Life, Dreams and Reality -- Sohel's Blog

Music, Melodies and the Savior By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) August 15, 2006 Classical music has its dazzling charm. Piercing violin, up and down cello, and in only background the reflective organ mash the music in its virtuoso synthesis. A world of music, where new tunes defy the traditional vigor, frothing like dewy soap bubbles, harmonious beauty in soothing sound. You can hear distant tabla chatting with playful sitar while harmonica keeps tango with shifting piano and strumming guitar. So many talented music composers contributed in the vastness of musical library around the world, generations after generations. All different kinds, different appeals to different people from varied background. Poor or rich, literati or illiterate, music can seep into everyone’s welcoming veins if given a chance, transfusing agonies into sweet melancholy. In its elemental form music have no boundaries, no immigration laws could bound its soaring trebles, and no artificial barriers could sti

Cynicism By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) August 11, 2006 You may call it whatever you like. You may just ignore it at your own peril or convenience. But the fact of the matter is that we are in the middle of a rupturing cynicism. Day by day our patience are thinning out, our tolerance level toward opposing views and culture are reaching threshold point, and sooner or later there will be commotion beyond our worst imaginable dream that can forewarn. You may agree or not, there are clever methods in action, from groups of vehemence, who wants to create sharp and deep wedges between different ethnic groups and cultures. Palpable but quite not tangible essence of being caught up in a growing whirlwind that will surely suck in all the frivolity of life. These are depressing words. These are depressing times. A world where brute might and violence rule over peaceful means cannot be impressively positive. A world where a mother has to prove that the milk of her baby will not blow u

Dear Readers, Mother Jones's interview with Tariq Ali, a prominent progressive writer, is a must read. Mr. Ali has that unique sense and sensibilities for our apparently maddening world of drunken stupor, he slices through all the calculated diversion, political fiasco, and aggrandized media bent to their knees kissing the lowest portion of neocon's shoe-soles. Mr. Ali is not afraid to say what comes to his mind, about the opportunistic “liberals”, “seculars” in the Muslim world who are finding themselves propping up imperial agendas, by whim or force, and in many of these nations, Muslim conservatives are filling up the vacuums of showing resistance. Here is a very interesting comment Mr. Ali made in this interview, “in many parts of the Islamic world, secular forces, where they exist, tend now to be so unsure of themselves, so lacking in self-confidence, that in many cases—not in all—they line themselves up fairly squarely behind the imperial project and that then creat

Dear Readers, I haven’t read any of Mr. Selig S. Harrison’s writings before, at least not that I remember at this moment. His credentials seem quite impressive. He is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Centers for Scholars, written five books on South Asia, and was the chief of The Washington Post’s South Asia bureau. His recent article on Bangladesh that the Post published today delineates a very grim image. He was antagonistic in describing Bangladesh as “A New Hub for Terrorism”, though there was a questioning mark at the end of his article’s title, but the claim that he made using some well-known facts and some ostensibly “inside knowledge”, did not have any irrefutable substantiation to back up. Like many other parts of our world, there are radical elements in Bangladesh too, especially the ones with religious zealotry ingrained and some others who use religious fervor for their political gains, but Bangladesh is still a moderate nation, where the poetic libe