How cool is your mother tongue?

international-mother-tongue

What is the status of the language you call your mother tongue (first/native/arterial language)? How cool is it? One of the unfortunate realities of some international languages is that success or failure is often determined by language status. Yes, languages have so-called “status”. Some languages are high status, some are low status, some are in … Read more…

The Bangladesh Story

The Bangladesh Story - a documentary on Bangladesh

The Bangladesh Story is an interview based documentary directed by Faris Kermani which tells the story of how Bangladesh was created. It was broadcasted on Channel 4 of UK in January, 1989.  The doc is divided in 3 episodes. The total runtime is just over an hour. Here is the short description of the documentary … Read more…

Bangladesh Tomorrow: Rethinking Left Politics

Bangladesh Tomorrow: Rethinking Left Politics

Professor Anu Muhammad, Nazrul Islam, Naeem Mohaiemen, Ahmed Shamim, Dina Siddiqi, and Nayma Qayum talked on various sides of the issue at a seminar on  ‘Bangladesh Tomorrow: Rethinking Left Politics’ at the Graduate Center, CUNY on Tuesday, January 28th.  It was moderated by Humayun Kabir. Most of the attendees were, naturally, of Bangladeshi origin. The … Read more…

Bangladeshis Build Careers in New York Traffic

Bangladeshis Build Careers in New York Traffic

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN Above a Korean fried chicken restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens, Showkat Khan worked the room of mostly Bangladeshi men, speaking Bengali with a few English phrases mixed in, his enthusiastic message of opportunity broadcast through a crackling amp. At one point, he held aloft a copy of New York City’s Civil Service … Read more…

Anushay Hossain – A Bangladeshi Blogger

Anushay Hossain

Anushay Hossain is a Bangladeshi blogger & journalist based in Washington, DC.  She launched Anushay’s Point in 2009, and her work is regularly featured in Forbes Woman, Huffington Post, & the Shriver Report. She is also the online editor for Click Ittefaq, the English version of Bangladesh’s oldest national newspaper, the iconic Daily Ittefaq. Anushay spent a decade … Read more…

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide

Bangladesh at War 1971

This year, Gary J. Bass, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, wrote a book on Bangladesh’s liberation war  and role if US diplomats with the US administration during that time – “The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide”.  This book is about how two of the world’s great democracies – … Read more…

Bangla-Pesa in Bangladesh, Kenya

bangla-pesa voucher

Bangla-Pesa is a social community-backed currency/voucher. They are only accepted in an impoverished settlement called Bangladesh near the city of Mombasa, Kenya. The Banga-Pesa voucher are only allowed to circulate within the registered members who use it as a credit system plan and are expected to repay it after getting Kenyan money (shilling) later. The … Read more…

Secret Life of Scientists – Tanzeem Choudhury

Tanzeem Choudhury

Scientists are just like everyone else – they’ve got secrets. So who knows what happens when the lab coats come off? PBS’s Secret Life of Scientists is a series of short, web-exclusive videos where intriguing scientists and engineers talk about their surprising lives outside the proverbial lab. In one such episodes, I once saw Tanzeem … Read more…