I woke up one day with a song stuck in my head. For the longest time, I couldn't recall where it was from. After two hours of obsessive tinkering on YouTube, I found that what I was remembering was one of the catchiest tunes from a Star Ship commercial of the 90s that would appear on BTV.

"From Heaven Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet" by Vikram Seth is a 1983 travelogue about the author hitch-hiking through China in his student days.

About Town

It is the year 1971. Standing beside a green paddy field, Yahya Khan and a Razakar are locked in a heated deabate against a Bengali farmer.

Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon—the four elements necessary for life to flourish anywhere. Take one away, the balance is off, and the lovely blue ball floating in space that we call home is likely to become a barren wasteland. The Earth being blue has

My heartfelt congratulations and thanks to the Star Weekend team for coming up with an issue dedicated to the partition of the

“Time is a game played beautifully by children.” ― Heraclitus, Fragments

Most of Bangladesh's cities are now suffering from acute mobility issues. Dhaka has cars and no roads. Thanks to rain, Chittagong has converted roads to waterways but with no boats. Sylhet is full of motorcycles that look like those horror scenes where a spider egg just burst.

Envisaged as vast, impregnable structures in their inception, walls have been proclaimed to defend realms and their inhabitants from invaders for time immemorial. The same can be said to apply to the Wall in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, televised on-screen as Game of Thrones.

I am a 'Janagon'—an 'Amm-public'. If you still don't get it, then let me spell it out for you, because I know you are an 'Amm-public' too—the ever-so-celebrated mango people. I hope you now realise who I am as well as who you are.

There are no bright lights, no potted greens artistically arranged around the entrance, no indication that an exhibition is going on somewhere here in Arambagh.

If Eid is about those less fortunate than yourself, spare a thought this holiday for the often forgotten and even less often remembered people of Guam.

A medieval French village in Malaysia

About Town

Failure of flood embankments and absence of alternative solutions are leading Bangladesh to a watery grave.

Statistics related to floods and cyclones display a dramatic increase in intensity in the last three decades in Bangladesh and experts fear that the trend is likely to get worse.

In July 2017 alone, 22 females were stalked, one of whom committed suicide due to stalker harassment. A further 14 people were collateral damage for protesting stalking of the victims, of whom two men were killed and 11 people injured. Though females overwhelmingly constitute targets of stalking and sexual harassment, male family members and relatives protesting often too suffer violence at the hands of stalkers.

With violence erupting across the border in Myanmar and the number of new Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh crossing two lakh in number, it becomes imperative to revisit exactly how the ethnic minority has been persecuted through the decades.

Thirty-eight-year-old Anisur Rahman had decided to send his sister BDT 10,000 through a bKash outlet on his way home from work. Eid was nearby and his sister needed some extra cash. Upon reaching the outlet, Anisur discovered that he was not the only one who urgently needed to transfer money. He was asked to write down his sister Jakia Sultana's account number and wait. A few minutes later, the agent informed Anisur that his money had been transferred and asked him to call Sultana to confirm.

It's no wonder that enrolment in science has been on the decline over the decades in such a “demotivating” education system which is prevailing in Bangladesh.