Shaheen Mollah

Last Sunday, when Shahjadi Akter’s five-year-old daughter began running a fever, she rushed the child to Dhaka Medical College Hospital from her Hosni Dalan house. Doctors there diagnosed her with dengue, but could not admit her due to a lack of beds.

Four-year-old Tahsin Tuba plays with a doll that her mother had given her just two weeks ago. Minutes later, she puts the doll away and starts watching cartoons.

Spices and vegetables have become significantly pricier over the last one week largely due to inundated farmlands.

On Wednesday evening, Senior Assistant Superintendent Sultana Esrat Jahan was heading home from Police Headquarters. Near the High Court area, her vehicle got stuck in a traffic jam.

Imagine a family going home for the holidays. The jovial trio -- father, mother and a five-year-old boy -- reach Sayedabad Bus Terminal on time.

As a good number of doctors, nurses and staffers of public hospitals went on leave during the three-day Eid vacation, their non-Muslim colleagues had to shoulder the extra responsibility and play a vital role in providing services to patients during the crisis period.

With a brinjal-loaded truck, driver Sabuj Mia came to the capital’s Karwan Bazar kitchen market from Tangail’s Madhupur early Sunday.

By the time Abdur Rahman and his family reached Sadarghat launch terminal it was almost 4pm. Though they have to board a launch to Barishal in the evening, the family of four decided to get there early.

During Ramadan, all the eateries and food stalls on the streets are thronged by people right before iftar. This is the busiest hour for street vendors selling mouth-watering food. They call out to their potential customers, enticing them with the usual spicy, crispy and fried food items.

Although traffic congestion has become way too common in the capital, the Eid shopping spree and ongoing construction work of metro rail in the middle of roads has exacerbated its severity.

Over a house in the capital’s Mirpur area, a banner hangs reading: some men in civilian clothes introducing themselves as law enforcers abducted Mohan Miah on June 10, 2018.

Hours after Ataul Islam died in a road crash on October 12 last year, his family filed a case against the driver hoping to get justice. But Sub-inspector Riazul Islam got in the way.

Early morning every day, a reserved spot in Mirpur’s Pallabi sees no less than a thousand pair of eyes looking at every passer-by in hopes that someone will call for work.

It is already one of the most crowded spots in the city on any given late afternoon of the year. Factor in the added rush of thousands of commuters to get home for iftar with family in the month of Ramadan and a massive blockage to the metaphorical artery of the city’s road transport system, Farmgate has become dire straits for the working class posted in the vicinity.

Traders in Dhaka's Kachukhet area get ‘death sentence’ over phone if they dare turn down the demand of the caller. Many listed criminals are demanding and taking extortion money from businessmen and traders in some parts of the city, police say.

With its sun-kissed stretches of sand, shimmering blue and jagged coastlines battered by white breakers -- Cox’s Bazar sea beach never gets old.

Twenty-year-old Shahadat Hossain Shyamol sits on the floor on the space between the elevators and stairs of the fourth floor of Dhaka Medical College Hospital’s burn unit, a gunshot-wound in his foot and police cuffs on his hand, and two police personnel keeping watch.

A politically-affiliated murderer may just be planning his big comeback. At least that is what the locals in his area believe. For them, it is a nightmare come true.

In a perfect juxtaposition of poverty and progress, a rail-track beneath the Bijoy Sarani-Tejgaon flyover slithers its way past rows of shanties and a makeshift bazar where a few hundred vendors offer what appear to be everyday groceries.

Despite a government promise that price of essentials would not rise before Ramadan, a section of unscrupulous wholesalers and retailers have yet again begun charging people more for those.