To answer this question, let me hazard an analogy -- good writing is much like good food. Good writing tickles our senses the way good food does.

The ruby red kite fluttered above head, contrasted against the aquamarine sky, and it all was picture perfect for a split second, so perfect that it was a spoiler to the fact that something horrible was about to follow, like it did almost always.

They carried the dead body from the front yard inside the house and slowly laid him down on the floor.

Just imagine, a detective character like Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Satyajit Ray’s Prodosh C. Mitra alias Feluda appears in the Bangladesh literary arena.

Some stars fell...

A city made out of dust

Different scenario unfolds at every turn of a corner. Grand in a domestic dimension is the historic house museum - the Palazzo Falson - apparently the second oldest building still standing in the walled city of Mdina.

The classic collection of marble sculptures from Parthenon at the British Museum, commonly known as the Elgin Marbles, has been a vexed source of doubt, appreciation, enthusiasm, disapproval, and envy ever since they were brought to England during 1802-1812.

I say “No” to the jungle’s call.

“Room to roam” remains my indelible imprint of this idyllic historical island. A less trodden route.

Old friendship like cold tea waits at your side

Shaheen Akhtar is a notable Bangladeshi author, who won the Prothom Alo Best Book Award in 2004 for her novel Talaash, (translated into English as The Search and published by Zubaan, Delhi, in 2011).

John Milton’s Areopagitica (1644) is a fine specimen of the prose polemic defending the freedom of expression and opposing the governmental licensing of publications and procedures of censorship.

Where Hopes Don’t Die

With a familiar hunger

A part of my life over.

My father was in the Pakistani army, so we moved frequently, every few years. Soon after I finished Grade 10 in 1966, we made a big move: from Chittagong to Rawalpindi.

When I came here, to our new abode, I was quite surprised to see the letter box outside our flat. “Who writes letter these days?” I was wondering. After the death of my mother, my father decided to shift to this new flat. He wanted me to overcome the grief caused by the death of my mother as soon as possible. He was terribly worried about my well-being.

The wind sighs as if upset; the snow’s anxiety is audible, A capricious sky causes a few docile stars to descend, Horse-driven sledges home amidst the din of strewn snow— Portrait of a deserted highway at the edge of a horizon!

The pale yellow moon shone through the leafless winter trees. Their silhouettes were the only beauty in the dark between the lights of town. I hunted the imagined monsters that live in the dark. I was out in the fields where no one should walk alone.