Rokeya (English spelling used by her: Roquiah) was born circa 1880 (alternately 1878) to a declining aristocratic land-owning family in the village of Pyrabund, Rangpur in present-day Bangladesh.

It was my grand privilege to have succeeded our founding editor SM Ali in November 1993. Journalism has undergone dramatic transformation in these last 24 years, regrettably not all for the better.

I was a junior lecturer when I had the privilege of working alongside Professor Nurul Islam, who was chairing the departmental admission test committee at Jahangirnagar University.

He looked at the sparse trees around the British Library in London and found that he couldn't name the trees like he would be able to in his motherland; UK was not home. Also, he wanted his young children to be, as he put it in Bangla, “tog-boge” (full of energy) in the then-young country of Bangladesh. So, he returned to continue at JU.

To many of us who are over 60 years of age Zaglul Ahmed Chowdhury is someone we will fondly remember as a committed journalist and most gracious friend. On November 29, 2014 we lost Zaglul in a freak accident in Dhaka.

Going down can be as arduous as going up. Treading down the stairs of the Dhanmondi Hospital on the Tuesday morning of November 14 after meeting his family on the fifth, I paused momentarily, more so mentally, when I reached the first floor, knowing that his dialysis was proceeding in some room.

Dina Wadia died on November 2, 2017 at the impressive age of 98. She was the only child of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan—though there was a breach between the two when she did as her father did and married a non-Muslim.

On this occasion, we remember these heroes with love, respect and gratitude.

October 26 is an auspicious day for the Bengali people, for on this day in 1873 was born Sher-e-Bangla AK Fazlul Huq, the great leader of Bengal, who came as a saviour of his fellow Bengalis from the tyranny of the exploiting landlords and British colonial rule.

While we all occupy multiple identities in our lives, some stand out more sharply, and are more cherished, than others. For most of the people engaged in the Liberation War of 1971, it is that experience alone that perhaps defines them more than anything else.

Munshiganj High School, Haraganga College playground, and Idrakpur Fort are where we would rendezvous in the mid-fifties—Nurul Islam Anu; my elder brother Shah Ali Imam, a freedom fighter; and myself.

How does one describe her? She was an educationist, researcher, writer, social worker, a dedicated women's rights activist, a symbol of non-communal consciousness, theatre enthusiast, and a participant in all progressive social movements.

Nuclear physics was first introduced in Bangladesh by an energetic and amiable young man who returned from England after obtaining his PhD - Dr Anwar Hossain.

Today marks the 25th death anniversary of my father-in-law Lt General Khwaja Wasiuddin (1920-1992), a patriotic army officer and diplomat in later life. Mere words cannot do justice to the memory of the kind of person that he was.

On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces was on duty in charge of an early warning radar system at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow.

In the tranquil landscape and in the distant line of the horizon, he beheld something as beautiful as his own nature. In the wilderness, he found something more dear and innate than in cities or villages. The greatest delight the trees and woods showed him was the suggestion of an occult relation between him and nature.

So many small incidents rush into my mind when I remember Nitun Da. I first met Nitun Kundu in the latter part of 1970, when we were colleagues at Bitopi Advertising.

For many centuries before partition and independence in 1947 the type of government experienced by the peoples of the subcontinent of Asia was imposed by right of conquest; it lacked the ingredient of consent.

Saleh Chowdhury, veteran journalist, freedom fighter, and president of the Bangladesh chapter of Commonwealth Journalists Association, passed away on September 1, at age 82.

It was April 4, 1971, a little over a week after we had revolted against the Pakistan Army and the Pakistan government. I was then a member of the Second Battalion of the East Bengal Regiment, commonly known as Second Bengal.