Sarah Anjum Bari

This past year spent studying in France has been a race against the clock. Weeks, months, and semesters passed, and my shortening stay in Paris saw the magnets on my refrigerator room piling up.

Out of the 161 million people of Bangladesh (as of 2015), 16.1 percent of adults and 15.2 percent of five- to 10-year-olds live with mental health issues. Only 0.44 percent of our national budget was allocated for mental health in the same year.

It's a tale as old as time—Paris as a city of stories. Not just because of the published literature flowing through it ceaselessly, but also the rues, boulevards, bridges, gardens, and buildings royal and ramshackle which contain stories of all those who have passed through them.

Harrowing messages from strangers that make us laugh more than they actually harm us, have turned “stalking” a carelessly tossed around phrase – if you're young and attractive, you're “supposed” to have stalkers.

It was a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman of good breeding must be in search of a life led in humble anonymity.

A few years ago, I collaborated with a friend to write about the double standards young girls face in Bangladesh.

You know that imaginary friend that every child grows up with? Mine was Rahul. Not a storybook character or a person I'd made up at random, but the Rahul of the dimpled smiles and a necklace that spelled 'COOL'.

This baggage will be an inescapable part of our reality for the years to come. But the memory of Faraaz's actions lightens the load. It helps to remember that our background isn't one that harboured murderers, but one that instilled a very young man like Faraaz with so much strength, maturity and love for humanity.

Watching television snuggled between my parents or grandparents; talking to them for hours; rubbing their feet when they were tired from work. On quite a few of these occasions, my father will say something that he means as a compliment, but one that takes me by surprise every time. He wonders aloud if I'd still be spending time with them this way if I were a son. I argue, every time, that that's beside the point.

On May 5, 2017, an employer poured boiling water over an eight-year-old domestic help – a child – for breaking a glass by mistake.

The past few weeks, at least for young audiences of American television in Bangladesh, have been rife with different variations of the same discussion.

From the outdated legal concepts under which cases of rape are tried in court, the “medical” tests that are required for proving rape, to the institutions which are supposed to stand by the survivor, it is not surprising that many women are scared or traumatised to even report incidents of sexual violence.

In tracing the shifts from joint families of yesteryears to some single-parent households of today, what is happily evident is that the essence of the family remains the same.

The fact that 13 women have been killed and 17 physically abused over dowry in Bangladesh in January and February of 2017 does little to rattle us. Neither do the figures of 107 deaths, five suicides, and 94 physical abuse victims in all of 2016.

Looking up information on underprivileged children's education in Bangladesh, I found a picture online of a classroom that looked far

The internet is abound with stories of how sports can, and is, changing the world. How it helps build physical fitness and traits of teamwork, respect, and resilience.

Contrary to horror stories narrated by some standardised test veterans, the GRE isn't designed to rob you of your sleep and social life weeks before you sit for the test.

Bill Condon's 2017 rendition of The Beauty and the Beast ends with a song by Céline Dion. “How does a moment last forever?

As a student of English literature, “Eshob pore ki hobe?” is a question I've had to face on a near-daily basis.

"They said that the divorce rate in Bangladesh is so high because women these days are getting too educated, which gives them the independence to leave their husbands when they are abused physically or refrained from an activity; this wouldn't be allowed in earlier times."