Waqar A Khan

I arrived in Islamabad as a schoolboy along with my family from Dhaka in January,1968. The new capital city of Pakistan was still in its nascent stage of development.

The misdemeanors of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan are legendary.Tomes have already been written about this ‘dark, diabolical prince’ of Larkana, Sind, in Pakistan.

It was in the early 1980s, that I became aware of Frederick Fritz Kapp popularly known as Fritz Kapp, a German photographer through his photographs printed in a book published from Calcutta.

It happened sometime in the winter of 1959. There was a ripple of commotion in the ‘kancha bazaar’ (kitchen market) in Dinajpur town. Someone gave a clarion call, “The gypsies are here. Allah save us! Secure your things.” It was as if a calamity had descended on the small town. Sajeed our domestic servant came running home from the bazaar and excitedly broke the news.

The years 1968-1969, were a tumultuous period in the political history of the state of Pakistan. My father a Bengali civil servant from East Pakistan, was an official in the then central government in Islamabad.

The following story unfolds in a prominent zamindar (feudal landlord) family of the Senguptas, in the then remote and obscure sleepy little village of Barama,

It stands proudly as a silent sentinel - forsaken, forlorn, dilapidated - entwined in the vicious vice-grip of invasive vegetation – serpentine vines and clinging creepers - that threaten to bring it down anytime sooner than later.

The spectacular socio-cultural efflorescence known by the sobriquet of ‘Bengal Renaissance’ was an extraordinary period from mid- 19th to early 20th century in Bengal.

The failed Indian Rebellion of 1857, which saw the ultimate triumph of the East India Company, nonetheless also led to its demise and the emergence of the last great colonial empire in modern history- the British Empire in India - popularly known today as the British Raj (1858-1947).

The Honorable Justice Nawab Sir Syed Shamsul Huda, KCIE, an illustrious son of Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh) was born in 1862, in the village of Gokarna, formerly in Comilla then a part of Hill Tipperah, in British India.

A brief on the Armenians of Dhaka: Regardless of the absence of any definitive chronicle on the advent of the Armenians in Bengal, particularly to Dhaka, historians today unanimously agree that the Armenians started to arrive in Bengal, from the late 17th century onwards.

I am enamoured of Netaji. I have been since I was a five-year-old, when I had first listened with wide-eyed wonderment about this legendary hero from the elders in my family.

This feature article is a sequel to an earlier essay of mine entitled “Early Indian Voyagers to Vilayet” published in The Daily Star. In this essay, I shall briefly mention a few notable Indian travellers who went to Britain, including those who later wrote about their varied exposure and experiences there on their return home to India, between 18th to mid-20th centuries.

This essay is largely about the pictorial depiction of the once imposing south-western bastion of the Lalbagh Fort in Old Dhaka, along with a brief history of the fort.

On a languid summer afternoon way back in 1973, after a hearty lunch I had settled down comfortably in bed and started to flip through the pages of the latest issue of the prestigious The Illustrated Weekly of India,

In this essay the word Vilayet, which originated during the Ottoman empire to specifically mean a geographical area or district, is used to denote Europe in general and, Britain in particular. More recently, Vilayet (Bilat in Bengali) has been further narrowed down to mean England, or even London proper.

It would be difficult to find someone in this country today who, having grown up in a typical middle-class Bengali household of the 1950s-60s, has not heard of the fabled tale of the Bhawal Sannyasi (a Hindu mendicant) through family sources.

This fascinating story needs retelling, particularly for the younger generations in Bangladesh, who would take pride in knowing that a fairly sizable portion of one of the most successful...

In the summer of 1970, our prestigious Notre Dame College in Dhaka went on recess for three weeks. I was a student there, having recently relocated from Islamabad after my matriculation for a better prospect of a good college education.

It was the Dhaka of 1970. Unlike today, it was then a laidback provincial capital city. I was a student at Notre Dame College.