Column

We thought we had it all right; our way of living was right, our way of balancing the society was right, our way of providing health care to the masses was right, our way of handling the state of the affairs, including politics, was right. The coronavirus outbreak has demonstrated…

How many women does a man know or can know in his lifetime? And what type? He gets to know his mother, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, wife, daughters, friends at the educational institutions, and female colleagues at his workplace. And I refuse to believe that he, the man, doesn’t have the…

Imagine that a few of Bangladeshi workers, infected with coronavirus, manage to filter through our ports and airports and mingle in with an ocean of 170 million people. Since the virus is airborne, those infected persons would surely contaminate many. From a few persons to many; from many to millions.…

I have a mind like a commoner. I think like a commoner. I enjoy thinking like a commoner. And that brings me to my understanding of a sustainable city. In my mind, a sustainable city would be able to survive without any disastrous consequences at least for one thousand years,…

For me, like many around the globe, the advent of the New Year was deeply saddening. When I heard that America had assassinated Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, I panicked. I thought this would be the beginning of another spate of long-drawn conflicts in the Middle East and Gulf…

I always thought that men who feel the urge to rape women or other men suffer from severe mental disorder; it’s a form of retardation that leads to someone’s to assault sexually. It’s no less than that. Rape is an assault and the rapist encroaches upon a victim who is…

The sound of fireworks and the phantoms in the night sky at zero hour on January 1, 2020 was a display of how urban Bengalis celebrate the New Year, even amid various restrictions. The skyline was full of fireworks and phantoms going up in the sky. It was quite a…

When a city is mired in traffic congestion, extreme pollution, and an unhygienic lifestyle with hardly any solutions in sight, the news of electing its mayors creates almost zero excitement among the dwellers of the city. That we will soon be electing our new mayors is not the most inspiring…

ছোটবেলায় একটি কবিতার কয়েকটি লাইন খুব ভাল লেগেছিল। কবির নাম মনে নেই। তবে তিনটি লাইন মনে আছেঃ “জীবন খুব অল্পের জন্য সুখী, আরও অল্পের জন্য অসুখী, বাকি সবার জন্য অনিশ্চিত।“ কথাগুলো সার্বজনীন। কিন্তু কবি’র মত সাজিয়ে সবাই বলতে পারেন না। এসব কথা আমরা সারাক্ষণই বলছি। হাটে-মাঠে-ঘাটে। এবড়োথেবড়ো শব্দে। সুখ-দুঃখের গল্পই…

Finally, the chief executive of the country, as our head of state, had to intervene in what was going on between two important ministries, and partly shoulder the responsibility for publishing an almost-flawed list of persons who didn’t want to see the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. One ministry had…