Star Literature
FICTION / Not talking in a city of loudspeakers
The door didn’t fully click shut. That was an ordinary affair in the house because the door locked to prevent escape. But, by chance or sheer good luck, it didn’t fully lock this time. The click was off. Someone hadn’t done their job correctly. Bloody hell, no one does their jobs correctly in this godforsaken country.
POETRY / If I Speak
Tell me what to say when I need to speak, If I have to say something, So what can I say: look at that
POETRY / IS & WAS
Death dwells between is and was, Riding the final particle of a fading breath.
Tribute / T.S. Eliot and on living in unreal cities
I once again find myself drawn to "The Waste Land"—though this isn’t about just the one poem, not really—where so much of the old world exists in motifs in a tattered landscape.
Poetry / Silent screams
Let us raise our voices, let us be heard, / Justice for the dead, let their voices be stirred
FICTION / My London: An immigrant story
You land in London with £210 in your pocket. It is the year 2009. You are able to pay the first month’s rent for the room, but not the deposit. You have to share it with an acquaintance from Dhaka. He arrived a week prior.
POETRY / Not everyone looks at the sky with the same weighted heart
Once, I believed there was a crown on my head. The heart was brimming with life and light Brimming with boundless force to surpass any spread. Among the crowd, I was always one
Fiction / Terrible tea, terrible life choices
But I guess Ivan did not choose wisely. It was a series of unfortunate events with him and now, he was stuck with Rebecca–and there was still six hours 46 minutes left in this office cubicle.
ESSAY / The alterities of hunger
In two of the more prominent fictional works that are part of the diasporic South Asian literary production, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, food is presented as a conceptual apparatus that makes palatable the tensions of ‘multiculturalism’ and offers a critique of class barriers—if not always at the level of economics, but at the level of consciousness.
Why Nazrul was at loggerheads with language purists
I proposed a panel at a North American Bangla literary conference. ‘Is translation itself a form of activism?’ I queried.
Kazi Nazrul Islam’s short narratives
Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), was a poet, novelist, lyricist and musician in Bengali, and was popularly known as the rebel poet.
The howling pack of dogs
This poem has been translated by the author from Zahir Raihan’s poem, ‘Kotogulo Kukurer Artonad’ on account of the novelist, writer and filmmaker’s birth anniversary.
Anjuman and the stories of the mango people
My father’s ancestors were Ayurvedic medicine men from a remote corner of the North Bengal. A few generations ago, one of them had cured a long-lasting ailment of the Raja of Taherpur and had received, as a reward, a large chunk of agricultural land or “joat” next to the mighty Joshoi Beel.
Unravelling Bangali feminism and female rage
Feminism and literature share a profound connection as literature gives voice to the experiences of women, allowing us to understand their perspective. However, despite the abundance of information in the technological age, the promotion of feminist books remains a challenge in Bangladesh, often facing criticism from conservatives.
Diphylleia grayi
The burst of fragrant marigolds on the blanched porch of our old Calcutta home, free like sand, unbridled like the wind
In some corner of a foreign field: Rahmat Ali & the once and future Cambridge Majlis
The map is part of an exhibition arranged to mark the revival of the Cambridge Majlis, a society (dating from 1891) designed for students from all over the Subcontinent to meet socially to enjoy their commonalities and discuss and debate in a civil way their political differences.
The poet who shook the Ershad regime
As he had actively protested against Ayub's dictatorship, and was indeed jailed, he felt compelled to protest against Ershad's dictatorship through his poetry.
