ON THE NIGHT of November 15, death came as a mercy. It was those that survived the carnage of cyclone Sidr along the coastal districts of Bagerhat, Khulna, Barguna and Barisal that survived a fate far worse. While the images that emerged from the cyclone-hit areas in those initial days shocked the world – canals strewn with bodies and the carcasses of dead animals – the full extent of the horror of that night is still being unravelled. Will the statistics – over 3,000 dead officially, and 15,000 according to the aid agencies, 9 million people affected, 90 per cent of the homes and 97 per cent of the crops destroyed — bear an adequate testimony of that night for posterity? For a father to have to bury his children without a shroud to cover their bodies, for children – many of them infants – to return to their homes from where their parents had tied them to trees, only to find them dead and mangled, is a tragedy that defies testimony... [ + ]

SYED Siddique Hossain, a homoeopath based in Kurigram in the 1930s and possibly the first Muslim in the subcontinent to write a seven-volume book on homoeopathy, would wake up every day at 4:30am, light up a lantern and write non-stop till late morning. The eldest of his eight children, Syed Shamsul Haq, then barely seven or eight years of age, would peer through his half-open eyelids at his father’s illuminated face, absorbed and striking, and listen, in a dreamy half-awake, half-asleep state, the scribbling noise the pen made on the paper. Not books, the act of writing fascinated the little boy most. ‘The scene that I woke up to every morning had immense power – I wanted to conquer the feeling,’ says Haq. ‘Reading wasn’t much of a possibility anyway. We only had five books in the house – the Qur’an, the Hadith, a Bengali translation of the Bible, a collection of poems by Kaikobad, and Anwara, a famous novel of the time by Najibur Rahman... [ + ]

HOW would he like to be remembered? Pausing for moments, in his measured enunciation typical of his classroom lectures, Serajul Islam Choudhury, on a definitive note, said, ‘a committed intellectual... [ + ]

THIRTY-SIX years ago, on the day when Bangladesh won her freedom, a woman in her late thirties broke down – her tears were of pride and inexplicable joy. The end of humiliation, the end of not being able speak up, the end of the seemingly endless struggle to survive the bloody war had come. ‘I had held them back for so long and it was time that I let them out,’ says Sanjida Khatun... [ + ]

MONIRUL Islam, son of a sanitary inspector who hails from Chandpur but was raised in Kishoreganj, failed to pass his matriculation exams three times. The first time he failed and the second time he was disqualified. Angry at being disallowed he went up to his headmaster and asked him, ‘Why have I been un-allowed?... [ + ]

Dear son,
   Only the other day I was walking along the street when this really large and impressive looking vehicle stopped right in front of me. A handsome fellow dressed up nicely stepped out and immediately bent down and touched my feet. He informed me that though I may not recall him he was a good friend of my son’s. He was now the district commissioner of Jaipurhat and I burst into tears, both happy for his success and sad at my own predicament... [ + ]

MOHIUDDIN Ahmed has rarely, if ever, squabbled with his fortune, good or bad... [ + ]

AS I waited outside a children’s ward at the Central Hospital, I could hear an elderly man talking to a child. It seemed the child was talking to an old friend. There he was – Professor Mohammad Rafi Khan, widely known as MR Khan. A living legend in the world of paediatrics but to the little child, he was just a friend – loving and loveable... [ + ]

SALEEMUL Huq looked out to the beach on a warm afternoon at Nusa Dua, a posh resort town on the enchanting Indonesian island of Bali, which was hosting the UN climate change conference. The ministerial segment of the conference was to kick off in a few days, with the participating countries deeply divided. The raging debate over the right to development and obligation to gradually reducing the consumption of fossil fuel became central to the issue of global warming and permanent change in weather patterns... [ + ]

THERE is an unmistakeable spark of recognition in her eyes when she runs her fingers slowly and softly on her gold medals and poses for a photograph. She is concerned about the gold and silver medals not coming well in the photograph. All of a sudden, the sound of the plane flying overhead disrupts her attention from the camera... [ + ]

IN 1994 a group of human rights activists realised the need for an organisation that would work relentlessly for protection and promotion of the people’s fundamental rights. While the ouster of the despotic regime in 1990 had put Bangladesh back on the path to democracy, election-related violence, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, torture in custody continued to undermine the people’s fundamental rights, they noted. Thus came the social human rights coalition Odhikar into being... [ + ]