LIFE AS IT IS

I have always wanted to write about this but I was being lazy. Then after a post went viral on Facebook I thought that it was high time I wrote about my personal experience and thoughts about child delivery. The post that went viral on Facebook was a blog post by an English woman (married to a Bangladeshi man), who gave birth to her daughter at a top-tier hospital in Dhaka last September. Technically, she did not give birth to her child; the attending doctor forced her to have a Caesarian section. The baby was only 35 weeks old at the time of delivery and weighed 2.5 kg. The premature baby went through some of her roughest days right after coming into this world. Have you ever wondered why so many babies are now born through C-sections in Bangladesh despite the medical advances of the recent decades? Our parents, aunts, uncles, our friends and we ourselves have come to this world through a natural childbirth process. So, why suddenly we are seeing a shift from what has always been

When will our society stop raising boys with the idea that only if they suppress their emotions and act macho, they will be considered "men?" It is unhealthy for these little boys, the women they will love when they grow up, and the world at large. I was reading, probably in TIME, that a suppression of emotions actually makes men weak and vulnerable - it even pushes some into dangerous practices and habit-forming behaviors like smoking, drink and substance abuse. I was also reading Dr. William Pollack's work yesterday - parents, who have sons, could use his book, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood.      style="display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px"      data-ad-client="ca-pub-1412858923217987"      data-ad-slot="2221625556">

It's not about what you have, it's about whether you are happy with what you have. Some people have a lot and are still unhappy, whereas some are happy with the very little that they have.

এই শীতল সময় কবে শেষ হবে? পাগল হয়ে যাচ্ছি তো!

We see what we want to see - we exclude the visual details that inconvenience us. -Wara

I was just reading a write-up by a friend on Falgun (the Bengali month that marks the beginning of spring in Bangladesh) where he compared the season and the festivity around it with Vincent van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Crows." A prolific writer, my friend's writing carried me back to the Falguni days I left behind in Dhaka. Years come and go but I do not get a chance to watch and enjoy the Falguni festivity, something that I so looked forward to in Dhaka. I would always wear something yellow, never a sari though. I am still not comfortable in a sari. I would just wear a yellow salwar kameez and a dozen or so glass bangles. No, no flowers. I cannot recall tucking a flower ever in my hair. Don't get me wrong - I love flowers! I like to give and receive flowers. Anyway, I used to see girls on my college campus and on the streets wearing a yellow rose or a strand of marigold, or just a single marigold in the hair - they looked beautiful! Young men would wear orang