime in April of the momentous year of 1971. My first sighting came with two terrors. My father was fleeing Dhaka with the family with the hope of crossing the river to escape the brutal onslaught of the Pakistan army. Arriving at the banks, there was the Padda (Padma) before us with its glorious panorama. It seemed like an oceanic river, with no sight of the other side, and the frightening prospect of crossing it.
When Zainul Abedin left Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1947, as India and Pakistan negotiated a partition-ridden freedom from the British Empire, he was one of the city’s most acclaimed artists.
This endeavour seeks to offer a more nuanced, responsible, and humane approach to shaping our built environments
On September 2, the student front of a political party announced its intention to form committees in 16 private universities. It was greeted with apprehension and alarm.
There is more fiction than historical truth about the origin of the name ‘Goalanda’. According to a legend,
Bangladesh has just celebrated fifty years of independence; this year also marks fifty years since its Ganoparishad ratified the Constitution of Bangladesh. Anniversaries are as worthy occasions as any to recall why certain ideological principles were chosen to guide the new nation.
The history of advertising in Bengal is as old as the history of modern print media in Asia. The first Asian newspaper -- The Calcutta General Advertiser -- was published from the British Bengal in 1780.
While their families search every alleyway, survivors say that they lived right around the corner in the capital city.
We were at the dinner table. My wife asked if I had seen Bulbuli, the Coke Studio Bangla song. Till then I hadn’t. The upload was only a few days old.
Perhaps the starkest image of the Partition, which created the two independent states of India and Pakistan in 1947, is that of the train massacres.
Between May 9 and 14, 1947, in Sodepur near Calcutta, Mahatma Gandhi had a fascinating set of conversations with Hindu and Muslim leaders of Bengal.
The Battle of Plassey and the Battle of Boxar were the imperial wars between the East India Company and the Mughal authority, which in turn gave the Company a legal status in Bengal.
A child’s memory of her parent is often difficult to narrate. There is no single narrative, no linear structure. There are so many stories, so many events that fold into each other.
