FREE DE SOUL

Topic: The art of living a double life in a traditional Bangladeshi family. Every year as Eid approaches, the living room fills with discussions on qurbani prices, sermon clips shared via WhatsApp groups, and gentle inquiries about my morning prayers. Like thousands of young people across Dhaka and Chittagong, I nod along. I smile, pass the shemai, and participate in the rituals expected of me. To come out as a non-believer in a Bangladeshi household is rarely a simple intell

I used to seek comfort in the idea that the universe had a plan. That every hardship, every joy, every trivial detail of life was orchestrated by a benevolent intelligence. But the universe doesn’t care. Stars explode, earthquakes strike, humans are born and die, and the cosmos continues without notice. At first, this idea was terrifying. It felt like all meaning evaporated, leaving only a cold void. I clung to rituals, traditions, and stories, desperate to convince myself th

For a long time, I believed morality required a divine author. Right and wrong, good and evil, were ideas that existed only because God decreed them. I measured my actions against rules I hadn’t written, constantly worried that I might unknowingly step outside some invisible boundary. Morality felt like an external system sometimes comforting, often oppressive. Leaving faith forced me to rethink everything. If there was no God, was everything permissible? Did life lose its mo