February 26, 2022
Jibanananda Das’ “Ananto jibon jodi pai ami”
If I get to live forever— then forever, I’ll be all alone— If I return to the paths of the world, I’ll see green grass Sprouting—will see yellow grass scattering— the sky Whitening in the morning—like a tattered munia bird, Breast blood-stained in the evening—again and again I’ll see stars And view a strange woman untying braided hair and leaving Alas, her face devoid of traces of the setting sun’s soft glow
November 20, 2021
Pandemic Musings Anthropocene: climate change, contagion, consolation
Sudeep Sen’s Anthropocene is the third work on the subject by an Indian writer that I have come across in recent years, but it is truly sui generis.
November 6, 2021
Scenes from a Radio-Active Age
As my siblings and I grew up in the first half of the 1960s, the radio set was the most sought-after device in our house. Till Baba bought a television set for us towards the end of the decade, it was our main source of entertainment, news and small talk.
October 2, 2021
Paradisal Libraries
Younger people might find this too dated, but I will stick by what Jorge Luis Borges once said: “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of a Library!”
August 14, 2021
Empathy and Bangabandhu
Empathy, the Wikipedia entry on the word tells us, includes “caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person’s emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.
July 29, 2021
Reflections on University of Dhaka convocation speeches: Part II
The second volume of Dhaka University: The Convocation Speeches, 1948-1970 (Dhaka University Publications, 1989), assembled assiduously by Emeritus Professor Serajul Islam Choudhury, is an important publication like the first one for anyone trying to understand Dhaka University’s extraordinary role in the genesis and identity formation of Bangladesh.
July 3, 2021
The University of Dhaka and the Birth of Bangladesh
In Dhaka University: the Convocation Speeches, a volume compiled with an introduction by Serajul Islam Choudhury in 1988, we read that DU was established by the British as a "splendid imperial compensation" for the Muslims of East Bengal (Choudhury, 26). They had wanted the current rulers of India to make up through it for the loss they felt they had suffered because of the reunion of Bengal in 1911.
May 8, 2021
Translating Rabindranath Tagore’s Song-Lyrics
In the song-lyric numbered 230 in Gitabitan, Rabindranath Tagore’s comprehensive compilation of such verse, we find his delight at capturing the loveliness of the world outside his window in a song-lyric: “I’ve caught uncatchable loveliness in rhyme’s binds—/The loveliness of a distant night-bird/Singing at a late hour of the night/ Wings crimsoned by ashoka flowers of a departed spring/And a heart filled with the fragrance of fallen flowers” (my translation).
May 8, 2021
Tagore Songs
Clouds pile upon clouds And the world darkens Why keep me waiting by the door then, All, all alone?
May 1, 2021
A. K. Fazlul Huq’s English Prose
In “Gandhi and Nehru: The Uses of English,” an essay written by Sunil Khilnani from the 2010 collection of essays edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, A Concise History of Indian Literature in English, we are told about how the two leading figures of Indian independence not only used the English language to write back against empire, but played important roles in “the long, uneasy and interminable task of making English an Indian language.”