Shamsad Mortuza

Growing up in the 80s, one of the silliest things we used to do was to play loud music in our cassette decks.

In our Viber group, a departmental colleague shared an excerpt from a student’s exam script. The student wrote down the title of Jhumpa Lahiri’s book “The Interpreter of Maladies” as “The Translator of Disease”.

A national newspaper ran a story on January 10 featuring the research expenditure of public and private universities of Bangladesh.

On January 17, 1972, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Getting the news of vaccine was a figurative shot in the arm for the human race plagued by an ever-evolving crown-shaped virus.

Ever since a London based agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) partnered with Times Higher Education to measure “academic excellence” against a host of quality indicators at the beginning of the millennium, universities all over the world have been attracted to the idea like ducks to water.

National Professor Rafiqul Islam, speaking at a virtual event organised by ULAB in remembrance of the martyred intellectuals, mentioned that the job of writing the history of the Liberation War should have been given to the universities from the start and not to the politicians.

Music has the power to delve into the heart of the listeners and create decision affecting moods. During the liberation war, songs became a weapon to influence the mood and morale of the nation.

I walked out of the doctor’s chamber with my mother when someone took the prescription from me.

A lot of whimpers and whines are coming out of the White House as the sun sets on the Trump presidency. The man in question is convinced that he has been cheated out of power.

On a day like this, 33 years ago, I became a man. To be precise, on November 28, 1987 at 12:10 pm in the emergency ward of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), I became a man.

I woke up with a colleague’s hesitant post on Facebook wishing his friends well on the International Men’s Day. The comment thread is filled with issues ranging from locker room banter to the high theory on the dominant form of masculinity.

One more circular. One more extension. The opening of the educational institutions is further delayed; this time up to December 19.

Have you ever put your ear to the rail to listen to the rumbling sound of an approaching train? I have. Many of us have.

You have near perfect vision, or 20/20 vision, if you can see the letters of an eye-chart from a 20 feet distance. 20/20 is an exciting cricket game if you can add two ounces of cricket with one ounce of baseball and garnish it with pom-poms.

As the old joke has it, there is no lid in the mouth of hell where the Bengalis are kept.

In his Ode to the Onion, the Chilean Nobel laureate poet Pablo Neruda praises onions as “the miracle” that happens under the earth.

The title alludes to a very famous folk song by Abdul Alim, Premer Mora Jole Dobe Na. The song pits true love against so-called flings, suggesting that mere water cannot drown the “body” who is in love.

English professors are known for being sticklers for rules. Even if I try to disassociate myself from the grammar Nazis, there are times when I have to wonder about the usage of certain words.

“And my last ask is: if you’re someone’s sister, the next time you see your brother, please hug him… as tightly as you can, for as long as you want, because that’s all I want to do every time I see those photos. But I will never be able to hug Fahim again.”