Chittagong’s neighbour Sandwip is absent from Bay of Bengal history because its nature is hard to define.
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.
The writing of history in the Bengali language by a Bengali began around 225 years ago with the publication of Raja Pratapaditya Charitra in 1801.
Historical evidence suggests that almost every year before independence in 1971, present-day Bangladesh consistently grappled with a widespread shortage of food grains.
I returned to Chattogram from the Liberation War on December 20, 1971 with my nephew,
Historically, Afghanistan, and its cities Kabul and Peshawar, were central in the Mughal imagination as the space where the idea of Hindustan took shape.
As I delved into the autobiographical works of Abul Mansur Ahmad, it became evident that he had a penchant for plain speaking, avoiding embellishments.
Kazi Nazrul Islam is our National Poet, but, in addition to writing poetry and composing songs, he also wrote fiction. In fact, Nazrul’s first publication was not poetry, but the short story “Baundeler Atmakahini” (The Autobiography of a Vagabond), published in Saogat in May 1919.
My memory is again in the way of your history. Agha Shahid Ali
I had once written extensively about S.M. Sultan. Why? Because it felt essential to make our ‘art authorities’ aware that he was a rare talent, although many were unwilling to accept it. Thus, the pen became my last resort.
In the opening years of the twentieth century, Abanindranath Tagore (1871– 1951), Rabindranath’s nephew and a prominent artist living at the Tagore palazzo in Calcutta, Jorasanko, made a trio of paintings depicting the Emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58) at different stages of his life, together with his great monument to love, the Taj Mahal.
Thinking of Syed Waliullah and being his son always triggers contrasting feelings of joy and pride, melancholy and pain. Regrettably, neither my elder sister Simine nor I am able to remember much about our father, as we were both very young when he passed away.
Congratulations on your new book, “River Life and the Upspring of Nature.” With your academic background in religious studies and social life in Pakistan, what prompted you to shift your focus towards studying the river life and char communities in Bangladesh?
