LIFE AS IT IS

The aroma of dates, haleem and fried food is missing in the air, so is missing the ambience of Ramadan, but life goes on -- we fast like we did back in Dhaka. Many of us still prepare chola, peyaju, beguni and sherbet for iftar but many of us  don't. We drag our drowsy selves from beds to eat the early morning meal, but it does not feel like observing Ramadan in Dhaka. Fasting in a foreign country is a different experience altogether. We fast for almost 17 hours here in Minnesota. Being without food and drink for 17 hours is not easy but our bodies have somehow adapted well to the rituals of Ramadan here. Ramadan is so different away from home. A working man or woman does not have the luxury of going to work at 9 a.m. in the morning. He or she cannot leave work early either.  Sabina (not her real name), who works at a McDonald's store in Brooklyn, New York, starts her shift at 6 o'clock in the morning. "I eat a little something for sehr...

Friend, really? I  sometimes feel that I have too many friends but too few 'true' friends. Facebook has given me more 'friends' than I will ever need in a lifetime. The word 'friend' has always carried a very special meaning for me. So growing up, when people asked me to name my friends, I could never name more than five or six. A look at my friends list will therefore take people by surprise -- some 380 plus names already grace the list! 380 is not too large a number if compared to those who have a couple of thousand friends on their lists. Their list could as well be called a fan page because my human mind cannot grasp the idea of one person having 2,000 'friends.' As said earlier, the word 'friend' has always carried a very special meaning for me. But today, anyone and everyone can be a friend. Your boss, a former colleague, a guy who you took just one class with in college, a girl to whom you hardly spoke in class, a friend's frie...

It was my fourth time in Chicago, the windy city. One might wonder what makes me go back to this particular metropolis time and again. The answer is: it's a magnificent place that boasts racial and cultural diversity, shopping places, restaurants and a breathtaking skyline along with its many other attractions. Famous for its architectural grandeur, Chicago, in the State of Illinois, has skyscrapers that leave tourists awestruck. Once home to the world's tallest building, the 108-storey Sears Tower (now known as Willis Tower), draws millions of visitors every year. Many associate Sears Tower with notable Bangladeshi-American Fazlur Rahman Khan, who was the structural engineer behind this architectural wonder. Chicago's John Hancock Center, a 100-storey building, also boasts the structural engineering feat of F. R. Khan. So, if you are ever in this vibrant city, you may consider standing on Sears Tower's sky-deck to enjoy a panoramic view...

I wrongfully thought that my business with maps was over on my last day of eighth grade. I thought that I would not have to deal with maps again unless I accidentally agreed to teach geography to a middle school child. Oh well, but what one thinks for the future does not always come true therefore, today I look at the U.S. map every time I decide to find a new restaurant, mall, hotel, clinic, salon, tourist spot, bank, pharmacy, in short, almost any establishment. Now, I often say, "What would I do without Google Maps or a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit?" The age of technology has made living in a foreign land so much easier - the Google Maps application on my phone almost on a regular basis helps me find myself in downtown Minneapolis, MN. For someone whose sense of direction is rather deplorable, finding her way in a new city is only possible with a map. Street numbers are often just random numbers to me, for I also need pictures of buildings and streets to assure m...

I can't even recall making a cup of tea while in Dhaka. My relationship with the kitchen was limited to finding a jar of cookies or pickles from the cupboard. This very relationship changed soon after I set foot in the USA, where I learned to cook for the first time in life. I am just a cook, not a good cook, let alone a great one. I cook to survive. In the US, I learned to cook mostly fried veggies, lentils, egg curry and tuna kebab. While hubby happily experimented with cooking ingredients, I happily appreciated his culinary skills as I ate his beef and fish curries, biriyani, chotpoti and much more. Nevertheless, I cooked almost everyday, prepared what I could, and never dared to embark on a large culinary project. Then it all changed with the arrival of the woman who brought me to this world. Now, I have more or less gone back to my Dhaka days. I literally have not cooked in three months. I happily handed over the responsibility of cooking to my mother. Now, my own re...

I grew up seeing a copy of Ranna, Khadyo, Pushti by Siddika Kabir on our bookshelf. Like our house, countless other houses in Bangladesh have a copy of this valuable book that instantly helps ease a mother, wife or daughter's culinary vexation. As a child, I often saw my mother flipping through its pages, looking for the recipe of a Chinese dish or anything that she was cooking for the first time. Ranna, Khadyo, Pushti also graces the bookshelves of Bengali households outside Bangladesh. "I cannot help but consult Professor Kabir's book every time I cook a deshi curry," Nazia Hussein, a doctoral student at University of Warwick, U.K., said. Like Nazia, thousands of other men and women regularly consult her book before embarking on a culinary project -- be it shrimp malaikari, murighonto, biriyani or Chinese fried rice. "There was a time when Siddika Kabir's book was given as a gift to anyone going abroad," said Naznin Sultana, a homemaker from Dhaka....

Thanksgiving in the past three years came and went by and I did not feel the festivity around it. To me, Thanksgiving was synonymous to Black Friday shopping. But last Thanksgiving was different for me, and it was because of a group of people, who shouldered all the trouble of cooking a traditional turkey meal for themselves and their friends. There were baked turkey, mashed potato, sweet potato, corn, green peas, gravy, vegetable casserole, garlic bread and pumpkin pie on the menu. I ate to my heart’s and stomach’s content, it was my first traditional Thanksgiving meal after all. As I devoured the scrumptious food, I wondered if the first Thanksgiving celebrated by the natives and the Pilgrims, the first colonists to build permanent settlement in New England, had a similar menu. It turned out that the food served on the first Thanksgiving did not really have anything common with the kind of food cooked today.  There are mixed opinions though. While some believe that the feast h...