Mahmud Rahman's Blog, page 2

Out of class, into the drivers seat: driving an 18-wheeler across America

Back in the spring of 2003, I wrote up a profile of a student at Mills College who had taken a leave and embarked on a career as a long-haul truck driver. The film “Nomadland” has got me thinking about wanderers, from the vandwellers in the movie to hobos from the 1930s and others in […]

Crossing Borders, Mapping Tongues – essay at Papercuts

Born in East Bengal not long after the British left, my first words were in our Bangal dialect of Bangla. Starting there, how did I end up where I am today, writing prose in English, and more recently, translating Bangla fiction into English? That story, involving multiple borders and influences and triggers, became a new […]

Partition At 70: August 1947-2017

Mid-August, people in Pakistan and India will observe the 70th anniversary of independence from the British Raj. The country that is now Bangladesh also came free from the Raj at that time but it would be as part of Pakistan and the people there would learn that they had exchanged one colonialism for another. Bangladesh […]

A mythical place called Bangla Motors – revised version

The April 6, 2017 issue of Dhaka Tribune‘s Arts & Letters magazine carries an expanded and revised version of my non-fiction piece on Bangla Motors in Dhaka. Bangla Motors is a neighborhood in Dhaka; it’s where I was born and grew up and the essay offers a decade-long meditation on the place, on colonial histories, […]

Why we need a new, truly global, prize for world literature

This article was published in The Dhaka Tribune and reprinted by Scroll India Another October, another Nobel for Literature, another round of controversy over the awardee. Some years, we hardly know the person, so we scramble to find out something about them, looking for bits of their writing online. Other years, like 2016, it goes […]

Another Nobel for Literature, another round of debate

Another October. Another Nobel for Literature. Another round of controversy over the awardee. Some years we hardly know the person so we scramble to find out something about them, read some snatches of their writing available online. Other years it’s a more prominent person and many of us express our disappointment that it didn’t go […]

In Bangladesh, writing fiction about the liberation war may well become impossible

Bangladesh is about to pass a law making it illegal to ‘misrepresent’ the liberation war of 1971. Will all writers have to tell the same story now? My take on the subject, published in the Dhaka Tribune and reprinted at Scroll.in, June 22, 2016. All signs suggest that the Parliament will soon pass the Liberation […]

Down a Slippery Road: Increasing Religious Persecution in Bangladesh

More murders and religious persecution in Bangladesh. I wrote this essay published on May 5, 2016 at The Wire In Tangail, Bangladesh, Nikhil Chandra Joardar, a Hindu tailor, was hacked to death by machete-wielding on a motorcycle. Several years ago he had spent some time in jail for supposedly offending religious sentiments – Muslim ones, […]

Bangladesh: Fighting for free expression in an age of death squads

In the wake of the murders of several bloggers in Bangladesh, I wrote this essay published on June 7, 2015 at Scroll.in The death squads of fundamentalist Islam have taken the life of yet another Bangladeshi blogger. This time it was Ananta Bijoy Das in Sylhet who also edited a rationalist journal named Jukti. Some […]

Bangladesh: Stifling A Country

An essay of mine on the history of free expression in Bangladesh was published on April 24, 2015 at Kafila. It was also reprinted at Scroll.in. When I think about the state of free speech in the land of my birth, my memories take me back to 1970-71 when I was a higher secondary student […]