That capitalism is cruel should come as no surprise to those who understand either the meaning of cruelty or the logic of capitalism.

It has taken more than four decades of incredibly hard work to build up the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In fact, the first export-oriented RMG industry of Bangladesh began when Daewoo of South Korea established a joint venture in 1977, almost 43 years ago.

It has only been a month of isolation, yet it feels like “One hundred years of solitude”.

Too little money, too much screen time, and uneven distribution of household chores and childcare—a recipe made in hell.

Since December 8, 2019, when a first known case of pneumonia with unknown aetiology was found in Wuhan City, China, the world has been badly tangled up in the novel coronavirus or Covid-19.

Wars and epide-mics make the perfect bedfellows. Wars create the perfect wombs where murky diseases can gestate and then combust, wiping out entire populations as they spread around the world.

Three days ago, on March 25, listening to a briefing on the then available latest global statistics about the COVID-19, I learnt that the global total of recorded cases was then a little over 400,000, spread across over 169 countries.

Any bored individual who has nothing better to do than to read the comment threads while listening to some old songs on YouTube must have come across these two ideas: “Who is listening to this in 2020?” Or “So-and-so brought me here”.

The Great Depression of the 1930s left its mark on every society and changed the way we think about life.

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.

These are unprecedented times, times that call for unprecedented measures, humane measures.

The COVID-19 pandemic has once again exposed our soft underbelly, particularly of the richest and the most militarily powerful countries in the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic is still making its way around the world and it will be some time before it is over. Nevertheless, even at this early stage, there are some lessons that can be drawn on regarding how best to be prepared to deal with the much bigger problem of climate change impacts which will be coming soon after.

Little did we know on the night of December 31, 2019 that we were about to begin not only a new year but a new epoch which can only be compared to a century-old calamity.

A barrage of fireworks light up the smoggy skies of Dhaka and I feel as if I’m in the opening scenes of a dystopian film.

In 1968, one of the United States’ top scientists, Dr Gordan JF MacDonald, who was a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee and the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, wrote:

The closures of academic institutions for two weeks in response to the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the globe have caught many of us involved in the academia by surprise.

It is fascinating that Bangabandhu began his Unfinished Memoirs (published in 2012) with an existential characterisation of his birthplace in geographic relationship to a river: the Madhumati river, which divides or connects the two southern districts of Faridpur and Khulna.

Winter lasted a little longer than usual this year. Having grown used to shorter, barely cold seasons in recent years, it was something of a surprise to see a winter extending well into March.

At five feet four, most people’s mouth is where my nose is. In a democracy, they can do all the loud talking at a distance from me, but their flurry of drenched words requires my close proximity. My nose is again of the type that inspires free speech, supplemented with coughs and sneezes.