LIFE AS IT IS

  If someone asks me what I have achieved in this long stay-at-home situation, I will say that I have relished the rich and exciting works of Bengali wordsmiths! During this time at home, I have explored and read works of Bengali writers, many of whose works I had not read earlier. Thanks to the internet, which brings Bengali books in the palm of my hand 8,000 miles away from my homeland.  The Daily Star link As someone who is a product of the English-medium education system of Bangladesh, my exposure to Bengali literature was rather limited, I admit. As a teen, I devoured works of Humayun Ahmed, Muhammed Zafar Iqbal and Satyajit Ray. I enjoyed Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Kakababu series, Rakib Hasan’s Tin Goyenda, and Sukumar Ray’s unique gibberish. However, my exploration of Bengali literature stopped short for reasons I cannot recall now. I did read Bengali novels, however, every now and then, but it was English paperbacks which kept me engrossed for two decades.  I am the ki...

I heard that I would hear people speak Bengali in its shops, restaurants, roads and alleys. I was told that I would see women shopping in sari and shalwar kameez, and men discussing international politics over shingara and steaming cups of tea. How many Bangladeshi expats would let go of a chance to experience Bangladesh away from it? I would never!  The Daily Star link  Feb 21, 2017 It was the summer of 2013, it was my first time in Jamaica, a neighbourhood in Queens, one of the five boroughs of New York City. I had heard so much about it from friends and relatives that I was convinced a summer vacation in NYC was incomplete without one trip to this diverse neighbourhood.  So on one scorching afternoon of May 2013, my family and I embarked on our exploration of Jamaica. As we left the subway station and began walking along its Hillside Avenue with our then nine-month-old daughter, I turned my head to see anyone who spoke Bengali. No language ever sounded sweeter ...

I joined an online forum a year ago. Let’s not get into the details of what that forum is about, but talk about what I earned from it. The most beautiful thing that the forum has perhaps given me is a few dozen Bengali-speaking friends hailing from both Bangladesh and West Bengal. Some of them are Bengali expatriates like me, living in countries like America, Canada and the U.K. Together we have a knitted a virtual circle of friends, which has the potential of lasting a lifetime. It’s a twist of fate that one of the friends I found on that forum lives only 15 mins away from my home! But when we first became virtual friends none of us knew that we lived so close to each other.  She is older than me and I call her didi or di. She is married with a 12-year-old son. First we talked over the phone and then we met each other for the first time at a concert in Philadelphia, PA, where Kolkata’s musical band, Chandrabindu, performed. She then invited me and my family to her place for l...