Perspective | The Daily Star

  • The government is right to be afraid

    The quota reform movement that exploded on to the nation's radar last week enjoyed enormous public support, especially among university students. I can't underscore enough the extent of its popularity—in a series of surprise resignations, university-level leaders of the ruling party's student wing broke ranks to join the movement.

  • Solidarity Quota reform movement

    Tanvir Ahmed was a student of University of Dhaka. He committed suicide at the very beginning of this month . According to his

  • The Mother, A Tribute to a Homemaker

    The bedtime of weekends turns out to be the most intimate moment of exchange between us, mother and daughter. That is the time when my mother opens her heart to me and reveals her darkest fears, her deepest pains and disappointments from the past.

  • Heading to the hottest place in hell?

    One of the most trending quotes shared by the activists of the ongoing quota system reformation movement is Italian poet Dante Alighieri's “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality”.

  • Raising a child with autism

    Rupa shows me the broken glass of a bookshelf in the bedroom, which her son Rakin had shattered by banging his head against it, not half an hour before I entered their home in Mohammadpur last week. He had done something similar last year, which had required 10 stitches on his face. This time, luckily, Rakin had no injuries. His mother was still shaken, the accident a vivid reminder that her world can be turned upside down in a second, though she works hard all day to ensure a regular routine for her autistic son.

  • Raising a feminist son

    I listen in abject horror as my three-year-old comes back from school one day and proclaims that his playtime with his afternoon neighbourhood playmates will now consist of “the boys on one side and girls on the other”. My carefully constructed gender-equality declarations and almost repeated bad gerings over the past few years on his swiftly developing brain seems to have collapsed in one session of rough

  • Search for sight and community in Sydney

    Growing up, I was always told to be prepared when embarking on something new. Sometimes, however, there is very little one can do

  • Being an Unmotherly Mother

    Much like buying a free-size robe that needs no trial, motherhood is expected to fit all women who give birth. When it comes to

  • Innovations for survival and stranger things

    We live in parallel worlds—one in which everything seems to happen in a single moment and another in which nothing seems to happen at any moment.

  • “Act like a girl!”

    I am 25 years old, from Bogra. Biologically I am a woman but I cannot declare myself as gender conforming. Nor do I have an exact answer to give when asked whether I am gender non-binary.

  • Ungendering Hair

    As soon as I left college, I decided to keep long hair. Having studied in Cantonment School and College, I never had the leeway to do this thus far. Whenever my hair grew an inch, it attracted the immediate attention of my teachers.

  • 7 march speech

    What makes a speech great?

    This October, UNESCO recognised Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's March 7 speech as part of the world's documentary heritage. One of the most influential speeches of the country, those 20 minutes at the Ramna Race Course inspired tens of millions of Bangladeshis and laid the seeds for the country's freedom.

  • The revolutionary concept of width

    About two years ago, James May, mop-haired British TV personality and certified automotive encyclopedia-on-legs, was still presenting for Top Gear, the BBC's acclaimed show on cars.

  • word-vomit

    Words, words everywhere, but not one to trust…

    The power of words can move a nation to war, or spread the spirit of love and hope, and in-between, arouse a whole range and scale of passions and emotions in men that may change their fortunes forever.

  • The colonial hangover in academia

    The colleges and universities established during the colonial period have, hitherto, contained, concealed and, in many cases, carried out this colonial purpose in the subcontinent.

  • Darwin: The portal to Asia

    Tucked in a remote corner at the tip of the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, lies a little known city called Darwin—first named in 1839 by John Lort Stokes after his former shipmate and evolutionist Charles Darwin.

  • Unforgettable jingles of the silver screen

    I woke up one day with a song stuck in my head. For the longest time, I couldn't recall where it was from. After two hours of obsessive tinkering on YouTube, I found that what I was remembering was one of the catchiest tunes from a Star Ship commercial of the 90s that would appear on BTV.

  • The 'other' side of the Wall

    Envisaged as vast, impregnable structures in their inception, walls have been proclaimed to defend realms and their inhabitants from invaders for time immemorial. The same can be said to apply to the Wall in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, televised on-screen as Game of Thrones.

  • Surviving our long distance marriage

    Courtesy of studying and working in different countries, the vast majority of my half-a-decade long marriage has been long distance.

  • (Un)passing thru' Jahangirnagar with 'radiant, cool eyes'

    56 students were charged with attempted murder and sedition for speaking up against the police brutality that left three students of the 'Protibader Naam Jahangirnagar' road safety movement severely wounded by gunshot and countless others injured.

  • SUFFERING FROM AN IDENTITY CRISIS?

    It is the first day of the Bengali New Year and our national identity seems to be in a state of predicament.

  • Anandabazar's alt-journalism

    Here in Dhaka last year, at a conference on the future of print media business, DD Purkayastha, CEO of ABP Group, the parent company of Anandabazar Patrika, said of the paper's digital strategy: “We are giving what our readers want.”

  • Do You Recognise the Patriarchy?

    A system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

  • Do Doctors Need Handwriting Classes Now?

    Do you remember the times you got a prescription that looked like bad artwork? That is a doctor's handwriting. But why is it so bad? And do they need handwriting classes?

  • No one left for Nasiruddin Shah to idealise

    A few months back Nasiruddin Shah was denounced over his remarks on late Rajesh Khanna. The same Nasir was eulogising late Om

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