Zakir Kibria is a writer, policy analyst, entrepreneur based in Kathmandu, Nepal. Chronicler of Entropy | Chasing next caffeine fix, immersive auditory haze, free falls. Collector of glances. “Some desires defy gravity.” Email: [email protected]
From Victorian automata to today’s AI girlfriend apps, we have sought to mechanize intimacy, to distill love into algorithms. This musing traces that arc, using Joi as a lodestar to navigate the shadows of desire, capitalism, and digital isolation.
BNP has to govern not merely as the winner of an election but as the steward of a divided nation. Jamaat-e-Islami has to act as a parliamentary opposition, not as a liberation war revision society. The international community has to support democratic consolidation, not strategic alignment.
The polls close. One by one, the live streams flicker and die. The official pages go dormant, saving their energy for victory declarations or accusations of theft. The meme pages are quiet. The deepfake bazaar has shut its stalls. Your thumb, trained for twelve hours on a refresh-loop, finally has nothing to pull.
Dhaka’s walkers are not Darwinian subjects -- they are Darwin’s teachers. They have mastered the art of evolving within the apocalypse, turning every sidewalk and sewer into a classroom.
Ashfaq Chowdhury Piplu’s death is a question thrown at our feet by the city we are building. The falling rod asks: What do you value more? The abstract future value of a building, or the concrete, present life of a person walking?
The path forward begins by refusing to accept the silent exclusion as normal. It requires naming the disagreement for what it is: an attack on the pluralistic foundation of the state.
The question for a republic is whether it can learn to look away from the dazzling, authoritarian image long enough to see -- and rebuild -- the dull, demanding, and essential foundations of a reality-based politics.
The right to live in peace is not a gift from empires. It is a demand, shouted into the barrels of their guns. It is a world, built stone by stone, in the ruins they leave behind.
The message for Bangladesh's policy-makers is clear: ground this decision in data, not delusions of grandeur. Commission and publish an independent, peer-reviewed fleet plan.
The crown cat becomes a single blood cell in the circulatory system of the algorithmic beast. Nusrat doesn’t remember the cat meme today. Not consciously.
It is no longer an abstract fight over who controls the political clock. It is a concrete, urgent battle for the very foundations of public order, institutional integrity, and rational discourse.
We need laws that protect us from genuine harm without imprisoning our sense of humour, and platforms accountable to local contexts. Most of all, we must remember that the ability to laugh at power -- cleverly and without fear -- is not a Western import. It is a homegrown, centuries-old Bengali tradition.
The arrest of Baul singer Abul Sarkar exposes a deeper struggle over who gets to define Bangladesh’s cultural and religious identity, portraying a growing state-backed exclusion of syncretic and minority traditions from the national narrative.
What does this Western-originated term truly reveal, and what profound realities does it obscure about the young people of the Global South?
The time for action is now. Bangladesh must look beyond Western-dominated financial institutions and embrace a multipolar financial world that offers better terms, greater sovereignty, and sustainable development.
