Wuhan Soundtrack: Louis Armstrong

The Wuhan Soundtrack- Louis Armstrong     But for real, for real, the real soundtrack here is the language I don't speak filling the air and swirling around me. I hear it like background music everywhere I go. Shit, it's background music even when people are speaking it in my face, even then I'm…Wuhan Soundtrack: …

Writing in Scraps — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

This is my book in my phone Writing advice often starts from the premise that we’re all going to sit down and bang out our word count for an hour every morning—or we should be. But not only do you not have to write every day, a lot of writers can’t write every day. They […]Writing …

The inward gaze

Hesse is always worth reading, even though it can be a little New-Agey. In Hermann Hesse’s novels, as in his life, self-discovery walked a tightrope between deep insights and profound solipsism By M M Owen Read at AeonThe inward gaze

An Elegy of a Piece: Review of Pico Iyers’ Falling Off The Map

The name alone is enticing enough. It is the neatly packaged moniker which perfectly hooks the reader – in this case, me – who might be interested. I pointed at it for the boy minding the store. He labored out of his seat, and seeing what I was pointing at, said: “Do you really want to see it? Are you going to buy it? It’s really stuck in there; will be hard to get out. Why do you want it anyway?”

Looking for Shah Jalal

The avenue leading up to the mazaar was much wider than any other road I had yet seen in Sylhet. Cars were parked in a row along the middle of it as apposed to the side: it used a system of parking completely different than what I was used to. Stalls stood on both sides of the avenue, which gave the place the look of being more a peddler trap than the ascetic shrine the word mazaar conjured up in my mind.

Kotka Beach

The trail we walked through cut through a field, the jungle did not hold sway there. It was the plain of tall grasses and small shrubs; with singular trees the height of a tall man rising up like scrawny watchmen. A small woodpecker skipped over the bare ground about five meters ahead of us, pecking at the earth looking for grubs and maggots. When we got too close it would fly straight down the path, get some breathing room away from us—the pesky intruders into its realm. It kept doing so for a good twenty minutes before it got fed up and flew up irritably to the branches of a tree that overlooked the path, and waited for us to move past.

A Roth Stands Still in Dhamrai

A Roth, unused and dusty, sits on the main road of a small town. It is a platform for idlers to while away the days. It was late afternoon when we got to Dhamrai. The seven of us-a group of Dhaka University friends-took a regular-route bus up to stay the weekend at Ishtiaque's place. It …