CHINTITO SINCE 1995 | The Daily Star

  • 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.

  • Umme Zakia Sultana

    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.

  • The foreign input and the ugly outcome

    Our officers are (in)famous for making foreign trips as part of any government project. Executives of some private enterprises are also

  • Astounding, bewildering and confounding

    Ever since the second IPL, obviously I could not do it any earlier, it has been a matter of wonderment for me why the three-piece

  • Expect everything, appreciate nothing

    Yet another Pahela Baishakh, the 1424th in fact, with lots of fanfare, merriment and of course hullabaloo came to pass. But one matter was confined in deafening silence for the second year running – the 20 percent bonus (of basic pay) for employees of all government, autonomous and semi-autonomous institutions disbursed as per a gazette.

  • Beating the traffic jam

    You can sit back and witness a silent movie unfolding, starring a street vendor and a buyer. Some people ask the price to pass time, and the disgusted seller knows it.

  • When you have to start with a 'no'

    No apol-ogy when one is due would reflect my insensitivity. The excuse for my unusually long voluntary hiatus is that the media the

  • A tribute to a scout leader

    The earth is not blessed every other day by a teacher as principled in his thought, word and deed, by a trainer as versatile in every aspect of training, by a person equally amicable to the young and the old as Monir Sarker Sir.

  • Beyond a social fever

    Elections are a fascinating spectacle, to say the least, and this is not in reference to any tax dodging on a massive scale, deleted emails of humongous volume, amazing tales of surreptitious groping (the 'victims' fading into silence after being overrun by the electoral

  • Politics of, for and by the non-politician

    Politics, for as long as I can remember, has been practised by most politicians (at least outwardly so) to give the impression that the 'politician' (not too many who pursue politics favour that stamp) was striving for the wellbeing of the electorate.

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