Personally speaking, roses never topped my favourite flowers’ list; they do very little to move me. That claustrophobic red bouquet I once got on a Valentine’s Day from someone I was not too keen on, and that half dead rose stick I get on every Woman’s Day has ruined the flower for me. Even visiting the rose village at Savar did little to change the situation.

I have quite the humongous extended family. For the sake of clarity, just my first cousins alone sum up to a hundred plus figure. My eldest cousin is older than my mother, and my mum is now in her early ’70s!

I woke up with a longing that rainy morning, my plants were all beaming in the rain drenched sunlight, and the air was thick with a muddy, grassy scent and I wanted to go on a long drive; in fact, I wanted to drive to an unknown remote place and buy fresh organic vegetables.

Last evening, I had to avail an Uber ride home, and since I was flat broke, and only had the smallest of changes, I had to stop by an ATM.

It was an early autumn morning. The village was cloaked in a blanket of mild mist, and the cool breeze of the wee hours carried with it the scent of the rain soaked muddy paddy fields.

My mornings are pathetic. Like all the ladies out there, juggling work and family; with crying toddlers or school going kids, with angry teenagers, or nerdy university-going grown-ups, and not to forget a difficult child-like adult heading for work — our mornings are worse than any migraine headache.

I found paradise at a quaint pond on the crack of dawn last Friday. I must jot down the exact moment before memory fades, as I wish to return to that exact moment time and again, even if it is only through the words I write.

The emerald green taro leaves stoutly stood its ground amid my peridot bush of bracken ferns. It’s an unusual place for taro leaves to sprout, but nonetheless, the sun and the rains did bless me with an expectant gift.

It would inevitably be late in the afternoons; after wrapping up her daily household chores and completing Zuhr prayers, Nanu would sit down to have her lunch, which in itself was an art, almost like a ceremony of relishing heavenly manna.

If it was a 25-day Caribbean holiday (mum says you always have to dream big, that’s beside the point though) coming back to work would have been a dread and almost a matter to contemplate desertion.

His desirous lovey-dovey stare and her coy smile says that the young couple on the rickshaw on that breezy sunlit Chaitra afternoon are in love, and perhaps soon to be wedded. They are a good-looking couple, the girl holding a packet with lowered gaze and the boy looking at her in a manner

What separates man from animal? The fact that we can speak? Or the fact that we have opposable thumbs? How about that fact that we have a complex society and technology that hurtled us to the moon?

At the cross roads of life, we all contemplate on the what if’s? Yes, that includes the ‘what if I took a sound decision on my finances,

It was almost like Eid, with the slight difference being in the exchange of trays full of gourmet goodies with neighbours and friends, and praying with family the entire night instead of visiting them

Walking down the brick lane of the 200-year-old Panam Nagar had me in a fully nostalgic mood, my usual dreamy self reminiscing of the bygone glamour, and the grandeur of the lifestyles of traders and landlords.

My friend is a brilliant orator; even her most illogical arguments seem reasonable because of how she narrates them.

I sympathise with the bereaved family. I sympathise with the 'may-have-been' young love crying her heart out. I feel for friends who may have had shared notes for preparing a presentation at the university.

They say, times have changed; maybe they have, but as shocking as it seems mothers possibly still favour their sons over daughters.

I was just debating the other day whether a chilled lemonade, with loads of ice and a slice of squeezed green lime floating in a tall glass, the rim of the which is laced with salt and sugar crystals, can be called a mocktail.

Crossing the Meghna Bridge is a hurdle; the Gomti is another feat in itself, but once these obstacles are left behind, you are greeted by the fields full of green paddy and canary yellow mustard, swaying in the mid-morning breeze.