What happens when your desire Lies in being alive?

Lacerating the unfortified,/ Picking at the flesh for bad blood to find

The whole courtroom held their breath, waiting to hear Nizam's answer. As he nodded in affirmation, the enraged audience got off their seats to beat up the accused.

My father reasoned that he had grown up in a poor land that had been plundered by the colonial powers and he was not going to give away another national treasure

Bury your feet where its green And when the air is thin you will see 

His five sons/ Were killed and the books...

Shimu and Tushar had grown up together on an alley in the Mirpur area of Dhaka city. Their neighbouring houses were separated only by a brick wall, about two meters high. The branches of a tree growing beside Tushar’s house overhung the wall, its foliage shading a part of Shimu’s courtyard.

The beast bellowed below Mushfiq’s bedroom window, propelling rushes of tingles within him. He smiled.

My love affair with spectacles has long been regarded by my mother as nothing but a symptom of my dramatic nature.

If you’re someone who tends to pay attention to details, you will find a CliffsNotes for The Bell Jar on the coffee table next to Heather Chandler’s dead body in the 1988 cult classic,

I am put away impulsively like the totems on a modern alter 

One early morning, before the sun’s ascent, Stood a red bud in my front lawn.

I’m not sure when I first realised that we’d met before. In the beginning, you were just the elderly man I often noticed pottering around our communal rooftop.

The slamming of the front door sounded an ominous note, warning of trouble to come.

She’s as real as my meandering/ As tangible as tinkering.

Thinking of the roles of narratives in responding to the climate crisis, the most obvious one that comes to mind is the effective reach of narratives that connect us to the crisis, emotionally and intellectually.

Seven feet of mud swept water, /Bodies under rubble.

She doesn’t need an alarm For the last hour of the night.

This is part of a grand narrative that, offensive as it is, asks why the Jewish people let themselves be killed, instead of asking why the system enabled it to happen–the same narrative also exists in the cases of colonialism and slavery.

Her Kohl-rimmed eyes, dangling earrings,/ The chiffon scarf, the satin silk shirt