There is no doubt that the nation adored him. Many of his fans and friends even worshipped him. Film lovers in India and Pakistan also highly respected his skills and versatility as an actor. Yet Razzak was a humble man and gave our film industry everything he possibly could without asking much in return.

Being someone who is keen on watching films that were made on our Liberation War in the early seventies and the films that made an impact on our nation's movement for freedom, for me, Zahir Raihan is a legend.

The leftwing politicians of the time were honest, patriotic, and pro-people; however, they were not able to go as close to the heart of the masses as could Bangabandhu's Awami League. He and his party represented middle-class values but were very sensitive as well to the plight of the downtrodden.

We can recall with respect that Justice AB Mahmud Husain was the second chief justice of Bangladesh, immediately after the constitution of the Supreme Court.

This year July 24 marked the birth centenary of Captain Mustafa Anwar, who was a pioneer Bengali Muslim pilot in the Indian subcontinent.

Tajuddin Ahmad took over as the finance and planning minister in Bangabandhu's first cabinet sworn in on January 11, 1972, and on the morning of January 12, I received an urgent summons from the prime minister to meet him when he conveyed his decision to appoint me as the finance secretary.

An authority on constitutional issues, his views on matters of national importance were dearly valued in times of crisis. He was a quintessence of objectivity, with no penchant for any political dogma.

My parents, so far and yet so near - I look for them around me, in their friends, in relatives and in me. We all carry bits of them with us. And I try to reconstruct an ideology, a way of life, a way of thinking, a way of being. The objects that would help such reconstruction are not easily accessible or available anymore. But I would like to tell their story around some of the artefacts that were around them. Each of these brings out certain aspects of their character, their response to ideas. One such object is the 'Venus Bust'.

The real Fayza Apa was the most soft-hearted person in the world. She was frustratingly generous and kindhearted. Frustrating, because there was no way you could dissuade her from buying gifts for you – and she bought gifts for practically everyone she knew and even for those she didn't.

Your radiance remains undimmed despite your physical absence. It remains in everyone who had the opportunity to know you, to befriend you, to love you. I am happy today, Ishrat Akhond. Happy to have had you as a friend and learn that happiness is a choice.

This baggage will be an inescapable part of our reality for the years to come. But the memory of Faraaz's actions lightens the load. It helps to remember that our background isn't one that harboured murderers, but one that instilled a very young man like Faraaz with so much strength, maturity and love for humanity.

September 11, 2001, attack on Twin Towers in New York. We all remember the paralysing aesthetic of the live image of the attack on the second tower that the global news channels continued for days to air.

If “life is lived forward but understood backward”—as the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once put it—Choudhury can look back and easily say in the words of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet: “This is how you must love the earth/so you can say 'I have lived.'”

One of my earliest memories of my grandmother's house is that of her bookshelves stacked with copies of Begum magazine.

Faruq Ahmed Choudhury was very close to my heart. Though he was a 'big' man in terms of his stature, he communicated with us like

It is with a heavy heart today that I write about the passing of Faruq Ahmed Choudhury - a man whose presence loomed large not just for those of us who that the good fortune of knowing him, but for our entire nation.

While engaging an adversary, Faruq Choudhury demonstrated the highest levels of professionalism and tact, his strongest tools being his ubiquitous charm and ready wit.

Few can forget the well-known voice of Serajul Majid Mamoon, an engineer by profession, and a celebrated newscaster and television anchor, whose first death anniversary was on May 2 this year.

Philanthropy is derived from the Greek words “philos” which means loving and “anthropos” which means humankind.

It was February 27, 2004. I was a resident of Shaheed Janani Jahanara Imam Hall at Jahangirnagar University.