CHINTITO SINCE 1995

Ringtones of Misery

It's three in the afternoon. I have just retired from my routine lunch. As I settle down to relax with the day's newspaper and a bit of a shuteye, my mobile gives me a rude startle. Being someone whose occupation demands connectivity, I need to receive every call, and so I do.
Politics of posters

Level playing field” was the most popular phrase before the 11th national parliamentary elections, and after.
Why will 'they' pay to serve us?

The young man delivered the hot biriyani at our door. I thanked him and paid him his company's due, and a little something extra for his service.
Let architects do their job

Architects, not all, will perhaps offer a convincing reason for choosing the subject and the profession. Dialectics may vary from
My name is Ahmed

My Name Is Khan” is a 2010 Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol starrer Indian hit film. In the cine world, plagiarism is the name of the game, and sure enough Dhallywood followed suit in 2013 with a romantic action movie by the same name with local heartthrobs Shakib Khan and Apu Biswas doing the honours.
The road belongs to us, the public

That does not imply we can do anything with it, on it and besides it. This license of ownership is rather a delegation of responsibility that very few of us understand, and therefore are unable to fulfil.
No apologies, I am not a candidate

To be honest there has not been any clarion call from any quarters, least of all the fallacious source of all power, nor from any of my well-wishers, relatives or "true" friends for me to submit my candidacy for election to the Jatiya Sangsad.
Celebrity slip is a shame for the game

A tennis umpire worldwide commences a game uttering what sounds like “Love all”. To the French, it means “l'oeuf” (pronounced love),
An example to build on

Going overboard for even acquaintances, nationalism for the appropriate cause and at the right time, united in the face of any natural calamity, and indulging in innocent gossiping (read: harmless backbiting) are some of the finer points of a native Bangladeshi.
Traffic education, upwards from kindergarten

Ignorance and defiance in combination with irresponsibility can be disastrous, more so if wrongdoers can get away with murder with a little help from delinquent sections of the state machinery.
A freedom fighter and Liberation War researcher

Our imagin-ation seldom can reach beyond the immediacy of time. We are free to jump on an illusory time-machine to traverse from a million year old cave to an undersea home in Mars, yet we do not venture even within that limited range; either way beyond is dark (or bright), who knows?
Rupa, Rajib, Payel, Dia, Abdul Karim…

Passenger safety or dignity were never the strong points of transport workers starting from the ticket counter till pushing them off a bus.
Our unwarranted fixation with foreign sportsmen

A 40-year-old Argentina supporter wanted to raise the blue and white stripes atop his building in Dhaka. His hand-held flag-mast came in contact with high voltage electricity.
Elbowed out by mind block

The morning was laden with an overcast sky, yet a brazen sunburst rifting through the haze bode a promising day. Despite the overwhelming laze and considerable reluctance, I moved my gaze away from the engaging serenity. With much disinterest I leafed through the pages of a newspaper lying beside me. There she was spread all across the front page, affording me a perchance face-to-face meeting. However virtual, the famed Indian silver screen infatuation of millions was in my hands.
Sports is about more than just participating

It is natural to assume that Australia's Gold Coast is strewn with aurous accolades for the picking. A little exploration would have revealed that close to four and a half thousand athletes from 71 countries and territories were vying for the 275 sets of medals this summer Down Under.
Forgive us, Alvira

I have never met you, my child. But, there are so many of you we all know; cheerfully running around, full of life, the apple of your parents' eyes. And your grandparents? They must love you to bits. Whereas the world should have been your playfield, your workshop to discover anew, your garden to dwell in peace and tranquillity, we have turned it into an ordeal where danger lurks abundantly, and death strikes with cruelty. We beg you an apology.
Farewell to arms

This could be the start of a gory serial. In response to 17 hale and hearty lives lost, and 15 serious injuries from a white shooter (predictably mentally ill) at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, the best the country's beleaguered president could do after seven days was to suggest arming school lunch staff with concealed weapons, and this was during his meeting with angry and emotional friends and relatives of
We are all VIPs in this kingdom of VIPs

Kobi Guru had this figured out more than one hundred years ago.
Old words in new voices

It's a wonderful feeling, ascendency to almost ministerial heights, when you hear your old words in new voices, and more important, manoniyo at that.
A friendship to cherish

Abdul Qayyum was a unique person. While I tap this on my mobile sitting at a hospital in Essex, England, January 15, his Janaza could be taking place in Narayanganj. By the time I finish he would probably be resting in eternal peace.
The world has changed

Till that moment, I was under the impression that North Korea's so-called “old lunatic, mean trickster and human reject” was alone in his diatribe against anyone who did not see eye to eye with him. We were so wrong
Good ideas gone bad

Ershad Shaheb perhaps had a Maoist idea when after seizing power in 1982 he proposed, ordered and then displayed what he and his cohorts at the time thought would become the trendiest phenomenon since Marilyn Monroe lost her purdah to the winds.
Conflict of interest, for example…

Often times, at greater intensity than the minister himself or the MP herself, the corporation chairperson, the district commissioner or the police officer in-charge—in happenings that hurt the government
Lonely, yet we do not walk alone

The position of Russia is bullish at best because the Kremlin machinery does not have the eye to see the human destruction in the Rakhine State of Myanmar; yet there have been protests in Moscow, and arrests too, with Chechen Republic's Ramzan Kadyrov contemplating a nuclear strike.
Myanmar military's murderous melodrama

Myanmar has based its entire brutal, shameless operation on unarmed Rohingya civilian men, women and children, on the vaunted single incident of August 25 when reportedly...
Stop genocide, in the name of Buddha

Buddhism is a religion of peace; all religions are. Although we are born into a religion, many, mostly Westerners, influenced by the philosophical teachings of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, have embraced Buddhism as a lifestyle; so powerful has been its all-inclusive ideology.
Pray, tell me why?

All retired government, police and military officers have all the solutions to all the problems and a big-window plan for the next one hundred years, and yet those presently serving are at a loss for words.
Ball, bribe, birthday, bridges and beef

It had been heralded last month that Bangladesh has moved up two notches in FIFA ranking. Wow! You sit up to bask in the glory that we could be, say thirty-forty places behind Germany or Brazil, Spain if you fancy Flamenco, because in a classroom situation that's how at worse fares the untalented, inattentive and unruly student. They make great “politicians” though.
Apologies to Pablo Picasso

I was shocked to see Pablo. Well, if you know him as Picasso, that's your shortcoming, rather your admittance of not being on first names with perhaps the world's most multi-talented painter.
Visa is not a right, courtesy is

Ekushey Padak awardee, sculptor Hamiduzzaman Khan Sir was my senior colleague at university. It's been quite a while, close to a decade, since we last met. After all these years consulting Sir was critical, because I was exploring the possibility of his art objects adorning the garden of a bungalow I designed.