By Myesha Munro · Culture · March 5, 2026

Photo: Bideshi Archive

Origins and Mythology of Bonbibi Bonbibi, also known as Bonodebi or Ma Bonbibi, is a forest goddess venerated across the Sundarbans by both Hindus and Muslims. Her story is primarily told in the Jahuranama, which blends Islamic and Bengali folk motifs, featuring Islamic characters such as Fatima and Muhammad, alongside Bengali names like Phulbibi. The Jahuranama is written in a mixture of Arabic, Persian and Bengali, and although it is written in the Bengali Hindu meter payar chhanda, it reads from back to front as with Arabic texts.[1] According to the Jahuranama, Berahim Fakir lived in Mecca and was married to a woman named Phulbibi who could not conceive a child. After consulting with his daughter Fatima, the prophet revealed that Berahim would have two children if he took a second wife. Phulbibi agreed to her husband taking a second wife on the condition that Berahim eventually fulfil a promise to her. When Berahim’s second wife, Golabibi, became pregnant, Phulbibi grew jealous and used her promise to banish Golabibi into the forest, where she gave birth to Bonbibi and Shah Jangali. Unable to care for both children, Golabibi abandoned Bonbibi to be raised by deer, establishing…

By Fariha Rahman · Culture · March 6, 2026

Photo: Bideshi Archive

Bengali Harlem: Migration, Memory, and the Making of a Diaspora NBC News (2019), photo courtesy of the family of Ibrahim Chowdhury highlighting a 1952 banquet, including mostly former ship workers from Bangladesh with their interracial families. In the early 20th century, before New York became home to one of the largest Bengali diasporas in the United States, small communities of South Asian sailors, peddlers, and workers quietly carved out spaces for themselves in the city. Among them were Bengali Muslims—many from present-day Bangladesh and West Bengal—who formed some of the earliest South Asian enclaves in Harlem and the Lower East Side.[1][2] Their story, largely unknown until recently, reveals a complex tale of migration, survival, and cultural blending that continues to shape the Bengali American identity today. Early Arrivals: Lascars and Peddlers in New York The first significant wave of Bengalis in the United States came not as a result of mass immigration, but through lascars—South Asian sailors employed on British merchant ships. Thousands of lascars passed through American ports between the late 1800s and early 1900s.[1] Some jumped ship or overstayed, seeking better o…

By Sarina Nushrat · Culture · March 6, 2026

Photo: Bideshi Archive

Introduction Long before a Bengali child learns to write their name, they learn something much more complicated: that they have more than one. This realization rarely arrives with ceremony. No one sits you down and explains it. It happens abruptly, usually at school, when a teacher calls out a name and you look around the room to see who is being addressed, only to realize, with some alarm, that it is you. Thus unfolds your lifelong lesson in living between identities. In a Bengali person's life, a name functions less as a single label and more as an entire system. It comes in pairs. One name is meant to be written down whereas the other name is meant to be spoken. One is built for history and the other is built for love. Bhalo Nam The bhalo nam (ভালো নাম), literally the 'good name', is the name that is cooperative with modern, everyday society. It is "for identification in the outside world" [3]. It submits politely to forms, databases, certificates, hospital wristbands, and eventually, if tradition has its way, your gravestone. It is the name that will outlive you, circulating long after the person it once referred to has left the world. This is the name institutions prefer and i…

By Danial Zakaria · Culture · March 6, 2026

Photo: Bideshi Archive

Bangladesh's participation in the world-famous Olympics align heavily with the nations it found itself part of across history. However, its history also tells a larger story on how structural disenfranchisement and oppression significantly affects a nation's performance in an industry we usually consider to be unifying and meritocratic; sport. Through looking at the effects of British colonisation and Pakistani oppression, and a lasting deficit on athletic talent that remains today, the reasons for why Bangladesh is the largest nation to have never won an Olympic medal remains all too evident. Their main participation within the Olympics has primarily been through the wildcard system, which grants athletes from nations typically underrepresented in specific sports to qualify without a traditional, strict qualification process. This article will take a look at a historical timeline of Bangladesh's participation in the Olympics, within different nations and as its own nations, as well as considering the socioeconomic factors developed over time which have limited the success Bangladesh has experienced across one of history's oldest, and most prestigious sporting events. British India…