Just a few days ago, while standing inside a packed elevator in the building of a renowned telecom company, a thought crossed my mind. For a moment, I wondered: what if I could hold a placard in my hand, asking all men to stand at a distance from me?

I had taught at a College in New York City for six years—which used to administer fire drills every month. During the drills, each person was required to leave and evacuate the building.

During the last days of March in 1971, when there was fear among everyone at Dhaka University—the teachers, students and general staff—that the university could be attacked by the Pakistan military anytime, Jyotirmoy Guha-thakurta, a professor of English department of the university, was the provost of Jagannath Hall.

The boom of export-oriented garment business created jobs for millions of mostly young female workers in Bangladesh, many of who moved from rural areas to urban centres like Dhaka.

Ever since I returned to Dhaka in 2011, I have seen how fast Dhaka has been growing. The GDP growth rate has been phenomenal but, with economic wealth, multifarious challenges have come to the fore: land- and river-grabbing, tree-felling, and endless construction changing the landscape of the city.

I still remember one morning in 2006 when we escaped death by an inch, as one of those popular “city” buses struck the rickshaw I was in with my mother and sibling. Had it rolled its wheels a little more, I wouldn't have been able to write an op-ed piece today.

The influx of millions of female workers to work at the garment factories has created unique health challenges, issues and needs that have mostly remained unstudied and unaddressed.

A few years ago when I was in the United States and contemplating a return to Bangladesh, I was worried about the challenges of

Some of our news outlets have termed the yaba smugglers as “yaba dealers” or “yaba traders.” I am not a grammarian. So I am not judging whether it is grammatically right or wrong to use the words “dealers” or “traders” to mention the yaba godfathers. I am talking from a general perspective.

The geographical location of Bangladesh puts the country in an odd position when it comes to the drug and narcotics epidemic.

In Dhaka, a woman travelling—whether walking on the street or using public transportation—faces a near-constant threat of sexual harassment.

Recently, the bodies of three "rapists" have been found shot to death with culpatory notes hanging around their necks. On January 17, the first body was found by the police in Savar,

The year 1991 is a significant one in our history. By the beginning of that year, General Ershad had been forced out of office and it is in 1991 that parliamentary democracy was formally restored.

In the film Taken (released in 2008), Kim, an American 17-year-old girl, was abducted in Paris during her European tour. Her father Bryan Mills was a retired CIA field agent.

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.

We live in a world where things are constantly happening. Every day seems like an assault on our mental stability because of the nature of the events that take place, more so for a writer who has to go through the unpleasantness of trying to connect the dots and produce an analysis of them.

According to “World Population Prospects: the 2017 Revision,” the number of older persons (those aged 60 years or over) is expected to more than double by 2050 and more than triple by 2100, rising from 962 million globally in 2017 to 2.1 billion in 2050. Globally, the population aged 60 or over is growing faster than all younger age groups.

Apparently “inspired” by last year's safe road movement, the DMP has come up with yet another action plan to deal with Dhaka's anarchic—to put it mildly— traffic situation.

It's amazing how unhinged society can become if you don't pay attention to the smaller details and address them appropriately. Take for example violence in society. The majority of inhabitants of society detest and abhor violence.

At the end of the 20th century, the issue of women's empowerment and development was finally thrust into the limelight. Scholars identified lack of “economic power” as the primary cause of women's suffering and including women in the outside world by educating them and opening up the job market for them was thought to be a universal panacea. The accepted doctrine was that when women have economic power like men do, they can be independent and raise their voice in every sphere of society.