creative nonfiction
CREATIVE NONFICTION / The tall and short of it
It feels like only two days ago that my dadu was still here, worrying I’d always be too short like her.
CREATIVE NONFICTION / Not waiting for answers
How long does a corpse of a hero take to rot? 50 years or more? What about the corpses of martyrs? One week? 10 days? The 40-day mark to blow the candles of funeral fires?
CREATIVE NONFICTION / PeaceCity alley
The Notorious Loverboy, Slum Boy and Millionaire’s Daughter, My Bride or My Mother, My Mother’s Body in a Wedding Saree,
CREATIVE NONFICTION / Of moms and balcony gardens
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a mom in Dhaka must be in want of a balcony-garden
CREATIVE NONFICTION / Patuatuli and a young girl’s love for glasses
My love affair with spectacles has long been regarded by my mother as nothing but a symptom of my dramatic nature.
CREATIVE NONFICTION / Of faith: Mother and memories
Back in 2006 at the age of 11, I was introduced to faith, in the most domestic way possible.
CREATIVE NONFICTION / Homeward
When I was born, my skin was dark, like my grandfather’s, in whose arms I discovered my first home. Relatives old and new, whose disappointment was being nursed by my parents’ fair complexions, looked from afar as my rotund cheeks melted into the sleeves of my dada’s discolored half-sleeve shirt.
CREATIVE NONFICTION / Of love, longing, and music that make us
My mother’s house is beside a lake that separates the rich and mighty of the city from a little isle of people who work for them.
CREATIVE NONFICTION / The graveyard in Banani
Love is the enormous mango tree growing directly from an ancient grave, so old that no headstone remains at all.
7 minutes to midnight
In exchange for the presidential suites at the Ritz and so on, the men holding our city keys have already opened our skies to all that may come.
An odd memory in Dhaka city
The only thing I like about this city is the thought of leaving it. And I was leaving it finally, after one and a half months, my longest stretch of stay in the last three years. Juggling my luggage with one hand and my phone with the other to get Google Maps directions while I balance myself on the rickshaw racing through bumpy Dhaka roads–it is a metaphor that sums up my life in this city.
In Ireland once: A story of ghosts
Are ghosts real? This was the question Mollie, a little 8-year-old girl who lives at the end of our street asked me in a–real–letter she wrote me recently. I had apparently included a book of ghost stories in a bag of books I had given her.
Fail better: A new year’s resolution
But I understand. I am part of a historic pattern. So not everything is personal. I can't help but fall into some of the traps and become prey to some of the vultures.
A fairytale ending
Football, bloody hell! Like the chapters of a book, slowly unfolding towards the eventual climax, this edition of the World Cup has been nothing short of breathtaking. From gorgeous goals to late drama, with a few major upsets sprinkled throughout, this year’s World Cup has probably been the most spectacular iteration of football’s greatest tournament.