When the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Havana in the early hours of January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro was 550 miles away, at the opposite end of the island.

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.

Wars are not just about strategy, diplomacy, weapons, death and destruction of human life, but also about the way it affects natural environment.

"When you begin searching for traces of past South Asians in Australia, it becomes visible that their histories remain inscribed on the land itself. Throughout the Australian outback, beneath the network of dusty roads that criss-cross vast distances lies the camel tracks that South Asian drivers once used to travel." Samia Khatun writes.

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.

History, more often than not, “is written by the victors”. But, what could perhaps be even more universally accurate is that, “the first casualty of war is truth.” Despite its great devastation and world-changing impact, the First World War is no exception to these age-old expressions; and neither is its commonly known history.

Finding Bangladesh is a quest of a group of young people which focuses on collecting, preserving and initiating conversations on Bangladesh's ancient histories, mythologies and legends. The aim is to revive lost tales of our land and help us in being more sentient

In 2002, Unesco declared the third Thursday of every November as World Philosophy Day, to celebrate "the enduring value of philosophy for the development of human thought, for each culture and for each individual". In celebrating the day, which falls on November 15 this year, In Focus publishes some excerpts from Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy, published in 2000, which examines everyday problems of our lives, and through the teachings of philosophers ranging from Socrates to Nietzsche, offers insight and understanding to the reader.

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...

Public spaces constitute the life-stream of a city, and these are in short supply in Dhaka.

Beginning October 1965 to mid-1966, at least half a million (over a million by some accounts) Indonesians were killed by the army and army-backed local civilian militias. Another million were incarcerated without charge.

This year marks the 45th Anniversary of the October War between Israel and a coalition of Arab States, a war that significantly contributed to the present, complex Arab-Israeli conflict.

On October 12, 1492, the world changed. It was a blind "date" that went awry. The poster boy of this historic(al) date is a maritime explorer, Christopher Columbus who was hell bent on finding a western route to India.

No building symbolises the advent of professional architectural education in Bangladesh during the 1960s more appropriately than the Department of Architecture building, designed by Richard Edwin Vrooman (1920-2002), at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

Dhaka, the capital of present day Bangladesh, is supposedly a 400-year-old city, established by Islam Khan in the year 1608 or 1610, and has also been the capital of the Mughal Subah (province) of Bengal intermittently. The city started on the banks of the Buriganga and expanded along the river.

Alongside his work as a photographer and teacher, Shahidul Alam has always spoken out for the rights of all Bangladeshis, and for free speech. He has been imprisoned for more than a month now for alleged "provocative comments". He has been repeatedly denied bail, with the next hearing likely to take place on Sunday.

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.

September 12 marks the 124th birth anniversary of author Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, best known for his novel Pother Panchali. This week's In Focus explores how the devastating Famine of the Fifties was reflected in Bibhutibhushan's writings and how he humanised the suffering of the victims of this "man made holocaust".

If after thousands of years of human civilisation, we crawl on our roads in our vehicles at 7km per hour and die untimely deaths just by walking, there is something wrong with the picture.

Before my first solo photography exhibition in February 2010, I went to the Farashganj neighbourhood and walked through its narrow streets—something I had never done before. I found myself lost in the glorious past of Old Dhaka. Magnificent architectural structures built on the bank of the great Buriganga River caught my eyes. I was witnessing the decaying beauty of some of the greatest ancient buildings of Dhaka, struggling for survival in silence.