Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

The Cat.

She is Minu, my adopted daughter.

She is an extraordinary cat. I wrote books on her. A famous film maker is going to make a film about her life. Many articles were written about her philosophy. She had a solo TV show. It was about her football. She was an excellent football player a couple years ago.
She is curious, courageous, fearless, adventurous, undaunted!
My friends say, ‘she is your daughter. Her characters are exactly like yours. It’s all about genetic inheritance.’

I am having chondromalacia on my knee joints. In the meantime Minu started having knee pain. She has been limping on her back legs for three weeks. Some X-rays are done. Her vet says, she has some degenerative changes in her knee joints. Obviously, she got my genes.
It is now terribly painful for her to walk.
I can have pain killer whenever I get pain.
She can not. Pain killer is poison for cats.

Some say, put her in sleep. I say, no.
I take her to different vets almost everyday to find some hope and to get her a better treatment.
People hate cats here. They love dogs but not desi dogs. They love Western dogs.
Probably vets do not know much about cats. Degenerative changes in her knees! Come on, she is only seven and half. Not even eight. The changes start after 12.
Some vets say, may be she has ligament sprains or tendonitis or blood parasites or disc prolapse! I do not know the reason of her pain. I will be the happiest person if treatments are available.

I will die if she dies.

The techie cat loves to sleep near computers.