Tahmima Anam

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The Museum of Independence in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The country has, in the past, placed no restrictions on dual citizens, but a new law is changing that. Credit A.M. Ahad/Associated Press

MundoAsia,

For most of my life, I had one, troublesome passport. It was green, for one thing, even though the leather cover was titled “People’s Republic of Bangladesh.” My green passport made me nervous at airports; every time I handed it over to an immigration officer, I braced myself for the frown, the close inspection, the questions about how long I was staying and how much money I had with me.

I was always that person who held up the line while people behind me shuffled impatiently. I carried a file of documents with me whenever I traveled — my student ID, bank statements, even college transcripts.…  Seguir leyendo »

Boats carrying thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have been abandoned in the Andaman sea. Photograph: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images

MundoAsia, ,

In 1971 Ravi Shankar and George Harrison organised a concert in New York City’s Madison Square Gardens to fund relief efforts for war-torn Bangladesh. The album featured the image of a starving child on the cover, which became a symbol of an impoverished country emerging out of the rubble of war. Forty-four years later, another image is now associated with Bangladesh: that of the abandoned refugees who float on the Andaman Sea with no hope of rescue.

We’ve all seen the photographs of these refugees. We’ve seen them hanging their emaciated limbs off the sides of their boats. We’ve seen the scars on their backs,earned in fights over scarce food and water.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, ,

In the 1980s, when there was only one state-run television channel in Bangladesh, a Philips advertisement became very popular. In the advertisement, a family is eating dinner, but the light in the room is so dim they can’t pick out the bones in their fish. The mother asks her son to go and fetch another bulb. Suddenly, the modest clay-walled kitchen is illuminated in a bright yellow glow. The man smiles widely and says, “Macher raja ilish, ar batir raja Philips!” Which means, the king of fish is the ilish, and the king of light is Philips.

It may seem strange to use fish to sell light bulbs, but one can never underestimate a Bengali’s love of the thin-boned ilish — a strong-smelling member of the herring family, notoriously difficult to eat but considered a treasured delicacy.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Bangladesh made the Guinness book of world records on 16 December. It was Victory day, the anniversary of independence from Pakistan, and 27,000 people held up coloured placards to form the world's largest human flag – a show of solidarity in what would turn out to be a fractious and divisive year. It had begun with great hope, as a mass popular movement against religious fundamentalism brought a secular agenda to the forefront. But that was quickly followed by a backlash, as the parties of the religious right rallied their supporters. The popular protest movement and its aftermath, named after Shahbag, the section of Dhaka in which it was born, foreshadowed months of crisis marked by the execution of a war criminal, a spate of electoral violence, and last Sunday, a contested election.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, ,

In his 1981 novel “Midnight’s Children,” Salman Rushdie describes the Sundarbans, the mangrove forest that traces the southwestern edge of Bangladesh, as “so thick that history has hardly ever found the way in.” For his characters, the forest is a site of magic and danger, a mythic place from which it is impossible to escape.

Today, you can visit this eerie jungle, taking a boat from the town of Khulna and making your way slowly through the narrow islets of the Meghna River, finishing your journey where the river meets the sea, possibly catching sight of a pink Irrawaddy dolphin on your way.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Something spectacular happened in a small corner of the world on Tuesday. After two years of military-backed rule, a free, fair, incident-free election was held in Bangladesh, with decisive results: a record voter turnout routed the incumbent party in favour of a secular, progressive alliance.

"Two ladies" is the phrase commonly attached to the leaders of Bangladesh's main political parties: Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League - both women, one the widow of a former president, the other the daughter of Sheikh Mujib, leader of the independence movement and first prime minister of Bangladesh.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

When the Al Gore documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” received an Academy Award last week, it seemed a pretty sure sign that Hollywood believes that global climate change is taking place. But what about the rest of the world? Prompted by a New York winter that went from disturbing warmth to bone-chilling cold practically overnight, the Op-Ed page asked four writers from different corners of the globe to report on the erratic weather they’ve been experiencing. Here are their dispatches.

1) Kotzebue, Alaska

In Alaska, Everyone’s Afraid of the Water

By Seth Kantner, a photographer and the author of the novel “Ordinary Wolves”

The sun was finally back in late January, and I thought, when it shines again it might even be yellow.…  Seguir leyendo »