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Personal curiosity writing, essays, and chronicles. For my technical work, explore the dedicated subblogs linked below or in the header navigation.
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A Deep History of Bengali Culture · Post 1/8
The Words That Feel Most Bengali
The words that feel irreducibly Bengali — the ones with no Sanskrit explanation — are probably the oldest non-Bengali words in the language.
A Deep History of Bengali Culture · Post 2/8
Before We Were Bengali — The People of the Red Earth
3,600 years ago, a rice-farming civilization on the Ajay River left words, bones, and pottery that are still with us. Who were they?
A Deep History of Bengali Culture · Post 3/8
The Words That Don't Move
Languages change unevenly. The words that resist replacement the longest are the ones lived in the body — farming, cooking, counting. Bengali is a palimpsest, and knowing which layer you're reading changes everything.
A Deep History of Bengali Culture · Post 4/8
Three Ways of Knowing the Same People
There is a community of 7 million people who remember, in song, walking through a mountain pass to a golden land they then had to abandon overnight. Genetics corroborates the journey. Sanskrit texts called their kings demons.
A Deep History of Bengali Culture · Post 5/8
The Iron That Cut Their Own Forest
Before any Sanskrit speaker had reached the eastern hills, someone there figured out how to smelt iron. Their descendants became the blacksmiths every classical Indian village needed. The iron they pioneered cleared the forests that had sheltered them.
Berlin's Transit Crisis · Post 5/5
Reform Pathways and the Automation Question: What Berlin Could Do Tomorrow
Federal operations funding, employer levies, congestion charging, and driverless trains — proven solutions exist for every aspect of BVG's crisis. The question is political will.
A Deep History of Bengali Culture · Post 6/8
A Word Older Than the Language That Carried It
Saat Bhai Champa — Seven Brothers Champa. The most Sanskrit-sounding element of the story is probably the oldest non-Sanskrit thing in it.
Berlin's Transit Crisis · Post 4/5
Vienna, Zurich, Munich, Hamburg: What Working Transit Looks Like
Every solution to BVG's crisis has been implemented somewhere in Europe. Four cities show what competitive wages, stable funding, and political commitment actually achieve.
Berlin's Transit Crisis · Post 3/5
Why BVG Drivers Walked Out: Wages, Strikes, and the 9.8:1 Ratio
Berlin pays its transit drivers less than any other major German city while its CEO earns more relative to workers than any other state-owned enterprise. The 2025 Ver.di strikes were the result.
Berlin's Transit Crisis · Post 2/5
Austerity, Concrete, and Compounding Debt: The Policy Failures That Built a Crisis
How the Black Zero balanced budget, a federal funding structure that rewards new construction over maintenance, and a procurement debacle created BVG's €3 billion infrastructure hole.
A Deep History of Bengali Culture · Post 7/8
Hidden in Plain Sight
আগডুম বাগডুম. You clapped hands to it as a child. The words seemed like pure joyful sound. They aren't.
Berlin's Transit Crisis · Post 1/5
From Division to Decay: How Reunification Broke Berlin's Transit
Berlin's BVG inherited two incompatible transit systems, a billion-mark loss, and a policy framework that would starve it of funding for three decades.
A Deep History of Bengali Culture · Post 8/8
What the River Remembers
"The history of Bengal is written in water." A synthesis — genetic, linguistic, civilizational — of who the Bengali people are and what a modern democracy owes to a culture that survived for 10,000 years.
Wayland Desktop Mastery · Post 4/4
My 2026 Linux Desktop: Niri + DankMaterialShell + Kitty
Complete stack overview showing how compositor, shell, terminal, and tools integrate through consistent patterns.
Wayland Desktop Mastery · Post 3/4
Desktop Polish: DankMaterialShell and the Perfect Rofi Launcher
Unifying desktop aesthetics across shell, launcher, and compositor with shared color tokens and consistent IPC patterns.
Wayland Desktop Mastery · Post 2/4
Mastering Niri Navigation: Shortcuts That Preserve Muscle Memory
Designing a unified shortcut system for Niri that maintains consistency with Hyprland and standard desktop patterns.
Wayland Desktop Mastery · Post 1/4
Niri: The Scrolling Tiling Compositor That Made Me Leave Hyprland
Why Niri scrolling paradigm works better than traditional tiling for ultrawide monitors, and how to think about window management differently.