FABLE FACTORY | The Daily Star

  • Out on the Streets

    Our streets aren’t safe for women. Every day, millions of women go about their day with fear in the back of their minds.

  • The Gift of Time

    I woke up to the sound of my phone’s alarm. Squinting at the screen, I swiped my finger across the surface which read: 6:00 AM. Groggily,

  • New Market to Nimiso

    There is a deep-rooted charm to this part of Dhaka, at New Market, a bustling zone of hawkers, shops and people, of all sorts. It is here where “fixed price” is a fallacy, the world is your oyster and you can get your hands on virtually everything as long as you can bargain.

  • NISHITA

    Ta was our neighbour, but by no means was she the ‘girl next door’. She had never showed up on our doorstep cradling an ice-cream box full of pakoras her mom made, perhaps in the very same box I had delivered to their home a week earlier.

  • Olfactory

    I saw her again on a chilly January evening, standing under a raintree, waiting for a ride, perhaps. That magnificent raintree at the

  • New Kid in Town

    People who don’t add sugar in their tea or coffee always seem to come off a bit proud about it, don’t they? There is a certain aura to when they say “sugar-free” or “Oh... No sugar, please” as they order away.

  • THE ESSENCE OF TIME

    The essence of time is not what it seems. Fleeting and seeping through cracks in hell and space, Learning and failing under the universe and its schemes, Plans that don’t deem you enough to fit in any one place.

  • Nippon Paint holds AYDA in Bangladesh

    With the theme “FORWARD - A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE”, Nippon Paint launched Asia Young Designer Award competition for the students of architecture and interior designing departments of different universities in Bangladesh.

  • A Story in Time

    In your last letter, you asked me a great but difficult question. All I can share is my journey through this mysterious concept that we call ‘life’. Like you,

  • A day and a life

    The heat was nothing short of unbearable as he stared at the bold yet intricate patterns painted on the CNG in front of him...

  • SACRED BLACK INK

    The curves of her C’s And the loops of her L’s. The swirls of her S’s

  • Poor Little Smart Boy

    His smile itself is an enchantress, his eyes two deep pools of the darkest coffee you make in December, amidst deadlines and impending vacations. “Two more days,” you tell yourself in your head, “This all will be over and I’ll get to relax.”

  • Signs

    Rehnuma, from her early teens, had absolutely loved cooking. After she got married, and the task became a duty, she loved it more.

  • HIS HANDS WERE WARM

    I held my grandfather’s hands, like he had held mine during my childhood despite my discomfort. My mother would bug my father about it once in a while, in a very soft manner. Father would squint his eyes and think deep. Mother would get bored and walk away.

  • MASTER OF PING PONG

    Cubicles, cubicles Perfect your cuticles Beautiful, immovable Work in pharmaceutical Usual, suitable Visions longitudinal Acoustical, musical Fire in the crucible Usable, renewable Born to be excusable Disputable, hot missile Physically magical Mythical yet practical A good life in the cubicle

  • Traffic Tryst

    On this crowded pavement full of pedestrians pushing past each other, we’re strangers in every definition of the word.

  • An Alternate Moon Song

    I’ve waited for a while now,

  • Indebted

    “Hey.” “Hi,” says Amreen, turning to look at me over her shoulder and then back to face the street again. In a plain white fotua and jeans, she cuts a stark figure against the stainless steel railings of the balcony on which she is leaning.

  • ANOMALIES

    They say my new friend isn’t really my friend. I don’t believe them. My friend has been a better friend to me than anyone else has even managed.

  • Burdened Hearts

    On the night of my wedding I break the ice with my newly wedded husband by telling him about the first man I loved.

  • Untitled environmental disaster

    The chilly winds of early November

  • The Pariah

    The world seemed to be moving at its own pace, hectic and chaotic, just like any other day. But it didn’t sound the same.

  • Fright

    …And when the surface tension could bear no more, the fluid slowly broke off – drip...drip…drip. The recurring sound of liquid dripping in the distance was the first to register into my mind which, accompanied by the stench of iron that assailed my nostrils, sent my brain into overdrive – blood.

  • LINES

    There’s a point in space where two lines meet, An angle, a corner, a bedazzling cosmic feat.

  • FABLE FACTORY

    “Hi, Lubana?” I feel a tap on my shoulder.

  • Farewell

    Goodbye, old friend. It was great while you were here,

  • A COW’S DREAM

    “When are we going to the farmhouse?” “I don’t know.”

  • The Sky Looms In

    The clouds crumbled and poured, turning KORT dark. Bags after bags rolled in, umbrellas after umbrellas strolled in.

  • Midnight Train

    Every day at 3 AM I’d see her. She’d be in the second compartment of the subway sitting with her legs crossed with a book in her hand. Always with a book in her hand. She’d sit so perfectly and so still, you’d mistake her for a china doll. If she did not occasionally flip the pages of her book, I would actually think so. Even when she flipped the pages she’d do so with the utmost grace.

  • MOTHER, YOU ALWAYS WERE

    I didn’t know who I was, May be a broken star,

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