Creative nonfiction / Growing up with a new nation: The Dhaka we once knew

Half a century from where we began, throughout this 50th year of Bangladesh, Daily Star Books will revisit and analyse some of the books that played pivotal roles in documenting the Liberation War and the birth of this nation in 1971. The last issue of every month will feature an elaborate article on these books.

There are two kinds of children’s stories: those which you dust off as an adult and find yourself discovering new depths to upon revisiting, and those that you flick through and donate.

Over the past few years, and particularly after their recent tussle with the government over the statue of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Ulama’s involvement in politics has come back under scrutiny in Bangladesh.

One can’t help but be excited about Netflix’s recent attempts at bringing to life and screen valuable works of South Asian fiction. Today’s focus, The White Tiger, which premiered on Netflix on January 21, 2021, was a debut novel by the Indian-Australian writer and journalist Aravind Adiga, who won critical acclaim and the Man Booker Prize in 2008 for his critique of class and caste boundaries in India.

Turbulent, murky, and eccentrically wide at this time of the rainy seasons, the river Padma flows incessantly. Lashing with fury at its banks on both sides the river flows swallowing fertile lands, homesteads, settlements. It is a different story at Mawabazar though, where humans endeavour to tame the river.

“Chotto Kaka, I’m not afraid of the bogey-bug (coronavirus) when I have a tummy full of ice cream.” When my seven-year old nephew made this demand, I thought, he could really have taken a leaf out of Ulysses – a masterpiece by the great Irish maverick, James Joyce.

Borja González is a self-taught illustrator, and you both can and cannot tell while looking at his resplendent new work, A Gift for a Ghost (Abram ComicArts, 2020).

The books which are closest to my heart and which evoke a certain sense of otherworldly glee are the ones that are themselves odes to literature, reading, and writing.

Despite much of the conversations and advances across countries since the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), gender mainstreaming still lacks a solid theoretical grounding, primarily because it grew outside academia as a movement under the ambit of feminism, and not as a part of social science.

On October 9, 1965—a day before the World Children’s Day celebrations—the Engineering Institute of Dhaka rang with the melody of young voices, their footfalls and bright costumes. Children from across the two Pakistans had been invited to take part in a competition of musical performances.

“Have you met Mr. Skunk? In case you have not, he is a short black and white fellow that you might often see at the bottom of the stairs, or near the dumpster.” Joe paused for breath.

Mashrur Arefin’s 2019 novel, August Abchhaya, is full of moments that evoke the blood-stained memory behind the language of conflict.

Read our tribute to Tintin comics online, on The Daily Star website,

There are few pleasures in the life of a Bangali that come close to the sheer delight of basking in the rare but sweet Sun on a winter morning on the balcony, accompanied by the aroma of a cup of tea,

In a near-perfect echo of today’s world, Nobel Prize-winning Elfriede Jelinek’s On the Royal Road: The Bergher King (Seagull Books, 2020) is stuffed breathless with metaphors, innuendoes, and anecdotes as it satirises US President Donald Trump.

This is a must-read book for anyone worried about the vulnerability of democracy in our time and the rise of authoritarian governments everywhere.

Four-year-old Sharanyo was bored from the lengthy lockdown during the pandemic. He could not go to school, parks, or shops and his day-to-day activities became mundane. He no longer enjoyed eating, showering, or going to bed at the right time. His father Shuvashish had to find found a solution. Having just returned to his son after a yearlong study leave in the UK, Shuvashish started creating stories to keep Sharanyo busy during dinner and bedtime. Soon, Sharanyo started chiming in, visualizing how the characters would look, how the stories would end.

Numair Atif Choudhury’s Babu Bangladesh is a tour de force of a novel. Exuberant, extravagant, learned, zany, ingenious, whimsical, irreverent and provocative, this is a work of amazing merit.

Today, on the first day of 2021, I open the 71st chapter of my memoir written – not sure when – probably before time. I want to read what lies ahead. There are only a few more chapters left before I happily reach the final episode.

In the desolation of today, I hang on to the promises of tomorrow: When life will be in harmony And struggles gone.