Star Literature
Death
It is so cheap
like it is everywhere-
on the highways,
under the bridges,
disappeared
15 October 2021, 18:00 PM
A Woman of Substance
She lies on the bed, a broken canvas.
Fragments and splinters of an old frame,
Faded colors of painted priceless picture,
Greys and white, crooked dark veins, wrinkled paper skin.
Frames abound on the wall’s fortress,
8 October 2021, 18:00 PM
Now As We Live In Two Different Cities
We stopped talking earlier.
Yet there was a chance that
I’d run into you.
There was a chance of
seeing you on the Gollamari bridge
buying vegetables.
8 October 2021, 18:00 PM
Remembering Mohiuddin Ahmed, the founder of UPL
Countless people cross our path as we walk through this temporal life; but only one or two strike us as people with no darkness within. Mohiuddin Ahmed was one of those unique humans. He radiated pure light, and for those within this light, time always moved peacefully because life seemed to have met all his wants and needs, and as a man so at ease with the ways of life, he effortlessly smoothed out the many negative thoughts of his visitors and friends, just by being who he was.
8 October 2021, 18:00 PM
Paradisal Libraries
Younger people might find this too dated, but I will stick by what Jorge Luis Borges once said: “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of a Library!”
1 October 2021, 18:00 PM
Sunflowers
I have journeyed long and journeyed far
looking for sunflowers in the rain — fresh
blooms, unwet, singing a song of freedom.
1 October 2021, 18:00 PM
Romeo’s House, Verona.
[Casa di Romeo, Via Arche delle Scaligere: Historians say this was the house of Cagnolo Nogarola, a Guelph supporter, like the Capulets, Juliet’s family. But according to legend and literary texts, the Monetcchi family, or the Montagues, lived here until the 14th century, and the V-shaped battlement was the ‘swallow tail’ symbol of the opposing faction, the Ghibellines, which Romeo’s family supported.
1 October 2021, 18:00 PM
On tears and taxidermy
tears tasted salty
when i was little
sometimes i would inspect a drop
against the light-
24 September 2021, 18:00 PM
CAMUS REVISITED
One intriguing question in Albert Camus’s philosophical novel “La Peste” (The Plague) is the idea of death perceived through the sense of rationality.
24 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Monsoon, My Grandmother, and Mini
The year Dadi died, monsoon came early. Days of incessant rain, nights with loud thunderstorm. And when there was no rain, my friend Mira and I sang rain songs and floated paper boats in the puddle.
24 September 2021, 18:00 PM
A Review of The Silence of the Girls
My first reaction to the knowledge that someone would attempt to re-tell the story of The Illiad appeared to be a foolhardy venture- one that was doomed to failure because it seemed too challenging and gargantuan a task, but within the first few chapters I could see Pat Barker’s skill in bringing the story of the Illiad to a modern context.
17 September 2021, 18:00 PM
The Last Frontier
Meanwhile I looked for space, for a new frontier.
17 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Lines from Fuller Road
This dawn is unvarying, lovely, peaceful, dewy,
Morning sky has opened its store of breathing clouds,
17 September 2021, 18:00 PM
The Plague in Bengal: Literary Glimpses and Anecdotes
About 122 years before the Covid-19 pandemic Bengal was struck by bubonic plague, which has left its traces in Bangla fiction and life writings.
10 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Obhoy’s Insomnia
An abrupt noise woke Obhoy up in the middle of the night and throughout the rest of the night his eyelids would not shut. What was the matter with him? He had been sound asleep; then suddenly he woke up as if someone was battering at the gate of his senses.
10 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Story of Bengal and Bengalis: The Bengali Homeland and its Inhabitants
With the onset of the new millennium in the 21st century, there seems to be a revival of interest in the space, in the eastern part of South Asia, historically known as Bengal, and the people who inhabit this space, the Bengalis.
3 September 2021, 18:00 PM
FEMALE WARRIORS
I had decided to write a brief review of Selima Chowdhury’s book when it was first published, but what with one thing or another making me put it off, a couple of years rolled by, and we found ourselves caught up in a pandemic with no end in sight.
3 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Writer Sheikh Abdul Hakim passes away
Renowned author and translator Sheikh Abdul Hakim passed away at his Madartek residence in Dhaka yesterday afternoon.
28 August 2021, 18:00 PM
On Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel
Guns Germs and Steel was first published in 1997 and received the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction the following year. Reading this book has been an incredible experience. Each time I put the book down for the day I had to gasp for air because I had been totally immersed, rather like deep sea diving and looking at the world in a new dimension.
27 August 2021, 18:00 PM
Brothers with the lyrical names
I arrived in Islamabad as a schoolboy along with my family from Dhaka in January,1968. The new capital city of Pakistan was still in its nascent stage of development.
27 August 2021, 18:00 PM