While Dhaka drowns in myriad urban problems, all resulting from some sort of scarcity in resources, the city's sensorium is marked by a glaring superfluity—be it visual, tactile, auditory or olfactory. Our experience of the city is thus unavoidably multi-sensual, yet when it comes to analysing the city the way we derive specialised knowledge about the urban environment depends heavily on disciplines and practices that are essentially visual. We depend on cartography, land surveys, optical geography.

Sara Ansari is delighted. She can finally drive in her own country thanks to a recent change in reforms in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The changes have just begun to take effect; Sara, however, has been holding a license for a couple of years. She got it from Saudi Arabia's neighbouring country, Bahrain, and would go there every weekend, just to drive around and have a good time.

Tania Sultana, a 23-year-old sewing operator at “Esses Fashion Ltd.” of BEXIMCO Textiles can now take home her compensation for 30 days of work at the end of the month, but it was difficult for her to do so just a few months ago. She was not always able to make it to work, especially on heavy-flow days when she could not work for 8-10 hours at a stretch. Since unsanitary rags were Sultana's only recourse, she would find it impossible to wash and

Last time, I wrote about how Dhaka's public spaces exude a strong maleness and how women walk about the city wearing their gender like the proverbial albatross that just would not unburden their shoulders. How does that weigh on men? I would say heavier!

International Women's D­­ay is entering its 108th year. Debates and discussions inevitably ensue each March about women's long journey through the years. This year, however, I want to introduce you to some of my life partners. These courageous women have been my friends and have slowly but surely been leaving their mark on my own life, changing me for the better. They give me the strength to stand strong, and dream of a better, more egalitarian future.

It was the evening of September 2016. A brilliant display of attacking football by Marzia and Co helped Bangladesh's Under-16 women's team come back after conceding an early goal to beat their closest group rivals, Chinese Taipei, in the Asian Football Confederation's Under-16 Women's Championship Qualifiers. The intense finish sealed the girls a spot in the much-coveted final round of the Championships.

That Ferdousi Priyabhashini's driftwood creations are more sentient than inanimate becomes apparent the second you enter Shilpangan, a contemporary art gallery tucked away in a cosy corner of Dhanmondi 13. Her current exhibition, Megher Shongi, is a tribute to the monsoon, her most loved of the six seasons, and the inspiration for her woodwork orchestrations. With boats and boatsmen, long-legged water-birds, and stranded figurines, her characters and forms look like they've emerged straight out of a tempest.

How do we define empowerment? What is it like to feel empowered? Is it possible to feel empowered, all the time? Empowerment these days is a buzzword for development practitioners (including myself), the unquestioned “good” aspired to by women in local communities and grassroots levels.

The rather long and tongue-twisting name of Apichatpong Weerasethakul may not be at the tip of the tongue for the average cinephile in Bangladesh, but it is ubiquitous to any serious follower of contemporary independent cinema anywhere in the world. Winner of the Cannes trifecta of Palme d'Or, Un Certain Regard and jury prize (in different editions), the 47-year-old from Thailand has been a darling

The Academy Awards are the one sporting tournament I follow with any level of engagement. I pay attention to the cottage industry of prognosticators that starts speculating straight out of Sundance, more than a year before the ceremony; I despair about the unsuccessful campaigns mounted by my favorites, as they fall by the wayside; I predict potential nominees and winners; I exult and rant about the films that make it; and, every late winter or early spring, I watch the overlong spectacle alternating between feelings of suspense, delight, and stultifying boredom.

I met Sabah Tani back in 2012 when I was asked to be one of the judges for the initial audition round of a TV music reality show. It was a fascinating experience, being a first-timer in something of that sort. I got the opportunity to visit all eight divisions of Bangladesh in 25 days, which otherwise I would have neither the strength nor the time to do. Our primary job was to listen to contestants sing and decide

"Which university do you want to go to?” I wrote down on a notebook. She circled the word “university” and weakly asked in a shaky voice that barely rose above a whisper: “What does this word mean?” Maisha will be graduating tenth grade in less than a year from a reputable institution in the city, but her performance at school lags behind her peers'—as can be seen from the absence of the word “university” from her vocabulary.

In the first part of this series the Star Weekend revealed, how huge amounts of waqf (an endowment made by a Muslim to religious, educational or charitable cause) properties in Bangladesh have been completely grabbed by illegal occupiers. We found that 122,294 acres of endowed estates are now under illegal occupation and Bangladesh government's waqf administration has lost control over 90 percent of these estates.

Opinion on pranks is divided strongly among two groups. There are those that think it is hilariously acceptable. And then there are those that have been pranked. Unlike a good knock-knock joke, a prank requires we laugh at someone. There needs to be a victim at the proverbial butt end of the ha-ha. Is there a right and wrong way to do it? Can you learn it the way you can learn how to fly a plane? Possibly.

When Rafiqul Islam, a college lecturer of Kaliganj upazila in Jhenaidah district, received a call from his son Ahsan Rafiq at 2:00 am on February 6, 2016, he felt a pang of anxiety. Ahsan studied at the Department of Disaster Science and Management at the University of Dhaka and used to live in the veranda of Salimullah Muslim (SM) Hall, as he did not have an assigned room.

"Just look at his pace.” That's a BPL team official describing a young fast bowler from Pakistan he picked for last year's tournament. The pace bowler didn't turn up because of clearance issues, which meant that the team owner would have to wait longer...

There is not much to love about being a woman on the streets of Dhaka. Let's call a spade a spade—Dhaka streets are not pedestrian-friendly, irrespective of one's gender. Missing or broken pavements, gaping holes to catch you off guard, footpaths overtaken by hawkers, vendors, makeshift shops of all sorts, piled up construction materials, spilled-over garbage, bikers and even rickshaws carrying passengers looking to cut across heavy traffic—you name

As we are now in the final week of February, Star Weekend asked five writers in the country about the annual Boi Mela and which books they look forward to reading.

In the early twentieth century, when Calcutta's political and social elites were protesting against the formation of a university in East Bengal, which would educate the “uncouth, working class”, the Nawabs of East Bengal came forward. Dhaka's Nawab Khwaja Salimullah donated 600 acres of land to establish necessary buildings for the university. The property also included Nawab's gardens and court buildings (now Madhur canteen and Shahbagh area). Syed Nawab Ali Chowdhury of the Nawab family of Dhonbari, Tangail even mortgaged a part of their estate to collect funds for the university.

Men have always been at an evolutionary disadvantage. Early man popped onto earth fitted with a small brain and lice-friendly