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
In conformity with the wish, you have frequently expressed, that I should give you an outline of my life, I have now the pleasure to give you the following very brief sketch:-
During the Mughal period, gardens were a ubiquitous element of the city landscape. Dhaka, once capital of the Bengal Subah, was no exception, and the names of some areas of the city such as Shahbag, Lalbag,
If you look for a definition of the word ‘nationalism’ on Google, or in an encyclopedia, you will find quite a few. However, this word, like many such words, is ‘notorious’ in its own way, as no single definition seems to define it thoroughly.
This writing celebrates how Bangladesh has practised a ‘disturbingly relevant’ legacy of William Shakespeare through a testimonial of Aly Zaker, a phenomenal figure in the cultural arena of the country.
In his seminal publication -- The Men who ruled India (1985) -- Philip Mason, in the last paragraph of the epilogue wrote: “When all has been said, one simple point remains.
Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was an Oxford educated Anglican clergyman from England, a man of letters and a notable hymn-writer. As an intrepid traveler and a curious observer, he has left behind an interesting travelogue entitled: ‘
Muzaffar Ahmad (1889-1973), one of the earliest communists in India, became the representative figure of a socialist and communist circle in Bengal during 1921-22.
Henry Kissinger once wrote that “history is the memory of states”. In this vision of the past,
In classical Urdu epics, kings would transmigrate their lives into a bird and lock it away in a secured place. To kill the king, one had to go after the bird.
Literature in Bangladesh about the war is in the nature of memorials to 1971, a thread between the dead and the living, a reminder of the absent as having once been, a mark of the present, of rupture and continuity.
