What Is The Word For Silence?

Amir Khusrau, a Sufi poet of the 13th Century, in the description of Kashmir, is believed to have said “If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.”

These many hundreds of years later, we, as a nation, continue to hold on to the notion of Kashmir as paradise. Some of us do so because we are swept away by...

(Including Tax)

Tiware Dam breach: struggle for life continues

Who is Responsible for Man-made Mistakes?
Tiware Dam fulfilled the water requirement for people and farms at Tiware village for the last 14 years. Maintenance work of the dam was ignored and there were major leakages, which was informed often by people to the concerned Irrigation Department but to no avail. Some low-quality repair...

(Including Tax)

Swati Lobola Ceremony

About Swati Lobola Ceremony

The Swati Lobola Ceremony is a three day colorful and vibrant affair characterized by song, dance and feasting. It is the culmination of a previous process in which the groom’s family visits the bride’s family to initiate discussions that conclude in an agreement on the number of cows that the groom’s family...

(Including Tax)

Hollow souls

"Hollow Souls” is a photo story that strictly employs portraits to tell different narratives of various victims of insurgency. Victims, as narrators of their own stories, talks about sorrow left behind by members of Boko Haram in lives of children, men and mostly women, many of whom lost some of their loved ones to insurgency.

As a result...

(Including Tax)

We dare

Besides striving to propagate Islam in a questionable bloody manner, another thrust of the philosophy of Boko Haram is condemnation of Western education. Many students, for embracing Western education, were slaughtered and several others abducted by members of Boko Haram, in the northeastern part of Nigeria. Over a million school children and their family...

(Including Tax)

A dying kind of business

There was a sombre atmosphere at Centenary Enterprises the day I visited. As Kabwe town’s best known wholesaler and retailer sells the last stock of washing powder and sugar.

There are no long lines of people queuing up, and the shop is eerily empty and quiet. Where all the different products used to be displayed with handwritten price tags,...

(Including Tax)

Those who stayed - Heissa Island in Aswan

“We are the only ones who stayed. Everyone else left.” says Annory, who lives on Heissa island in Aswan, Egypt. Surrounded by river Nile, Heissa island is one of the few remaining ancestral lands of Nubia in Egypt after much of the Nubian villages drowned after the construction of Aswan Dam in 1960s by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was ruling Egypt at the time....

(Including Tax)

The Ramnamis

In India, the concept of the God Ram has always been political. In Ramcharitmanash—biography of Ram written in verse by the medieval poet, Tulsidas—Ram had been drawn as an individual who stands for virtues valuable to Indian civil code, and as a ruler He was depicted as the last word for able and kind governance. Because of the beauty and simplicity of...

(Including Tax)

Losing Horizon

Known as Changpas, or people who migrated from the Tibetan district of ‘Changthang, a very special community resides-- or rather moves around-- the dry mountains of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas. Rearing goats is their only way of life and for these soft but hairy creatures these shepherds migrate from place to place looking for pastures. The community...

(Including Tax)

Migrants in Malaysia's tea estates

Migration for foreign employment has become a major source of income for a many Nepali households. Almost half of the Nepali households have at least one member working abroad. During the fiscal year of 2014, more than 520,000 labour permits were issued to Nepalis planning to work abroad. Malaysia is the number one destination country for Nepali migrants,...

Madrasa Education in Bangladesh

Presently, the national and the international media possess a certain perception that portrays the Madrasa teaching system negatively; my opinion differs. I believe we have to recognize that the Madrasa system carries a unique method of education, introduced in a specific era, intended for a certain populace and class of people. It is a choice by these...

A Struggle for Democracy

This work was started on 10 November 1987 Dhaka Siege Day. The people had united in a stand to overthrow the autocratic regime of General Ershad. A young worker, Nur Hossain, led one of the rallies. He had painted on his chest Let Democracy Live. He was the first of man who were killed by the police in the movement. The sequence of events, over the...

Celestial Devotion

It takes 15 months to four years to become a Hafiz (one who memorizes the holy Quran) according to the merit of a student, says a mentor at Tannjimul Muslemin Yatim and Hafiz Khana, an orphanage and Islamic school, situated by the famous Hazrat Shah Amanat Shrine in Chittagong. It claims to have mentored thousands of Hafiz since its establishment in 1970....

(Including Tax)