Some people are born this way. They don't have any strings to pull, bribes to offer, or merit to compensate for the lack of the others. Jamal was God's handcrafted failure, designed meticulously to suffer. He was gifted only one weapon to fight with, and a rather rusty one at that—his patience and the gift of staying quiet.  

The country has drastically changed after the quota movement, for better or worse. However, one of the most evident changes is probably the sudden spike in political interest amongst the youth. Be it for an autocratic regime ruling for 16 years or the terrorization of the university campuses by politically motivated groups, the youth have been disinterested in the political proceedings of our country previously. However, the quota movement completely changed the status quo.   

Most roaches knew the mayor's strategies and didn't believe the newspapers anymore. While they were still on the streets putting their lives on the line, some roaches like Mr Telaroach were gullible enough to believe whole-heartedly that everything truly was under control. 'The true cockroaches of Roachtown'—as mayor Roacher had labelled them and congratulated them for keeping their trust in the republic. 

In the early morning of October 7, 2019, the dead body of Abrar Fahad, an undergraduate student at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet), was found lying on the ground floor of Sher-e-Bangla Residential Hall. The sight of a student beaten to death in his own university shook the nation. However, the outrage of Buet's general students resulted in something long overdue: the end of student politics. 

Over the last year, people started to realise how much they overestimated their essentiality. Sure, they had friends but their friendships were only valued by their presence in a situation. Their presence was appreciated but not imperative to anyone. Their absence didn't create a vacuum anywhere and would barely put a dent in the lives around them. 

"One monsoon, around midnight, Amma had fallen really sick", Nana muttered one night suddenly, "The nearest hospital was two villages away. All the wives from the nearby houses came to see her one last time. I stood in one corner, figuring out how to react to my mother dying. Abba stormed into the room, ordering everyone to stop crying. He picked up my mother in his arms and ran out of the house. Drenched in water and mud, Abba ran for an hour in the pouring rain that night, until he collapsed. When he did, he found his Ambia dead in his arms. Abba came back home with Amma's corpse and sat quietly outside as everyone else wailed. That was the first death I saw."

"Abba took care of his only son", Nana continued, "He died two days after I got my first job. They found his dead body right where he had collapsed the night Amma died. What I hadn't realised back then was that my poor Abba died that night with his Ambia. They just found his corpse 20 years later."

"That's the secret, Zubaidah," her mother had said to her in confidence, "It's the blood. But don't let them know. Your father doesn't and neither should your husband or any of those men. They love the taste of blood as long as they aren't aware of it."

"Zubaidah," she said out loud. It had been years since someone had called her by her name. That night in the kitchen with her mother was the last time she'd ever heard her name.

"My fellow mice," shouted Julius Cheeser to a crowd of his roaring followers as he rose to the stage, "It is my great honour to have been serving you for the past 11 weeks and even more so to have been selected for the twelfth time in a row. As you know, I've always been open to criticism and competition. I've always wanted my party members to stand up, demonstrate their quality as a leader, and replace me. I assure you, no one would be happier than me if any of you took my position because that is the day, I'll be able to retire knowing that the basement is in safe hands! But it is my great privilege that my party members trust my capabilities so much that they've decided not to hold the party elections anymore and have accepted me as RAA leader sine die!" 

This should sound relatable – you get out at 8 AM to attend a 10 AM class, attend the two classes for the sake of attendance and by the time you start for home around lunch hour, the entire city is stuck. The bus hasn't moved an inch in the past 15 minutes and so you start walking under the heat, only to realise, there's literally no space on the road.

Whatever hint of pavement that's left is either occupied by vendors or construction materials. Standing in between a CNG and a bus, behind a queue of five people in the middle of the road as someone parkours his way over rickshaws, you realise that you, a pedestrian, is the last priority in your city's urban planning.

Despite living in Kolkata, in the heart of the Bengali renaissance, introversion stood in the way of his deserved recognition. Tagore criticised him for heavy choice of words and metaphors whereas Nazrul's opinion of Jibanananda implied a hint of neglect. Despite being apprehensive and doubtful, Jibanananda stood by his poetry with conviction.

His poems had been described as surrealist, metaphorical, difficult, solitary and even obscene. Critics like Sajanikanta Das and Nirendranath Chakravarty were extremely vocal in criticising him for poems like "Bodh", "Campe", "Aat Bochor Ager Ekdin" and even "Banalata Sen", all of which laid the foundation for the phenomenon he later became. But Jibanananda believed his true readers weren't born yet, quoting the French author Andre Gide in his diary, "I do not write for the coming generation, but the following one."