Shamsad Mortuza

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Is the Bangla word “porosrikatorota” really untranslatable? Does “envy” or “jealousy” fall short of denoting the condition of feeling down after seeing the success of others?

The sudden onrush of floodwater flowing into the country through the Teesta at a measured dangerous level—soon after the equally sudden disruption of peace and vandalism of temples and altars in different parts of the country—reminded me of the 1974 movie

I wrote this short poem a long time ago, inspired by a cemetery headstone. I was ruminating over the plight of a man who had transformed into a corpse, then reduced to a sign marked by dates. In the eternal existence of mankind,

Recently, while I was driving to my office, an SUV full of security men whooshed past me on the wrong side. I slowed down and let the car come to my lane near Ganabhaban.

“How do I cultivate freedom alongside discipline?” German philosopher Immanuel Kant asked in 1899. The question still remains valid in many sectors of life, especially in teaching.

You must have heard of the story of a fox who accidentally lost his tail to a trap, and later decreed that all foxes must lose their tails too.

It is as refreshing as watching flowers of urban forestry in bloom or the roadside plants glisten after a bout of rain.

In September 2001, soon after the attack on the Twin Towers, the Bangladesh government issued a public announcement to contact the America & Pacific wing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the whereabouts of Bangladeshi residents.

Two news reports caught my attention on Friday: one was about a wild elephant being electrocuted, and the other was about the dwindling international funds for the Rohingya refugees.

I don’t remember the last time I went to Chattogram. My knowledge of the port city can be summed up by the memorable quote from the epic fantasy series, Game of Thrones, where the main protagonist is told: “You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

I was watching a movie on Netflix. Suddenly, the voice assistant of the laptop, Siri, got activated and said, “Siri aha?”.

There was something ominous about the day in which Bangabandhu was laid to rest in his native village of Tungipara when, according to the village elders, the “skies were knowingly weeping tears” (Syed Badrul Ahsan, From Rebel to Founding Father, p. xv).

We are all glued to the mega-spectacle involving the flickering of the dropped or lost tails of some lizards who have tactically dissociated from a disposable part of their bodies to protect themselves from their attackers.

While staying with a host family in Pennsylvania during a weekend trip in the late 1990s, I found a statement knifed in the bed’s headboard: “Here a battle was won by the Man of the house [date]”.

There is a rush hour traffic out there. People after spending a short Eid escapade are frantically returning to the capital as the lockdown tolls the knell of a parting holiday.

Last week, all eyes were fixed on Neymar’s ripped shorts, Badhon’s jewelled blouse or English rogue fans’ red-crosses, when something terrible happened:

When an esteem-ed member of our university’s syndicate board died recently, we requested the government for a replacement.

The institution that one attends for education is often attributed with the honorific title alma mater, literally meaning "generous or nourishing mother". The phrase "alma mater studiorum" (nourishing mother of studies) was first used in 1088 as a motto by the oldest university in the Western world, the University of Bologna.

A female student of mine walked out of her dentist’s chamber at Bailey Road at around 8pm on June 7, 2021.