আমার তো এখন সারারাত বারান্দায় ফ্যাকাশে চাঁদের আলোতে বসে চাঁদ দেখে কাটানোর সময় নেই। কিংবা নেই সময় সারারাত ধরে গল্পের বই পড়ে কাটানোর। পরদিনের চিন্তায় স্ক্রিনের দিকে তাকিয়ে সময় পার করি। সময়কে স্থির করে ফেলতে পারতাম যে আগে সেটা আমি কীভাবে জানি ভুলে গিয়েছি। হাতড়ালে হয়তো খুঁজে পাব, কিন্তু হাতড়ানোর সময় তো নেই। স্ক্রিনের দিকে তাকিয়ে থাকতে হবে যে!

[বহু আগের একটি কবিতা রেখে দিলাম। কবিতা যেই শহরে(মূলত মফস্বলে) বসে লিখেছিলাম, সেখান আপাতত নেই আমি। কবে ফিরব সেই নিশ্চয়তাও নেই। যদিও খুব কাছেই থাকি আমি।]
https://greylead.home.blog/2020/02/11/phase-v-01/

Umberto Eco, Books, Reading

Here’s what Umberto Eco, the renowned scholar and novelist who owned a collection of over 50,000 volumes, had to say about books and personal libraries:

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.

There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.

If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!

Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."

He also said on multiple other occasions that reading gives a person a grasp of thousands of years of life. A non reader may live only 70-80 years. While a reader will have lived thousands of years because he/she will have read about the lives of great figures of the past. Thus books and the act of reading function not only as teachers but as a tool of time travel.

Spain boycotts Israel.

Now Mossad...er...I mean ISIS Wahhabis want to spread "tawhid" to Spain.

14th August 1947

The actual legal independence day of Pakistan is the 15th of August, 1947. The same day as India. This is what is in the British documents and on the earliest Pakistani postage stamps. And celebrated by Jinnah himself.

Pakis have such an inferiority complex and such a desire to portray themselves as different from India, that the Govt chose to start celebrating independence on the 14th instead.

There is also great irony in Jinnah saying that Pakistan would not be a religious country and that all citizens whether Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh, etc will all live in harmony. He disliked using Islamic slogans and the declaration of Iman, as symbols for Pakistan.

One should have asked him “So what was the point of Partition?”

It’s an answer that Pakis still can’t confidently give. And as long as the myths around it remain, they will stay stuck in a quagmire.

See Toka story above👆

And it’s still on their website

Bir Chattala now has a new look, but the food was better before. Some may also argue that the interior was better before, and that is reasonable. The interior used to be more traditional, whereas now it is more modern.

“The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien.

[n.b. Tolkien passed away 53 years ago today.]

"...the psychological toll of a girl sitting at home learning nothing is not a small thing. There are no decent parks, no recreation, no free programs, not even a serious madrassa system for girls — because there are very few qualified women scholars, and you don't produce them by keeping girls at home.

And strategically you are behind neighbors who happen to antagonize you. You will keep sending your women to them for treatment. Meanwhile the Afghans who care about their daughters' education will leave, and many already have.

Then there's the part nobody seems to have counted. These schools employ women. Teachers, administrators, staff, and for a lot of households that salary is the difference between getting by and not. Families are willing to pay the fees. It isn't money coming out of the government's pocket. You've shut down something that paid for itself and pulled women out of poverty while it did....

Huh!

https://youtu.be/8iCuLyWyhZ0

You may watch a film named "Incendies".
https://t.me/thecradlemedia/42634

আরও eআরকি: www.earki.co

He just wants to sleep on his mother's lap.
https://youtube.com/shorts/nKO592LoisI

Same playbook, everywhere!

https://t.me/Wikispooks1/2802

Re: The Cultural Imperative

An excellent response by Dr Naoki Yamamoto (a Muslim Japanese academic) to a fellow Japanese person who says Islam can’t fit into Japan because “people from the desert and people from rice paddies can’t ever be compatible”.

Dr Yamamoto points out that it was Muslims who spread rice cultivation in the Iberian peninsula during the 9th-12th centuries. Even the Spanish word for rice (arroz) derives from Arabic.

The Islamic civilization and world is very vast. Islam is for all people.