“A girl,” the nurse had said and the mother had frowned. “A girl,” she turned those words over in her head, mumbled them slowly. “A girl,” she said to the nurse, “I hope the world would be fair to her.” The nurse looked motionless as if she heard those words coming out of every mother's mouth.

The harmonium is massive in size. Antique and made of German reeds. Though time's whiplash left dark marks on it, its exquisite face still attracts its viewers.

Why is there no one around? Why is no human being in view? But there are still those in the rooms set aside for them. No changes were visible thus in the quarter where Lord Husayn's kinsmen and women had been kept.

“I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? Tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.”

-“Wonder! What a wonder!”

On Wednesday, October 10, 2018, the much awaited longlist for South Asian Literature 2018 was announced by eminent historian and academic Rudrangshu Mukherjee, the chair of the jury panel for the current year for the distinguished prize.

I do not write. I am not a writer. I am an active thought, willing to reveal through words the enigmas of human lives and the perplexities of women's stories.

The next day, Lebu had really blasted a peto at the party's office. Well, he had tried to. The peto had fallen off his maimed hand, right in front of the table. It didn't bounce — rather sort of slumped — like a ball in a slow spin. Everyone shrank in fear. Babluda, the secretary, had pulled his legs up on the bench. He pressed his palms against his ears and stared, wide-eyed.

Neil Gaiman ticked all the boxes on the “celebrity author” checklist long before he garnered mainstream fame. He guest starred in two episodes of “The Simpsons”, wrote multiple bestselling novels, penned one of the greatest comic book series of all time, and (what he considers to be one of his greatest achievements) scripted an episode of Doctor Who.

Two years ago, on a cool afternoon in November, driving towards the cantonment gate at the intersection past Radisson on the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway, a sign caught my attention.

They decorated her way with hibiscus,

The alley is dark. Dim streaks of light trickle down from the street lamp at the turn.

Baul songs, stuffed with enigmas and codes, sum up the existential philosophy of deha tatta (Truth in the Body), probably the central theme of Baulism, outlining the aphoristic concept according to which 'whatever is in the universe is in the receptacle (the body).'

Lālan Sā̃i, also known as Lālan Fakir or simply “Lalon” (d. 1890 CE) was a non-sectarian poet and mystical philosopher who lived in the historically undivided Nadia district of Bengal

There the City of Mirrors lies, Within a stone's throw of my place, I have a neighbour living there, Oh, I've never seen his face!

It always amazes me how a simple illiterate man—'sahaj manush'—from the rural nineteenth century Bengal could have had such a magnanimous vision to assimilate in his songs the core ideas from the Vedic, Upanishadic, Vaishnavite, Buddhist, Tantric, and the Sufi philosophy.

The Storm is a tale of multiple compelling characters from around the world but all tied back to a crucial time and place in South Asia—a storm based on the real 1970 Bhola cyclone.

Last weekend I went in search of my Nanna's bungalow. Seventy years ago, during World War II and in the years just after it, my mother and I had stayed with her mother in her bungalow in Erith, a small Thameside port, now part of Greater London.

The saga of courage is gradually coming to an end. O poet, once

What's the point in counting years, While the intensities are wasted, In bickering, fame and money matters?