Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) needs no introduction for us. As a polymath, he was the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1913.

And then it rained flowers, then it rained flowers emptying the trees.

The world grows dim and dimmer with feeble eyes. Youth turns into a broken wheelchair; Let’s walk through the desert together, you and I.

Because of the pandemic, this year FOSWAL went for an online conference in collaboration with the Sahitya Akademi. The 4-day long programme titled, “South Asian Online Literary Conference” took place between 15-18 March, 2021.

American children’s book author Beverly Cleary, who responded to a young reader’s plea for realistic characters by bringing rare insight and humor to the lives of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins and the other children who populated her more than 40 books, has died at age 104, publisher HarperCollins said.

During the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, collaborators led the Pakistani army to Sohagpur village. In one day, they killed 164 men. Fifty-seven

Solayman rolled off his bed in terror. Twisting his body, he dived under the bed stand and lay flat. His whole body was trembling. The freedom fighters must have surrounded his house!

“Did you see the dead bodies over there?” a little wizened old woman bursting out from nowhere asked, fixing her lackluster eyes on them.

It took Dr. Nilima Ibrahim 25 years to publish the narratives of rape victims of 1971 whom she interviewed almost immediately after the war.

Essentially a people’s hero, the most unique “disruptive leader” of Bengal, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920-75) solved a number of the “wicked problems” that the West Pakistani feudal-colonial overlords orchestrated and let loose on his nation before its independence in 1971 “by challenging the existing cultural hegemonies that fail to serve communities through concentration of power and the marginalisation of stakeholders” (Ryan, Christian N 2016, 108). Under his charismatic leadership subaltern Bengalis fought their glorious war of liberation, subverted the power structure, and liberated themselves through a nine-month long bloody war which claimed three million lives.

I am a songstress with

Are you reading this or just staring at what is written?

My body is not my own.

There is a paradox to literacy in our contemporary societies.

Tagore has remained ceaselessly relevant to us not just for his contributions to Bengali literature but also for issues relating to society, politics, gender, education and even environment.

Doctor Mahtab Uddin looked at the luminescent hands of his watch: 9 pm. Not that late, he thought and sat down on the circular cement platform not far from the patient’s house.

We reached the crematorium on the riverside that takes a mischievous turn near a local market. The hushed night was deep and dark.

The intellectual killing had left the country with severe brain injury in December 1971. We were devoid of cultural, moral and professional leadership all at once.

The police flagged down our driver, who ran a red light on the flyover one cloudy December afternoon. “Didn’t you see the STOP sign?” one of them yelled, as soon as the driver rolled down the window.

You are stuffing gunpowder into the silent cannon All by yourself. Now that the winter is over