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Article to be published in the dailies Prothom Khalo, Khaler Kontho, Samakhal, Drogantor

Great feeling usually starts with  a great desperation. Like always this four-year-old was up for 14 hours straight. I love him from his toenail to sharp tips of his teeth and every time he laughs my heart misses a beat, cortisol level goes down. But tomorrow is a Monday and it is 8:45PM. So I packed him in a stroller and went for a desperate walk.

Places: Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh & Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove, California. USA

My sister is not the best tea maker of the world. But, she can definitely make best out of the situation. Situation is back home, in bangladesh 20 years ago, when we bought tea leaves loose and milk daily. We used to running out of tea ingredients everyday. Less than half cup of milk or just 1 teaspoon of tea leaves was an everyday thing. With some kind of magic she made the tea with same consistency every time in the dented kettle-mug on the gas stove-top.

“Please, you look so nice in a sari,” my mother encourages as she wraps the fabric around me, seemingly having a plan in mind. I used to always watch her wear saris, wondering why she bothered mummifying herself in these impossible-to-manage window curtains.

Recently I was watching a talk show and someone was saying,
'During Charlie Hebdo, thousands of people marched to defend their right to offend Muslims but no one raised their voice when their children were killed in Pakistan.'

There is a weird old story in Hindu Mythology.

I got brown skin. Milk-chocolate tone! During summer months, when I grill myself in bikini by the beach, my skin turns a few shades darker – quite close to dark chocolate. But that is today’s me, which is dramatically different from yesterday’s version, when I was being ruled by the ‘Fair & Lovely’ regime.

The recent slaughtering of secular bloggers in Bangladesh by the radical extremists who claims the killings are the way of Islam and the government's response to it has raised some serious questions about our democracy, freedom, security and the power of political Islam in our democratic politics. How free are we to say what we think and what we believe?