The death’s head is panther-stalking her through the party. Bodies washed in neon pink ebb and flow, sinking and rising from the shadows as light thrums.

This is the fifth and final (for now) instalment in a fiction series about a family navigating the woes of immigrant life.

I sometimes think of Dhaka as an ancient twisted folk tale—one with a mystical, rusty lamp with a faux genie.

At Star Weekend, we try to find and frame the stories around us. Stories of strife and injustice and joy and history. This week, in what feels like a penultimate time, we decided to explore some of the stories that exist within.

Amidst all the commotion at Jahangirnagar University, this issue of the Star Weekend attempts to discern the trajectory of the disaster by sieving it through a chronological timeline, collated from reports published in The Daily Star and other major national newspapers. We start from the reappointment of the VC and take the reader through all that has happened till date, all that has brought this renowned academic institution to a standstill.This timeline is certainly not exhaustive. What it demands of the reader is discernment, analysis and conscious awareness of the ever-persistent, wider issues that these events represent. Where does it all begin, and where does it end? Why should a public university be in such a place to begin with?

I always had a desire to write fiction from school days onwards, but ‘to be a writer’ seemed like an unattainable goal.

Every November, Dhaka Lit Fest creates a hub of stimulating activities and conversations for the culturally inclined.

Shahbagh, the intellectual heart of Dhaka, becomes a meeting place for renowned and promising authors, scholars, poets, journalists, readers, and intellectuals from far and wide, at least twice a year.

Impunity under the radar

On August 19, 2019, Jamir Ullah*, a 45-year-old father of one based in Sreepur, hanged himself from a beam off the balcony of his home after being gang raped by 10 men.

Last year, 24-year-old Otoshi* divorced her husband because she had an unhappy and abusive conjugal life. Even today, she hasn’t been able to share the actual reason behind her divorce with her family members, except with her mother. The rest of her family and relatives blame her for failing to lead a domestic life with her well-off husband with a government job.

Dhaka is probably one of the very few megacities in the world without any proper design or guideline for the operation and expansion of its public transport system.

Ashraful Islam, a retired government official, built a two-story house in Dhaka’s east Jurain neighbourhood in 1996. He spent his forty years of savings and even exhausted his wife’s fixed deposit to build this dwelling.

Just day before yesterday, the capitalised “How” was asked by my amazed and astounded wife. Turns out I had accidentally locked her inside as I went out to deal with a mess my 1.5-year-old daughter made trying to feed the dog.

During my trip to Europe, one of the destinations I had planned to visit was Neuschwanstein Castle. I thought it would be just another historical building, but it is so much more than that.

In the face of history’s death and patriarchy’s indomitable presence, Leesa Gazi’s Rising Silence comes as an undying beam—one that can stir the nation’s collective psyche and present the realities of “a forgotten genocide” before the current generation (and the ones to come).

Fiction collides with the aphasiac state, as reality swirls out of the conscience. Drowsing past that holds much grief wakes up like strangers with all my secrets. Where burning tail-lights read stories brought back from heaven’s whorehouse.

There was a king named Prithu Raja in northern Bangladesh in the 13th century. He had a fort city in Panchagarh called Bhitargarh, and he may or may not have died by committing suicide in a lake.

There’s a buzz abroad in the development community around a new way to tackle extreme poverty. For exemple BRAC’s Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) programme combines asset transfers (usually livestock), cash stipends, and intensive mentoring to women and families in extreme poverty in order to help them “graduate” into more sustainable livelihoods within two years.

This year, all the precursor conditions—chilly nights and sunny, warm days—were in place for a fabulous fall foliage season.