Abida Rahman Chowdhury

The forest does not intimidate much, in fact, at times it could feel like an extension of Enid Blyton’s mystical and whimsical children’s

Many hours later as he faced the only open window in his room, Shafiq was to remember that distant afternoon when he took his first born to see the undulating sand dunes of the vast desert.

Many may know Shibu Kumer Shill as the lead singer of Meghdol, a popular soft rock band; some may know of him as a book cover artist who skillfully merges the contemporary with the traditional.

Once upon a time, in the winter of 2014, in a land far far away—Sundarbans—a young man in his twenties, seeking adventures...

I would not know it then, but it would be a twelve-hour stretch before I would get the chance to interact with another woman, as I made my way from Dhaka to Tanguar Haor. In those hours, journeying to the corner of Sunamganj to watch wildlife conservationists at work, I met, interacted with and received advice from only men. Why so? Where were the women?

It took three separate modes of transportation, a major fight between a bus driver and his helper, and a sleepless night before I managed to reach the foothills of Meghalaya to witness conservation and technology merge and in turn, make history for Bangladesh.

There is a district in the south-west of Bangladesh which is at the epicentre of a drinking water crisis. A crisis that is being exacerbated everyday owing to the realities of climate change.

“If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands…If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet”-goes the lyrics of one of the most familiar songs/rhymes/jingles that we have been exposed to as children.

It was just a few years after the Liberation War in 1971. Caroline Amena Lauritsen was a child then. She does not remember how old she was back then, but her adoption papers say she was three years old.

Below the waters of the Bay of Bengal, roams a fish unlike anything you have seen before. With its long, somewhat bizarre-looking, saw-like rostrum, the Sawfish is a reminder of a prehistoric time, dating back to the Late Cretaceous period. The Sawfish roamed our seas when real, live dinosaurs walked our earth.

From the very moment I took it on, it felt like a Herculean task. To bring back a relic of the past, to clean off the dust from an unused side of the bookshelf and reread Tintin in the wake of the boyish reporter turning 90.

The internet has had a complete ball of a year, thanks to millennials turning older and 'CRAY-zier' and fighting the growing costs of living. If you think that this 'I cannot buy a home because I spent all my money on avocadoes and that is why I am sad' is a problem just in the west, just drag your mouse and zoom in on Dhaka on the map (especially on the tri-state area).

This is the year when Bangladeshi millennials are eligible to go to polls. Star Weekend talked to young voters, many of whom will be voting for the first time, to understand what they think about the electoral process. The young voters also shared their hopes and aspirations regarding the upcoming polls, what issues they truly care about, and whether they will go to vote at all.

The first time I visited Satkhira, the tide country, was as a student of Environmental Science. And I remember returning with pages upon pages of focus group discussions with villagers who were living in homes that had been cut off from nearly everything because of water-logging. They talked of a life constantly battling a disaster.

To this day, there is that one Bangla poem that I cannot but help start reciting in my head if I find anyone saying the words Choto Nodi.

The recent cases of suicide in educational institutes this year—nine cases of suicide at University of Dhaka (DU) and one at a residential complex of a private university—has opened a can of worms, exposing how poorly the mental health condition of Bangladesh's youngsters are dealt with.

Just a few days back, The Daily Star ran a report that students' enrollment in government primary schools is decreasing sharply.

Among monstrous ships of all shapes and sizes on the river Rupsha, I first saw the “Dolphin boat”, shining and bobbing its snout in the soft winter light.

Think wildlife conservation and what first comes to mind are men in grey or beige toned outfits and names like David Attenborough, George Schaller, John Muir, and Roger Payne.

Why does the Spoon-billed sandpiper, a tiny sparrow-sized bird, migrate all the way from Chukotka, Russia to a mudflat of Bangladesh?