Shah Tazrian Ashrafi

A major portion of my childhood was spent in Farmgate—my paternal grandmother's place. It was a residential area wedged into the corner of a labyrinth breathing with multi-storey buildings, shops, parlours, salons, warehouses, other settlements, and tall electric transformers.

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I were to subscribe to one particular language that didn't have any link with my roots. One particular language, which I didn't know like the back of my hand.

Without knowing that it seeks to establish equality, some think that feminism is an aggressive ideology. That it seeks to lay siege to the rights of “men”.

In the face of dehumanizing discrimination, insurgency is important, but not when it deviates towards inhumanity from humanity,

In my impressionable childhood, my working parents often used to leave me in the care of our adolescent house-help. My day, for the most part, would be spent in her company.

It has been a while since you have wrapped up your work. Your words have bloomed characters and lives of their own, and given them a home.

Of course, we have people with polarising opinions sharing their annoyance, their neutrality, and their satisfaction with the new trend:

The migratory birds that had been successful in evading the local poachers' eyes packed their belongings and left. The dead trees are breathing again, their crowns filled with leaves.

The clouded leopard stretched its limbs and yawned as though it was tired for losing itself deep into the waves of a comfortable slumber. The dark patches scattered like oceanic

I was beaming when the word “Mowgli” floated up. Partly because I didn't know the remake had been in the works and so I didn't have to wait for the release; partly because it had ties with The Jungle Book. But I wasn't doing the same when it ended.

Aung lives with her father in a lush, hilly district of a coastal division where narrow concrete roads bleed through the green, rising hills, twisting and turning.

I often see death hovering above everything, sticking out its tentacles, and taking someone in its mouth on a whim. Its belly is swollen with the lives it has consumed and its mouth drips with the sorrows of those. It is an invisible (to the mortals) aerial creature. It flies fast despite being so heavy. It is omnipresent, and in the ocean, it is as visible as a boat shaped moon on a mirror-like pond.

I don't remember the last time I could eye a book from my wish-list in the local stores. Novels by emerging voices, shortlisted for Man Booker, Pulitzer, and other prestigious prizes are barely seen.

If you lived in Rwanda during the 20th century, you would often be asked about your tribe. It could either be the majority Hutu or the minority Tutsi. Back then, they used to coexist with the rising tensions among them.

Though it's a sunny Friday morning, the concrete Gulistan flyover renders the landscape gunmetal, where I'm to meet Shohag Mohajon, the manager of Clean River Bangladesh. Almost 20 minutes of miscommunication later, I manage to find him in a sea of speedy civilians. We exchange greetings and get on the waiting bus.

If you are someone who is done with school and still reminisces about the old memories for the sake of nostalgic pleasure, you should take notes from this article because we all know that your 'school kid' version dreaded many things about school despite repeating often how you took that life for granted.

Being the broke friend usually means being dragged down back to the ground by your empty wallet while trying to fly in the “financially stable” sky, hoping to splurge on food with friends, it also means becoming a machine that churns worn-out excuses every time something fun is planned.

The plastic bag was somehow separated from its diverse herd floating in the Caribbean. After the separation, it became a lone traveller, a sea nomad. Its pearly white, transparent skin blessed it with the feature of a jellyfish.

Whenever I think of Arundhati Roy, I am reminded of afternoons on the rooftop with soothing breeze and neighbourhood pigeons circling the sky.

Back when the river used to zigzag through the village's green skin like a sky blue snake and uninvited things did not invade the ambience, Anjum would drive his cattle to the water body for temporary relief from the unbearable heat. His daughter Roop would follow him too on the holidays; sometimes even skip school for this activity.