Aasha Mehreen Amin

It would have gone unnoticed as another suicide of a heart-broken young woman, a forgettable statistic among the thousands of desperate individuals taking their own lives to escape some harsh reality or the other.

The latest report in The Lancet, one of the most well-known international medical journals, on how Covid-19 spreads, is a real shocker.

I have to confess, one of the most frustrating things I have had to face during The Year of Covid-19 is having to restrain myself from hugging people.

One would think it to be the rantings of a madman had it not been the words of a parliamentarian—that feminists are to blame for the rape incidents across the country.

By now, many people have already watched the video. Others could only stomach the transcript, also shared on social media.

I don’t know why I was expecting that I would not be fazed at embarking on a journey across the Atlantic at a time when just stepping out of my bedroom had the potential to kill me.

At 75, Murtaja Baseer is as agile and hyperactive as a child, with a mind as sharp and clear. In his cosy apartment in Manipuripara, Baseer eagerly shows his oil paintings stacked against the walls and explains the various phases that he has gone through as an artist and the mentors who have helped him along the way.

Monday July 6 proved to arrive with ominous news for international students studying in the US, some of them still in the US, others back home for the summer as well as those who were scheduled to start university this fall.

I have often been tongue-tied in the presence of Latifur Rahman. Was it his impassive face and intense eyes that would look right through you, his relentless demand for accurate, precise answers?

After washing my hands for the eleventh time today, I am still not completely sure whether I touched something contaminated—the metal tap, the metal doorknob, the metal part of my pen.

No this is not about all the stuff that will make you want to exterminate the male members of the Homo Sapien species. Let’s leave that to the regular pages. Let’s talk about the heaviness of other burdens that we women have been made to believe are crucial to our happiness.

When we read about a woman being “gang-raped”, then raped again by her “rescuer” (The Daily Star, October 28, 2019), how long do we spend thinking about the unbelievable trauma this woman has gone through?

One of the interesting perks of being a brown South Asian, travelling anywhere in the world, is the special attention you get from various official quarters.

Even before we can catch our breath as we enter a new year, a new decade, rape continues to haunt us, reminding us of its presence...

So it has finally happened. Hard as it is to accept it, the Star Weekend magazine is about to close the curtain after an impressive run of 23 years.

You have to hand it to them—rain, hail or storm, Chhatra League manages to hog the headlines. The latest has been an attack on protesting students at JU who were demanding the

When we read how indivi-duals accused of a crime—drug peddling, terrorism or murder—get shot during a gun fight between their cohorts and the law enforcers we shrug it off without a bat of an eyelid. We know that these “gunfights”, “shootouts” or “encounters” are euphemisms for extrajudicial killing.

It is a common belief that only meritorious, above-average students can get into a university like Buet. It’s no joke when amongst thousands of applicants, only a handful are selected.

When things hit rock bottom humans have a tendency to find ways to laugh at them. It is related to that ambivalence of a bizarre event when you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” – Greta Thunberg, United Nations COP24 Climate Summit, Poland 2019