Sister Library, with the support of the Goethe-Institut, has been prompting and reading Sehri Tales with the charming Talespeople for the last three years. Our prompts have included Memory (2023), Library (2024), and this year we asked the Talespeople to respond to DIGITAL and PINK. The selection of prompt words was based on the current library themes and areas of focus. As we investigate the online lives of women in Bangladesh, the prompt offered an opportunity to collect personal reflections on the trigger DIGITAL.
The selected writings reflected the diversity of the community. The prompt PINK inspired many to inspect societal pressure on identity and relation to power. Among them are:
Mehrangez Rahman
PINK
I’m no expert when it comes to tattoos, but hers was probably the most god-awful one I have ever seen. A crooked starburst of daisies, healing erratically, etched across her ankle in a way that made me wince with sympathetic pain.
Everything about the design bespoke haste and lack of care. To be fair, I knew that she had made the decision in a hurry and had booked the first tattoo artist who had a slot available, knowing that if she wasted too much time she would probably change her mind and never go ahead with it at all.
I watched her trace a reverent finger over the design and then look up at me, pink with pleasure and anticipation.
“For new beginnings,” she said, and it hit me all of a sudden that this must’ve been the first act of ownership she had practised upon her own body, after years of being told what to wear and how to wear it, how short to cut the hair on her head, how often to wax the hair off her arms.
I imagined how it must feel to see that wonky little circlet of flowers on the bony outcrop of your ankle and know that you had put it there. Imperfect, maybe, clumsy, but also yours.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, and at that moment it didn’t feel like a lie.
Tahseen Nower Prachi
Tahseen Nower Prachi is a communication and Journalism graduate who chose poetry and micro-tales to cry a fake laugh between occasional self-loathe and narcissism.
PINK
I hold your hand in pink,
When mother earth would write her history,
This’ll be the color of her ink.
But I am no magic.
I do not belong to your temples,
Nor to the gods you name.
I am born from the spaces in-between,
Untamed, unfinished,
Forever in search of my sisters-
Those who wear magic like a second skin,
Born in the red earth,
Nourished by bonds of love,
In our tales of sisterhood.
In the soft pink of dawn,
We carry both beauty and fury-
A color of strength,
Not meant to be tamed,
With warriors’ blood from past,
The first scars crowning my forehead.
From the rubble of Gaza’s
Bombarded streets to
the quiet allies of the world,
From the sister in the mauve hijab, blooded with her families limbs,
From the little daughter,
Hiding from the devil’s shadow with a grin,
You will hear us scream
Our cries, woven in crimson pink-
The strength from our soul-tearing loss,
Of our rights, our existence, our homes.
Hear our screams,
against femicide, against fear,
against the silence of violence.
We rise. We bleed. We stand.
With the smile that knows no bounds,
Beware,
For I am forged in ancient fires,
With wisdom
of those who have come before.
In the pink that colors the sky,
We carve our path high.
Reminding you,
I was here before your history,
And I will be here long
even after your biased historians
are gone.
Rima Sarmin
Rima Sarmin is a freelance content writer. Writing has always been a part of who she is, especially when it comes to dark, unsettling stories.
PINK
When I was little, pink was my world. Pink floral dresses, pink dolls, pink birthday cakes. I loved it. Also because everyone told me I should, because I was a girl.
But as I grew older, I started hearing things: Pink is too girly. Pink is weak. Your closet is filled with pink.
People around me would joke about it and it made me feel like pink was a weakness. Strong girls don’t wear pink.
But I wanted to be strong. So, I ditched it.
Soon, my wardrobe turned neutral, my choices sharper. I rolled my eyes at frilly dresses and pastel shades, convincing myself I was above them. I started wearing darker colours even if they weren’t my thing.
But strength isn’t found in a colour, neither is weakness. And it took years to unlearn what the world had taught me. To realize that power isn’t black or blue or grey. It’s whatever I decide to wear, whatever I choose to embrace.
So, the first time I bought a pink outfit after many years, I hesitated. Would they think I wasn’t serious enough? Would they think I had softened?
But when I looked in the mirror, all I saw was me – a woman who had fought her way through doubts and expectations. And pink was MY colour. I glow when I wear it.
Now, I wear pink without apology. Not because it defines me, but because nothing does, except my own strength.
Sabrina Fatma Ahmad
Sabrina Fatma Ahmad is an author and journalist based in Dhaka. She is the creator of the Sehri Tales challenge.
DIGITAL
They talk about things like ghosting, fading, benching and breadcrumbing like Gen Z came up with the phenomena. Like cruelty didn’t exist in relationships before someone came up with names for the actions.
I swore up and down I was over it, all of it, that I’d moved on. For the longest time, I even believed it, until I heard the snatch of a familiar tone somewhere, and suddenly I’m clutching the handles of my grocery cart, waves of shame and anger heating my skin, making my eyes sting.
That’s because triggers are somatic responses, my therapist tells me. Unlike explicit memories, traumatic imprints can feel ongoing, as if they are happening now rather than something that occurred in the past.
So you tell me that even though I’m over it, my body still thinks it’s eighteen, and my best friend just disappeared out of the blue and stopped talking to me? That I’d installed a custom tone to let me know he was online, and I’d hear it play out and then…silence. That I replayed all our interactions over and over, wondering what I did wrong, until he did decide to break the ice, and acted like nothing was wrong? I feel the hot splash of tears against my balled-up fists before I realise I’m crying.
The therapist passes me the tissues. We’ve got work to do.
Santana Kamal
Santana writes poems about everyday life, about how emotions move through the physical world.
DIGITAL
It’s metaphysical, this spark
and all this feeling.
Never thought I’d meet someone like you,
but here we are, talking.
Burnt tomatoes make the best chutneys.
That’s unrelated to you, but online,
you send me recipes.
Far we’ve come, admit it or not,
friends we’ve become, closer than we thought.
