Tribute | The Daily Star

  • Serajul Islam Choudhury - Our Leading Intellectual and Inspiration

    He confronts, challenges, and combats the world with words. But his words become more than words. They morph into weapons in our struggles against oppression and injustice. For him, of course, writing is fighting. But, then, he is more than a combative writer.

  • Begum Sufia Kamal - The lone crusader

    Sufia Kamal, (June 20, 1911–November 20, 1999), lived a long and eventful life. She not only witnessed great cataclysms in history but played a major role in empowering women in an oppressive society.

  • What Bourdain Taught Me

    It was only last month that I found myself in La Fuente Alemana on a busy street in Providencia in Santiago, Chile.

  • Remembering a trailblazer for women's empowerment

    When many prominent leaders of Awami League were imprisoned, including Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,

  • Dr Hafiz GA Siddiqi

    Our beloved VC Sir

    The last time I met Dr Hafiz GA Siddiqi was at a seminar or a conference. VC Sir, as many of us still refer to him, was surrounded by crowds of his former students,

  • A tribute to Mustafa Nur-Ul Islam

    For most people who live to be 90, life is usually one long, painful journey troubled by debilitating illnesses or loss of mobility or memory, or both; they have to depend on others for the simplest of tasks like pouring a glass of water or turning in bed.

  • Kamaludddin Ahmed Khan: Keen, unconventional, relevant

    Being married to Begum Sufia Kamal was certainly an important part of Mr Kamaluddin Ahmed Khan's life. He derived much joy and meaning, and perhaps some recognition, from this. But he never derived his identity from this relationship. In that, he was fiercely independent, and quite unique.

  • Lieutenant Colonel Quazi Nooruzzaman

    Remembering freedom fighter Lt. Col. Quazi Nooruzzaman, B.U. (declined)

    Every year around this time, I get a phone call from someone or the other of the loose fraternity of Sector 7 veterans to remind me that May 6 is Lieutenant Colonel Quazi Nooruzzaman's death anniversary; he passed away in 2011.

  • Satyajit Ray: A director's gaze

    A pair of keen eyes put Simi Garewal on edge at a wedding reception of Raj Kapoor's daughter. Little did the teenager in her trendy outfit know that the eyes following her were none other than Satyajit Ray's. She had even less idea that in his mind Ray was already visualising her in the role of a tribal girl in his upcoming film “Aranyer Din Ratri”. The art of seeing past one's worldly looks and recasting them in light of their inner talent was not unknown to Ray.

  • A dream still too far

    Fifty years ago, America's iconic civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr, was slain in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4. In the United States, King's following words are famous to the point of being clichéd, but they bear repeating nonetheless: “I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

  • In memory of Simeen Mahmud

    It is both difficult and painful to write an obituary of a spouse, particularly if the death is an untimely one. Yet many friends and academic colleagues of Simeen, my wife who has recently died at a Harvard hospital within hours of being rushed to the emergency room, have requested me to do so since they think that she was both my “intellectual and life's partner”.

  • The Dream of Martin Luther King Jr

    IN a historic 1999 civil lawsuit of the King family against the US government, 12 jurors in the Shelby County Court in Tennessee reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999, after about an hour of deliberations, that Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. When asked whether the jury found “others including governmental agencies” to be “parties to this conspiracy,” the jury answered, “yes”.

  • Remembering Professor Jamal Nazrul Islam

    March 16, 2018 marked the fifth death anniversary of Professor Jamal Nazrul Islam. I know everyone is still mourning Professor Stephen Hawking, but Professor JNI was also a larger-than-life figure. It is unfortunate that many people in Bangladesh don't know about him. In my mind, Hawking's greatest achievement was helping fund and create the Centre for Mathematical Sciences (CMS)—the largest

  • Simeen Mahmud

    Remembering our sister Simeen Mahmud

    On the chilling morning of March 26, 1971, Pakistani soldiers kicked open the back door of our Dhaka University bungalow, and violated our residence for the second time.

  • Stephen Hawking's unparalleled legacy

    The world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking passed away on March 14, 2018. His death has left me saddened like millions around the world. But I was happy to see that The Daily Star had published a couple of articles on Stephen Hawking, one of which was written by a Bangladeshi academic. It inspired me to express my thoughts and feelings about how Hawking's work has influenced me.

  • Stephen Hawking

    Farewell to a brilliant mind

    Stephen Hawking died on Pi Day—March 14, which is also Einstein's birthday. He was born on another special day—Galileo's 300th death anniversary. It goes without saying that Hawking had a massive impact on not only gravitational physics, but also the world at large.

  • A rare kind of literary talent

    I have always been fascinated by writer Abul Mansur Ahmad's boldness and his political consciousness.

  • Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 98th Birthday

    Sheikh Mujib as I found him

    Like those of my age and experience, I can bear witness to some of the major developments in the recent political and constitutional

  • Black holes dissolving like aspirin

    When Stephen Hawking postulated in the mid-1970s that black holes leak radiation, slowly dissolving like aspirin in a glass of water, he overturned a core tenet of the Universe. Ever since Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915, predicting the existence of black holes, it was thought they devour everything in their vicinity, including light. Black holes, it was thought, were bottomless

  • Lessons of consent and critique from Ferdousi Priyabhashini

    I woke up on March 6 and was devastated to hear that Ferdousi apa, Ferdousi Priyabhashini—the famous Bengali sculptor, survivor of wartime rape and a protagonist campaigning against it in Bangladesh—had passed away.

  • A voice that still resonates

    The Raju Bhashkorjo is dedicated to the memory of Moin Hossain Raju, an activist of Bangladesh Chatra Union, who was gunned down near where the sculpture now stands, on this day in 1992 while protesting terrorism in the name of student politics on campus.

  • Adieu to a friend

    ASHFAQUE was not well the last few months. He had to deal with two major illnesses where either one would have been difficult for anyone to deal with, even if they were not of his age. One of them was a heart condition and when he was recently admitted to hospital for his heart related ailment and was on the operating table, he unfortunately suffered a cerebral attack that left him partially paralysed. Yet when Ambassador Shamim Ahmed and I

  • Priyabhashini's orchestrations of carbon

    That Ferdousi Priyabhashini's driftwood creations are more sentient than inanimate becomes apparent the second you enter Shilpangan, a contemporary art gallery tucked away in a cosy corner of Dhanmondi 13. Her current exhibition, Megher Shongi, is a tribute to the monsoon, her most loved of the six seasons, and the inspiration for her woodwork orchestrations. With boats and boatsmen, long-legged water-birds, and stranded figurines, her characters and forms look like they've emerged straight out of a tempest.

  • Celebrating a Braveheart

    A tribute to artist and freedom fighter Ferdousi Priyabhashini on a day we celebrate women could not be more befitting except for the fact that it should have been a tribute to a living legend not a eulogy for a hero who is no more. She passed away on March 6. When one looks at the life of this incredibly brave and beautiful woman one cannot help but feel that we as a nation have failed miserably to pay our dues to this freedom fighter.

  • Tribute to a visionary leader

    Today, February 24, marks the second death anniversary of the iconic central banker AKN Ahmed who presided over the Bangladesh banking sector in the turbulent days of the 70s. His towering presence at the defining moments in the country's history reminds us of his inspirational leadership to resuscitate the country's seriously ailing banking industry.

  • Legacy of a great lawyer

    It has been almost 12 years since my grandfather, Barrister Shaukat Ali Khan, passed away.

  • Remembering Justice Murshed

    The late Chief Justice Syed Mahbub Murshed was arguably one of the most distinguished constitutional lawyers and eminent jurists that our South Asian sub-continent has ever seen.

  • A pioneer of Muslim education in British-India

    December 27 is the 144th birth anniversary of Khanbahadur Ahsanullah, the renowned academician, educator and social reformer, a reputed philanthropist, a famed literary figure and Sufi thinker of the sub-continent.

  • Muzharul Islam: An activist architect

    Today, December 25, is architect Muzharul Islam's (1923-2012) 94th birth anniversary. Not only was he Bangladesh's pioneering modernist architect, he was also an activist designer who viewed architecture as an effective medium for social transformation.

  • A land where promises were kept

    How many times in your life do you stumble upon a story that encourages you? Boosts your spirit, makes you believe that there is still hope for us and a light at the end of the tunnel?

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