Old but New: New but Old

by Mahbubur Rahman(Editor)

BUILDINGS and monuments are the products of accumulated wisdom expressed through the language of space and form. They symbolize a particular civilization, a significant development, or a historic incident, and become significant in our cultural and national life. In addition to architectural, aesthetic, historic, and iconic values, they possess emotional value as the symbol of our cultural identity, and hence form the heritage. Architecture is a vivid expression in material form of a society's social, economic, technological and cultural achievements at any point of time in history and in a particular geographic area. In absence of adequate historical sources and writings, it is a common denominator between generations of people, a major means of communication with the tradition and heritage of a nation. A civilized people or society must know about its origin and roots in the local, regional and in world contexts to be able to understand and appreciate his being and to charter his course into the future.

Derelict

by Kazi Fazlur Rehman (Author)

Derelict is fascinating story of Sudhir Sebastian Rosario, a “native” Christian who was born in the village of Kanakpur, Noakhali but who goes to High School in Pahartali, where his father works for the Bengal Assam Railway. Treated affectionately by his father's scholarly “ Anglo-Indian” boss, Mr. Fernandes, he falls in love with his daughter Dora. Set against the backdrop of the crumbling of the British Indian Empire and the upheavals of the Second World War, this is a tragic story of a failed romance. The novel portrays vividly the life of Bengali Catholics in rural Bangladesh, the life of Eurasians in Chittagong, and the emotional devastation faced by these communities in the wake of the partition of India. As Sudir remarks ruefully, “Empire has crumbled and my community has been left behind as flotsam.” Derelict forms compelling reading not only as an aborted love story but also because of the glimpses it provides of empire's children.

Vyasa

by Shahzad Firdous

(Translated by Kabir Chowdhury)

Vyasa, in particular, is a remarkable novel that has an epic quality in spite of its brevity. Its central character Vyasadeva, believed to be the author of the great Indian epic The Mahabharata, is a unique individual, compassionate, virile and farseeing, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge.