adhunika blog

A year ago, the adhunika blog was merely an idea, after 365 days, 9 dedicated bloggers, 63 posts within 17 categories, 310 comments and 43291 visitors later – this is what we would like to share with our readers:
 
Comment from a regular participant:
Nazia Hussein from Bangladesh:

Since I first visited adhunika, I always wanted to join the team. I do plan to write regularly & look forward to become a team member in the future.

I hope many other’s like me will be participating & contributing to the knowledge base of adhunika.

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Great writing may be in the blood, but having a window seat on remarkable historical events can help to shape an author. A major new talent, Tahmima Anam, has the advantage of coming from a line of gifted Bangladeshi writers and thinkers, yet it is the damaging experience her family shared with thousands of others living around them that is to see her launched in Britain.

Read more…

(By our guest blogger Selina Huq) - 

Two weeks ago I attended a seminar organized by Landmark Education. . The purpose of the seminar is to come in terms with your past, fears and start living in the present. In that seminar the speaker says, ‘To forgive is to let go of the past’. Many of us are holding on to the past and we are not living in the present. We are always thinking about how we have hurt others or others have hurt us. The only way to let go of our past and live in harmony is to forgive others and forgive ourselves.

As I listened to her and started to ponder; I realized that it was true. We have been hurting for so many years and for so many different reasons. One thing that got to me is that sometimes we are hurting on things that we don’t even remember and we carry the pain and the hurt with us in every step of our lives.

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We recommend the following book for our readers:

“Sultana’s Dream: And Selections from the Secluded Ones” by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Synopsis
“Sultana’s Dream” was first published in 1905 in a Madras English newspaper, is a witty feminist utopia — a tale of reverse purdah that posits a world in which men are confined indoors and women have taken over the public sphere, ending a war non-violently and restoring health and beauty to the world. “The Secluded Ones” is a selection of short sketches, first published in Bengali newspapers, illuminating the cruel and comic realities of life in purdah.

source: amazon.co.uk

As a Bengali Muslim woman, sometimes I wonder what if I was born in the pre Begum Rokeya period instead of the post Begum Rokeya period?  Would I or could I have the same voice, thoughts and education that I have now?  

How someone like Begum Rokeya was so ahead of her own time, even being born in a society where women, especially Muslim women were merely prisoners of the society and religion? It is amazing how some history making characters change their time, and change lives of many. 

Every step of her life teaches us something, how to be positive, strong and progressive. Born on this day, December 9 of 1880, she was married at sixteen, became a widow at twenty-nine.  Generally, that would be the end of a women’s life back then. But she transformed the memories of her husband into strength, and established a school, Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School at Bhagalpur for Muslim women.  It was not an easy task for her at that time to convince parents to send their daughters to school.  Even she, herself couldn’t go to school when she was a child.  Muslims girls were not allowed to go to school then, nor even they could get educated at home.  She was grateful to two men at her life; her brother who taught her in her childhood, and her husband who was always a great patron in her pursuit for women’s liberation.  (more…)

( From our guest blogger Selina Huq)

I came across this article about drinking lemon with water, and is very beneficial for your body.

Lemon water helps unblock stagnant and clogged chi in the body. Chi needs to flow effortlessly and harmoniously if the body is to be in a healthy state. Lemon water is a good morning drink to start the process of removing impure chi in the body. (more…)