The Penman

Image source: Woman's Day.com The Back story My mother often feels sorry for the fact that feeding the children of our region is very hard. They like junk food very much, but if you try to feed them healthy foods, they will just turn their face back and say "Noooo!!"  On the contrary, the children born to nonnative parents like to eat those very much. I noticed the problem and thought: something must be wrong.  When I discuss that with my mother, she usually explains to me a theory which I call 'The nationalism theory.' It states that all Noakhali (nonnative) children are like that. Our children are 'adilka'. I don't agree with her at all. There must be some mistakes in the child-raising technique of our local parents. The probable causes behind the 'Noooo!' problem: 1. Our local parents are extra caring to their children. When feeding times come, they force their children to eat. But nonnatives don't. So, forcing the children might be the

Image source: ucg.org Dear B, I don’t know how you are in your next life and I don’t know whether Allah has forgiven you. I was very sorry when I heard about your suicide. I didn’t believe it first; I couldn’t even imagine you can suicide. I was shocked after being sure. I later called your mother and talked about you. I hope she is OK now. X, why did you kill yourself? I was informed that it was related to a relationship. My friend, you were a Muslim. As a Muslim, it was not appropriate for you to kill yourself because of a prohibited relationship with a girl. Allah has sent us in this life only to worship him alone. Our lives belong to Him only. That’s why we say ‘Inna lillah’ when someone dies. The sentence ‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rojiun’ means ‘Verily we are for Allah and to Him we will return.’ Our life, death, love, aspiration, everything is for Allah alone. After knowing all these, how could you sacrifice yourself for someone else? I assume you were too excited to think abo

  Image source: The Financial Express The whole world is under threat of the coronavirus. The virus has reached the best of nations, to the most advanced of all the advanceds. But have we thought of any positive effect of this pandemic? Probably most will answer no. I will talk about one particular positive effect of the pandemic. The virus has spread a disease, the disease has caused a lockdown, and the lockdown has given us a long time with our family, at our home. In my country, Bangladesh, the people live outside their hometown fall into either of these groups: Students studying in colleges or universities, Workers of industries and garments, Employees of public and private organizations, Other people working outside their homes Among all these people, the people of groups 1,2 & 4 are most likely enjoying their time at home. The reason behind this is that they usually stay out of their home for their jobs or education, often leaving all their family members at home. In this loc

Image source: Dreamstime.com Pressure on hardbooks and libraries has lessened to a great extent nowadays because of the widespread use of E-books and videos as tools for learning; thus, learning has become easier. But the problem is learning on a digital screen is harmful to our eyes and overall health. Here are 10 tips for you if you want to lessen the extent of the harm digital screen causes. 1. Choose a big screen size: the bigger the better A big screen makes your reading and watching a lot easier than small screens. So, try to buy a device with a screen as big as possible and affordable. 2. Choose right display type: the cheapest the worst The more expensive a device is, the best display it uses. But you must be sure by looking at the detailed specification. AMOLED displays are best and TN displays are worst. IPS display is good enough for both smartphones and laptops. 3. Prefer high contrast ratio: the higher the better The contrast ratio (CR) is a property of a display system w

Image source: Evaly.Com.BD Yesterday, a funny incident happened. I had just put on my punjabi for salat. But surprisingly, I found no pocket in my dress while going to put something in my pocket. "Where is the pocket? There has to be a pocket. I wear it every day; use the pocket every day," I said to myself with great surprise. Then I looked at my dress and found out that I had put on the dress upside down. "Ha..ha..ha! How funny! That's where the pocket went!" I said to myself. [I find it funny, but not everyone will find it funny. I wrote the funny incident on my diary on December 8, 2019.]

Image source: Daily Sun Suddenly, Takrim's mother, our neighbor, came to us and asked if we could go with them to Shahjalal's shrine by bus that day. My parents immediately agreed. We got ready to go. Our journey started at mid-noon. I sat by the bus window. Our journey started on the way to Shahjalal's Dargah Sharif in Sylhet. Of course I went there a long time ago with my parents when I was a child. This time I was very sad because my father could not go for his work. By the way, I looked out the window to enjoy all the beautiful scenery of the street. I saw that Sylhet is a very beautiful city; it is the divisional headquarter indeed. It took a long time to reach Shahjalal's shrine. I finally got there. I saw a crowd of people there. And Shahjalal's Dargah Sharif was very beautiful. We all prayed the Asr prayers. While performing ablution, I saw many big fishes in the pond. People had made the pond dirty by giving fish food in the pond. There were also flocks of

Image source: smart-village-network.eu Scenario 1: There is almost no difference between the population density of a city and a village throughout the whole world. Both villages and cities are quiet. The only difference lies in the infrastructure. Most people live in villages with their families. No distance from family members for the sake of education, job, or anything. Everybody fulfills his/her needs from home. Sounds great! Right? The condition is the same in one aspect for both our present world and the past world: cities have much more population density than villages. Job, travel, education institutes, medical centers, markets, everything is in cities. Those who are able, prefer to stay in the cities. Now, is it possible to reach scenario 1? If we look at the current world trend, we can see how everything is turning online: businesses becoming online, government works becoming online (passport, national identity card issuing, etc.), shopping becoming online. One day soon, we ma