When we read how indivi-duals accused of a crime—drug peddling, terrorism or murder—get shot during a gun fight between their cohorts and the law enforcers we shrug it off without a bat of an eyelid. We know that these “gunfights”, “shootouts” or “encounters” are euphemisms for extrajudicial killing.

It is a common belief that only meritorious, above-average students can get into a university like Buet. It’s no joke when amongst thousands of applicants, only a handful are selected.

When things hit rock bottom humans have a tendency to find ways to laugh at them. It is related to that ambivalence of a bizarre event when you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” – Greta Thunberg, United Nations COP24 Climate Summit, Poland 2019

The news story of police officials, including the OC, of a Pabna police station, forcing a gang-rape victim to marry one of the rapists is a perfect example of how perpetrators of a crime as heinous as rape, are allowed to go scot free with the help of

The recent tragic deaths of seven people at the hands of angry mobs on suspicion of being child abductors, in different parts of the country, are jolting reminders of the dangerous consequences of spreading rumours. Apparently, the latest series of mob killings were sparked off by a preposterous tale being circulated regarding human heads being collected for the building of Padma Bridge.

Adventurous is not the first word that pops into one’s mind when thinking of us Bangladeshis. Hospitable? Yes. Warm? Yes. Resilient? Definitely yes. And laidback? Yes. But “adventurous”?

The first thing that probably comes to a parent’s mind when their child is brutally taken from them is, “why couldn’t I protect her/him?” That is most likely what the parents of seven-year-old Samia, a nursery school student from Wari, were thinking when they

Every time we read the word “rape” and “gang rape”, we cringe with horror. Yet these two words keep coming up too often in our daily dose of nightmarish news.

As the country become a state of thieves?” Such a strong remark by a High Court judge was in reference to the strange reality of many policemen leading hard lives while others lived in expensive houses.

There could be nothing more symbolic of the utter absurdity of the state of our roads than a zebra crossing stained by the blood of a university student, a road safety campaigner who was crushed by a speeding bus racing with another speeding bus.

What do you call those who just refuse to see the writing on the wall? Delusional fools or compulsive optimists? Perhaps we are a bit of both.

The image is all too familiar, so much so that it is almost forgettable: A woman wailing amongst debris that once was what she called her home.

The gang-rape of a 35-year-old woman, a mother of four young children, because she insisted on exercising her right to vote for whoever she wanted to, has been the most devastating story for us ordinary citizens and especially for women of this country. It is hard to find words to describe the disillusionment and anguish I know I share with most of my fellow citizens that such horrendous violence should be inflicted as a twisted form of political revenge. While all the rapists have been arrested, even the man who “ordered” the 10 to 12 men to rape that woman “to teach her a lesson” for challenging him, what we cannot escape is the realisation of how far the culture of impunity of political elites and their cohorts has gone.

Ever since it started existing, governments have had a love-hate relationship with social media. Predictably, the romance starts to sour when social media contains criticism of the

Men all over the world are getting worried. Or at least they should be. What started out as a movement in the US against sexual harassment of powerful men at top positions in Hollywood...

Many indivi-duals who come to this country for the first time are enamoured by the overabundance of genuine hospitality that they receive from the local people.

Children should not speak unless spoken to. The old adage has come back to haunt us again. Or perhaps it never went away at all—at least not in our cultural context.

It is one of the biggest paradoxes of present time — the contradiction of having the most remarkable advancements in technology with the most regressive developments in human civilisation.

The damning indictment had been announced a long time before we were ready to hear it. Now, we can no longer look away from that awful, cringe-worthy truth. We, the grownups, the apparent decision makers of their fate, have failed our children.