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

It was a crisp midday. The scorching sun sat right in the middle of the sky, watching over the homebound school children.

When I first came to the US for college, I was perplexed by the physical education requirement: we had no such thing in Bangladesh.

Sometimes when there is no rational explanation behind certain happenings, we call them supernatural. There might actually be some justification, but they elude our sense of logic.

When my son turned into a marriageable age, all our friends, relatives and acquaintances started asking the inevitable questions, “When will he get married?”

Darkness thickens on the sky once more, Light's enigmatic sister— this darkness.

FOUR POEMS

I hope that you are well in London town — and that you are missing me! Let me say at the outset that this message comes to you

Her bedroom door burst open. She was silently crying on the bed when her mother stood in the doorway of her room. She didn't dare to look at her mother.

It seemed as though my little sister had climbed the five and a half stories from out of the dark recesses of the road where they were digging in the light of lanterns.

The dark rain clouds gradually spread across the blue expanse of the sky. The earth was engulfed in darkness. The rain started pouring. It was not a storm, though the wind blew in violent gusts.

Don't watch Okja if you are one of those with big plans of making the best out of all the surplus meat that will dip into your deep fridge.

VS Naipaul, the Nobel and Booker winning writer of A House for Mr Biswas (listed frequently as one of the 100 greatest English-language novels of the 20th century) and A Bend in the River, died on August 11 at the age of 85. He had visited Dhaka in 2016 as a guest of honour at Dhaka Lit Fest. Here are some notable excerpts from his session at the literary festival, titled “The Writer and the World” [after his collection of essays], which illustrate his struggles in his early writing career.

British author VS Naipaul, a famously outspoken Nobel laureate who wrote on the traumas of post-colonial change, dies at the age of 85.

Awakening your wanderlust, in hand is the ultimate travel guidebook to Britain's rich literary heritage. Here, innumerable destinations feature multiple authors, landscapes and legendary characters that transport both the studious and the curious into unforgettable literary trails.

Mesmerised within “zones of blindness and insight,” the British anthropologist, author and multiple temporalities enthusiast Christopher Pinney has emerged with perhaps the finest homage to evanescence yet written, The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages.

There is sorrow—death too—separation's pangs scald as well—

The grove of Srish Poramanik was renowned for nuts. It was right by the roadside and full of ancient trees. It was dark like the night even during day time.

We always talk about life. And then when people die, we talk about their deaths in terms of life—a life they will live for eternity in all

My tongue is standing by the road

The scene must have caught attention of those people who tend to come and go through the Farmgate area. How old may that