Ahnaf Ahsan

Life is full of questions that command thoughtful silences. You are thrown choices where opportunity cost plays the crucial role. "Either this, or that." Or the sentence should have been "Neither this, nor that." The line between either and neither gets blurred. As 2018 begins, life is yet to show me more amazing plays where the plot events have been scripted by God and I work as a prompter at the side lines. Curtains off. Lessons learned from 2017 will be heavily applied in 2018. Work is the only instrument that can change the course of action of your physique and soul. "Work to travel, travel to work" should be a motto as travel empowers you with natural experiences and work makes you financially disciplined. As thousands of fanush crossed the skyline of Dhaka, the significant economic thought that excited me is that 2018 will be year of sheer optimism when Bangladesh witnesses a National Election as inflationary curves will go uphill an...

The over-hyped film ‘Children of War’ was full of inaccuracies and was an insult on the face of Bangladesh. The film released on the 16 th of May was renamed into ‘Children of War’ from ‘The Bastard Child’ right at India as the Indian Motion Pictures Association expressed concern over the title word ‘Bastard’ and the production crew and as a result, the debutante director  Mrityunjay Devvrat hardly had control over the basics of his film. What was most frustrating about the film was the way it was dubbed into Bangla. The film had a linear story where a young lad wearing kajal begins his speech in front of a number of Bangladeshis clad in flags/bandanas mimicking the events of the Shahbagh movement in the early 2013. The boy begins to tell a story in his speech and the film begins to progress with his narration. The film starts with a newlywed couple’s home set in the 1971 where the notable journalist Aamir (Indraneil Sengupta) was listening to Bangabandhu’s declarat...

Remember the film ‘Her’? Yes you do. If you don’t, let me give you a brief. ‘Her’ is a 2013 American romantic science fiction drama directed by Spike Jones which won an Oscar for the best original screenplay. The film tells the story of a lonely man named ‘Theodore’ who falls in love with his newly bought artificially intelligent Operating System (OS) named ‘Samantha’ when he was going through a divorce process with his childhood sweet heart Catherine. The film is magical because of the way it approaches the humane point of view considering artificial intelligence and futurism. Let’s get back to this day. How many of you have talked to your phone asking it to find you the location of your friend’s house? How many of you googled a particular topic using the voice search? Most of you did. The answers were mind-blowing. The film ‘Her’ begins with the same scenes where Theodore is checking his mail using his voice and commanding his phone to delete the messages. Sounds ver...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez said on Fidel Castro: "A man of austere habits and insatiable illusions, with an old-fashioned formal education of cautious words and subdued tones, and incapable of conceiving any idea that is not colossal." The Late Nobel Prize Winning Author met Fidel Castro in the Caribbean island as a journalist to cover events that followed Fidel Castro’s grabbing of power by ousting the right wing dictator Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. Later their friendship spanned for years which spurred both criticism and wonders which eventually was thought to be a Cold War Debate. Gabriel fiercely criticized Latin Amercia’s right wing dictatorship which resulted in a debate between him and the Cuban Dictator. The Padilla Affair was the issue that brought their friendship to a crisis. Gabriel Garcia Marquez believed personally that he helped Heberto Padilla(a Cuban writer who had been jailed in 1971 for his opposition to the Castro regime) to get permiss...

I was forced to write an essay in such a troubled time. And if I had to write something on Mandela, I would find it extremely hard to write as he was a black person. That’s pretty much. I have had never seen him personally and I certainly know nothing about him even though he made a visit in Bangladesh once when I was too young to understand the basics of Politics. I think I was a good man before I aspired to become a politician and I admit it because I was way too hungry most of the times. After I searched the internet, I came across the Wikipedia Page where everything was written on Nelson Mandela. Many of my colleagues came across the autobiography titled ‘A Long Walk to Freedom’ explicitly found at Nilkhet and some of them even bought but never read and eventually, it was read by their children. I and my friends-foes were too busy climbing up the ladders of our respective political parties and we had to put so much of our lives that we had little to give to the Heroic Intern...

27 th of November, 2013 Ahnaf Ahsan Suny “We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play ‘goes on’ and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”- John Keating from the film ‘Dead Poets Society’ The Announcement What is an absolute necessity in a Man’s life? Obviously, it begins with a filthy birth. Then he toddles to his  cradle a...

The sentence says it all; Bangladeshis love news more than reality shows, dramas and going to the movies. Reason, the nation has such an arrangement both in the economy and politics that the excitement is beyond control each and every day. Internet has become a recent sensation in Bangladesh where organizations with names ending with ‘bd.com’ is more than ever. The reasons are obvious. The road is smooth enough to sustain a business and grow profit in the internet. ‘News’ in the form of visual media was limited to the country a decade back when only BTV and a few private TV channels existed. Then came the Television Channel Boom where all the channels, despite their characteristics broadcasted news in all flavors. Soon, someone had the idea to launch a news site for the first time in Bangladesh and it was none but bdnews24.com. Then, a number of online news agencies followed the same path and they thought of similar names. The names were related to either bd/24 in so...