New Book Alert: On June 7, 2025, we spoke to Sheikh Hasina over the phone. Almost a year had passed since she fled Bangladesh and came to India and we wanted to know what she felt about Bangladesh without her in power. Hasina told us what she thought about the July Revolution and Bangladesh under Muhammad Yunus. We also spoke to her ministers, members of her security detail, and officers in Bangladeshi military intelligence still loyal to her who helped @joyincal09 recreate the scenes inside Haina's official residence on the day she left. We also spoke to Hasina's political opponents who told us why she had it coming for a long time. But our book is not about Hasina, her mistakes or her political future. 'Inshallah Bangladesh' is about the extraordinary events of 2024 that changed the lives of Bangladesh's ordinary people. Like my co-author @SahidulKhokonbd who became an anti-national for writing against radical Islam and had to run for his life, and the 266 other journalists like him implicated in various cases. It is about young women who are afraid of playing football, and Sufis who watch helplessly as their mazars are pulled down, and Hindus who are trying to get used to hearing open calls of genocide. And young military officers trying to make sense of a General's betrayal. The book is also about past fissures shaping present politics. About stories that are not published. Like a dystopian novel about Sheikh Mujib finding currency after Hasina's fall. About the call for a Hindu homeland that is as old as the call for Bangladesh. About atheist bloggers once forced out of Bangladesh returning to save Bangladesh's soul. If the July Revolution promised a New Bangladesh, our book examines why the students' party that emerged from it is already so unpopular. Inshallah Bangladesh is the story of an unfinished revolution that did not begin in 2024. @swatichopra1 @juggernautbooks Here's the preorder link: tinyurl.com/3ebxb947

Shubho Bijoya. Painting by Guin Srikanta.

This is the way Saudi Arabia treats Bangladeshis. The beheading of the couple for kissing inside a mosque is only the latest example.

There is a strong argument that a lot that has gone wrong with the country today has to do with the bureaucracy. Such behaviour makes that argument stronger.

Good time to pick this book of short stories on lesser known Indian goddesses. 22 stories on 22 goddesses in one anothology edited by @KoralDasgupta. I have written a story on the resident deity of Sunderbans, Bonbibi.