Fakrul Alam

The title of the first of Professor Rehman Sobhan’s two-part memoir suggests that it is about his “years of fulfilment”; the subject matter of its sequel therefore would be about the “untranquil” years that followed.

The postcolonial and feminist lenses Chatterjee deploys in his discussion of the works of the selected women writers seem to suit his analysis of the works of these "enlightenment" period British women writers, for their biases, fixations, and anxieties often come into view then.

Self-confidence shaken, some shattered memories in their side bags

Who is the one playing such a plaintive tune on a flute

Melville's critics, inevitably, panned him for what he had characterised self-deprecatingly and in his frustration as his fictional "botches," although his works were rarely that.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora, written between 1907 and 1909, reveals the ways in which Tagore addresses the all-important issues of his time—national identity formation, the coming together of people over time, and obstacles or barriers put in the way of the progress of a nation. The novel captures Tagore’s fascination with envisioning a future based on human amity or moitri, one where the powerless and the dispossessed transcend the barriers of division and distrust.

How can you talk about peace without taking into account war? Both are subjects not only of Tolstoy’s great novel but also of the two founding epic poems of Greek as well as Indian literature.

By 1954 Jibanananda Das, after years of neglect, was beginning to gain increasing attention as a poet all over Bengal—East or West—and had a steady teaching job after a long, long time. Indeed, in 1953 he had been awarded the Rabindra-Smriti Puroshkar for his book of verse, Banalata Sen. In May, 1954 his Jibanananda Dasher Shreshto Kobita came out from a reasonably good publishing house, collecting his best poems.

A series of poems also reflect his ecological sensitivity to the machine in the garden and snakes and hyenas imperiling forests and rivers and Dhaka—the city he has lived in for most of his life.

The dust jacket cover of Amartya Sen’s absorbing and remarkable memoir shows him as a young boy, with his sister and a cousin at home, looking out at the world. An apt cover image of a fittingly titled book about someone who would be always taking in the world as he went all over

“The truth is—here is a new country, new people and new modes of behaviour. It appears that there is newness in the air, everywhere” (New China, 143)

The book reveals how in mid-19th century colonial East Bengal jute first emerged “as a global commodity”

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was rooted in the land and loved Bangladesh’s natural features. He wanted them to be as they were—green, open spaces full of water bodies and flora and fauna.

If I get to live forever— then forever, I’ll be all alone— If I return to the paths of the world, I’ll see green grass Sprouting—will see yellow grass scattering— the sky Whitening in the morning—like a tattered munia bird, Breast blood-stained in the evening—again and again I’ll see stars And view a strange woman untying braided hair and leaving Alas, her face devoid of traces of the setting sun’s soft glow

Sudeep Sen’s Anthropocene is the third work on the subject by an Indian writer that I have come across in recent years, but it is truly sui generis.

As my siblings and I grew up in the first half of the 1960s, the radio set was the most sought-after device in our house. Till Baba bought a television set for us towards the end of the decade, it was our main source of entertainment, news and small talk.

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!”

Empathy, the Wikipedia entry on the word tells us, includes “caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person’s emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.

The second volume of Dhaka University: The Convocation Speeches, 1948-1970 (Dhaka University Publications, 1989), assembled assiduously by Emeritus Professor Serajul Islam Choudhury, is an important publication like the first one for anyone trying to understand Dhaka University’s extraordinary role in the genesis and identity formation of Bangladesh.

In Dhaka University: the Convocation Speeches, a volume compiled with an introduction by Serajul Islam Choudhury in 1988, we read that DU was established by the British as a "splendid imperial compensation" for the Muslims of East Bengal (Choudhury, 26). They had wanted the current rulers of India to make up through it for the loss they felt they had suffered because of the reunion of Bengal in 1911.