Dowel Biswas

Fifty years after he died in 1976, Zainul Abedin no longer exists as a living presence. What remains is a body of work that has hardened into history, layer by layer: famine sketches, rural labour scenes, scrolls of catastrophe, and figures that still appear to look back at us with unsettling calm.

Nazrul’s “Rebel Poet” identity is too constrained to limit him within a single frame. Nazrul’s poetry moves, shifts beyond even its historical significance. They take rebirth, vertebrate, enter speech, then public conscience, and Nazrul returns as chant—becoming the primary language of people’s struggle for rights, carrying an unyielding spirit in every movement when people most need him.

Organisers described the programme as the country’s first nationwide reality-show-style competition dedicated exclusively to Nazrul Sangeet.

It is easier to preserve the grand aesthetics of Tagore than to confront the difficult ones. Rabindra Sangeet survives in carefully rehearsed cadence, quotations circulate endlessly online, and institutions commemorate him with ritual precision.

In Bangladesh, labour history is often narrated as chronology—laws, uprisings, collapses, reforms. From the 1881 Factories Act to Swadeshi in 1905, through 1971 and beyond, the working class appears in political history. But rarely does it appear as a cultural system that sustains its own memory.

The exhibition, which opened on April 14 at the Nazrul Stage and continued at Bardhaman House, featured more than a hundred portraits of prominent Bangladeshi poets, writers, essayists, and intellectuals. It also included rare photographs of National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam.

Nadeem A Salam still remembers the first time he stood on stage with The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus—not as a manager, but as a performer. He had already spent years behind the scenes—moving gear, fixing schedules, dealing with travel delays, keeping tours running—but standing there felt different.

As dawn broke over Ramna Batamul yesterday, Chhayanaut’s chorus of 200 performers lifted “Jago alok‑logone” into the morning air, opening the celebration of Pahela Baishakh 1433.

Folklorists have long recognised multiple categories within Bengali folk literature—songs, proverbs, riddles, and rhymes. Rhymes are not homogeneous; they appear in distinct functional types: nursery rhymes, social or satirical rhymes, occupational rhymes, ritual rhymes, and those associated with games. That diversity signals not triviality, but embeddedness. In their rhythmic repetition are folded patterns of labour, hierarchy, crisis and adaptation.

The press conference closed with “Baishakh Mashe Aiso Bondhu,” returning to the language of invitation.

Bulletins told listeners what was happening; songs suggested why it mattered, sometimes signalling the freedom fighters on safer roads, and information that would be crucial to win the Liberation War.

The exhibition, titled The Handloom Tradition of Bangladesh, opened on March 8 at Bengal Shilpalay in Dhanmondi. Organised by the Bangladesh Handloom Board with support from the Bengal Foundation, the nine-day programme combines a curated exhibition with a small fair celebrating the country’s weaving heritage.

Dana’s arrival in Bangladesh carried the strange familiarity of a travelling salesperson, except that nothing she sells intends to cure anything at all.

Mukhopadhyay lived through the fractures of partition, the uncertainties of migration, and the routines of middle-class survival. Politics was inherited consciousness, not a slogan. Songwriting became a ledger of conscience: a daily reckoning with history, place, and identity. His voice quivered at the edges, not from lack of technique, but from the weight of feeling itself. Being Bengali was not taught; it had to be experienced.

Electoral symbols in Bangladesh are semiotic anchors, mapping decades of political life into objects instantly recognised by voters. Embedded in the textures of daily life, their meanings are layered, historically rooted, and culturally resonant. They also function as tools that can shape perception and nudge voter psychology.

When cultural institutions crumble, archives burn, and instruments shatter, it is not merely walls that vanish—it is memory, identity, and moral courage. Culture cannot be revised; it is what history has written. Every assault upon it shakes the quiet foundations of a nation’s conscience.

For Sunny, the film is not “urgent” — a word he resists — but it offers a revision of political history told through lived experience rather than rhetoric. “We’ve been mistreated by the British, by India, by Pakistan, by our own governments. These layers flow through the film. If it does anything, it helps us see where we stand politically, socially, and economically. And honestly, no one needs to watch a film. Sometimes not watching is the best choice.”

Last evening, that engagement unfolded with both reverence and vitality at “Aloker Ei Jhorna-Dharay” (The Eternal Illumination), a collaborative tribute by the Embassy of Sweden in Dhaka and HSBC Bangladesh.

At Chhayanaut’s Ramesh Chandra Dutta Memorial Hall on Sunday, nostalgia met reverence as artists, activists, and admirers gathered to celebrate the birth centenary of filmmaker Ritwik Kumar Ghatak and his twin sister, singer Protiti Devi.

The Ministry of Cultural Affairs has turned this remembrance into a national homage — a three-day festival from October 17 to 19 at Lalon’s resting ground in Cheuriya. There will be music, discourse, and a fair that carries the rhythm of his spirit.