FICTION / The manifesto of laughter
The afternoon sun presses down on Dhaka like a heavy hand. Heat rises from the asphalt in shimmers; buses wheeze as though gasping for breath. Rickshaw bells jangle against each other in the thick, damp air.
31 December 2025, 18:00 PM
31 December 2025, 18:00 PM
FICTION / Writer’s block
Asif stares at the blank page, his chest tightening with that all-too-familiar dread.
31 October 2025, 19:37 PM
31 October 2025, 19:37 PM
FICTION / The truth factory
By the year 2035, Dhaka forgets the scent of the Gulshan-Banani lake.
12 September 2025, 18:54 PM
12 September 2025, 18:54 PM
FICTION / A gilded cage
The automated blinds of the penthouse in Gulshan, an upscale area, rise with a soft hum, revealing a picture-perfect Dhaka morning.
15 August 2025, 19:18 PM
15 August 2025, 19:18 PM
FICTION / The feed and the filter
Mira presses her thumb on the cracked power button of her phone.
25 July 2025, 19:07 PM
25 July 2025, 19:07 PM
FICTION / In defense of disorder
At a gathering in the unfinished community hall, Saleha raises a question: "They gave us walls. But what do we want to grow inside them?"
20 June 2025, 19:09 PM
20 June 2025, 19:09 PM
FICTION / Vivisection of a cat
When Ullash decided to choose the cat for one of his experiments, our borobhabi, Ullash's mother, didn't raise a single objection
23 May 2025, 18:36 PM
23 May 2025, 18:36 PM
FICTION / The importance of being imperfect
Now, an automated metro-rail glides silently through the city. Conversations have become clipped, calculated. Efficiency replaces spontaneity. They call it peace. Rahim calls it absence.
16 May 2025, 18:18 PM
16 May 2025, 18:18 PM
Retribution
Mohsin would burst into laughter, saying, "Justice for rape? Is that even a crime worthy of justice?"
Rabeya, laughing alongside him, would add, "People expect justice for rape these days? I'm speechless at their naïveté!"
7 March 2025, 18:00 PM
Sisyphus laughs: the laughter of God
At last, God heeded Sisyphus’s prayer—a plea he had been making for countless centuries. Each time, he hoisted the rock onto his shoulders, convinced that this would be the time it ascended with ease
3 January 2025, 18:00 PM
Baul Lingoes: An Enigma
Baul songs, stuffed with enigmas and codes, sum up the existential philosophy of deha tatta (Truth in the Body), probably the central theme of Baulism, outlining the aphoristic concept according to which 'whatever is in the universe is in the receptacle (the body).'
19 October 2018, 18:00 PM