Egg Apple Incident

I love triggers. No, I am not talking about gun triggers, I am talking about trigger events. Did it ever happen to you? Suddenly, an incident triggers a memory from the past, which was dormant for a long, long time. I'd call that a trigger event. Today was such a day.

We were having a family dinner, and suddenly my father and sister started arguing about the meaning of the words supper and dinner. According to dad, supper is "night meal" and dinner is "lunch". This is, of course, not true. However, my father was stern in his belief, and he even chanted the lines from a poem, which goes like this:

After dinner, rest a while
After supper, run a mile

Hmm....thought provoking, right? But as far as I remember, it was "lunch" and "dinner", instead of dinner and supper. Dad asked us to check the dictionary. Probably sis checked and figured out something. I moved on to my room, closed the doors, and separated myself from the rest of the family, not bothering about the incident at all.

Anyways, this dispute brought back to me the famous "Egg Apple" incident. No, it's not a historicaly famous incident. But it's a very important event in my life. That was not the first time I had disputes with my teachers.

Ideal Coaching centre; a name trusted by the parents of the wayward boys of Khilgaon, whom were in most cases, also students of Khilgaon Govt. High School. One fine morning, I was admitted in that institute, for further bolstering my study proceedings. Oh I so hated studying!

Me, coming from KSA, and being an avid watcher of Sesame Street, Popeye, Tom and Jerry and loads of other English cartoons, had an edge over the Khilgaon boys in English. But I never thought that edge would surpass the knowledge of the teachers, too! In one exam, we were asked to write the English word for "Begun", a very popular vegetable of this part of the world. Without hesitation, I wrote "Egg Plant".

When the exam was over, and marking was done, we were given the scripts for checking the scores and for placing any instant grievances. I was surprised, and really confused at seeing my transtlation marked in red, and scored at a big zero. I forgot the name of the teacher. It was a long, long time ago. This happened when I was in class 5. That'd probably be in 1990.

When I confronted him, he replied that the English for begun is Brinjal, not Eggplant. There is nothing called eggplant. I knew that begun is sometimes called Brinjal, but I never liked that word. I still don't like it. I don't like the word Okra as well. Ladie's finger sounds way better.

I came back home, and informed my parents about the incident. Had I been a bit younger, I'd probably cry, too. As I was the first kid, and necessarily a boy kid, my parents had a lot of affection for me (naturally). So they went to the coaching centre, and got hold of the culprit (in this story, a poor coaching centre teacher).

He produced an age old dictionary, and showed my dad that the word is primarily Brinjal, but sometimes that fruit, I mean that veggie can also be called "Egg Apple". I was like :-|

Yeah, that dictionary did have a picture of an egg plant, but the word describing the vegetable was not egg plant, but rather it was egg apple. I don't blame the teacher. His source of knowledge mislead him. Things like this can happen. The same thing happened when one of my friend, after living most of his life in Australia, came back to "burst out in laughter" to discover that the word Ass was being used to refer to a humble, hard working, four footed animal, instead of referring to the man's rear end.

I got half of my lost points back, as it was still an "Egg", be it a plant or an apple, I was half correct, according to the teacher. As my father was endorsing Eggplant, and some other teachers were silently agreeing, the culprit teacher did not dare to stick to his point for too long.

Back home, my parents encouraged me by saying that I was right, and even getting half the point back was a moral victory for me.

Since then, It is not ensured that my elders, teachers and superiors might be right all the time. Believing everything they tell us is simply an act of folly. You just need to wait till you have your confident consciousness built within.

It's happening again! The writer's ghost. I swear, the ghost forced me to write the last two lines up there :-)

Ahhhh......pleasant memories of the past. I miss the coaching centre. I made a number of friends there.

My Friends and My Birthdays

Yesterday I turned 25. When I was younger, growing up was fun. I always looked forward to getting older and gaining more freedom. I have my share of freedom, and I am advancing quite swiftly towards becoming an "old fart", as Daan Brown says in Angels and Demons.

My birthday parties are always special to me. Every year, I invite a fixed set of people to join in and celebrate the occasion with me. Unlike many of my friend, I enjoy having my birthday parties at home. A group of people always gets invited, and the others are variable. I change them according to the mood and situation I am in. As an example, Asif bhai has been a regular attendee for the last three years. But this year, I couldn't invite him as it was ramadan, and I wanted to invite Tawfiq bhai.

Tawfiq bhai wouldn't come if Asif bhai came. That's what happen last year, and this year I didn't want to take any chance. It felt bad not to see Asif bhai. My birthday party and his name had been closely connected for the last 3 years...2002, 2003, 2004....this year, he was missed. He was missing, and he was missed.

And because he didn't came, this years party was focused towards the adda aspect. When he came, he'd soon start playing Fifa or Smackdown! and Pintu would join him, and eventually half of the crowd would get bored, and the other half would join the gamers.

This year I had only my school and college friends as guests, apart from Tawfiq bhai. He, being the only IRC friend, shows that I am actually leaving my internet life behind. I am moving on, as some might say. However, IRC, or in other words, my Internet friends will always have a special place in my life. A few of them turned out to be very good friends of mine, which is really nice.

Rajib, Murshid, Pintu, Sajal--these are some of my oldest friends. Rajib being the oldest of all. Back in 1989, I was an alien in Bangladesh. I just arrived from Saudi Arabia, with having only the vague memories of BD in 1985. I didn't know how to communicate, I was having trouble finding my place in a different culture, and I envied by people for my English skills. In a nutshell, I didn't have friends. After hallf a year in Rokeya Kindargarten, I joined Khilgaon Government High School in 1990, as a student of class 5. My roll number was 158, and I soon became friends with Iqbal, Sazzad and Nahil. They are my oldest friends in BD, and unfortunately, Nahil has died about 8 years ago (inna lillahe wa inna ilaihe rajeun).

I have no idea about Iqbal and Sazzad's whereabouts. I also had another good friend (who was a friend of Iqbal) named Salahuddin. Last time I saw Salahuddin was in the year '95, and the last I heard about Iqbal was that he is completing his bachelors from some private university.

Enough said, when I was in class six, I actually started getting acquianted with the culture, and I started making friends. Rajib and Rico were the first to acknowledge me as a person who was worth "befriending", and I started hanging out with them on a regular basis. I met Murshid by chance. He came to my home with picchi(!) Faisal one day, after school. Apparently me and Faisal had same school bags, and I picked up his, instead of mine. I only saw Murshid a few days back, and he was a friend of Rajib and Sajal. After getting my bag, and returning Faisal's, we, too started hanging out. Eventually I met Pintu (another Faisal) and Sajal, whom were arcade freaks. I shifted on to becoming a arcade freak with them.

That was 15 years ago, and I still hang out these people. Ain't I lucky to have such friends? We had ups and downs in our friendship. Especially, Sajal kind of disappeared from our lives after school. He made a comeback I guess a year ago, and now he is almost never excluded from any of our special occasions.

Sajal was the first one to arrive. I had a do some levels of deception in order to get out of office yesterday. Nobody knows about my birthday in Banglalink, and I have no intention in beating the drum about this thing. In GP, my colleagues gifted me the Artisti shirt that I am currently wearing, but here, there's nothing like that. I am not complaining, because the gift came with a price over there...I had to treat the whole team at Pizza Hut, which was quite heavy on my pocket at that time.

When Sajal called me, I was in Rampura, not too far away from my home. So he insisted on waiting untill I reached. It took me about 10 minutes to reach home, as the traffic was dense just before the iftar.

Before iftar, everyone except Pintu, Rahat and Sujit was there. With a full house, we started having our iftar. This was my first birthday during Ramadan, as far as I can remember. So the party had to be changed accordingly, as well. Iftar was phase one, with Kacchi biriani as phase two.

My cousins bought me the Lord of The Rings book. I loved the movie, and I spent countless hours playing a strategy game based on the famous franchise, but I never quite thought about reading the book. Now that it's on my table, maybe I will start reading.

I also got two DVDs from Rahat, Sin City and Kung Fu Hustle. Good side, I haven't seen any of the movies. Bad side, Pintu and Tushar decided to borrow them!

The other gift I got was a very, very personalized one. A T-Shirt with the lyrics of "Bangladesh" by George Harrison, written all over it. I was really happy to get something related to Beatles. That was the t-shirt that I wore throughout the party.

We had a lot of fun.

Okay this was totally a messy piece of writing.

I wrote this on the 25th october

Landphones and Me: Part 1

Landphones and Me

Do you know what does PSTN mean? I didn't know this until I joined GP. It means "public switch telephony network", a moutful of name for the puny thing called landphone. No, it isn't a puny thing! Landphones are essential elements of a household, since like forever. When I was in Saudi Arabia, we didn't have a phone. But again, a phone was not necessary over there. There weren't too many people to call, and communique was done in physical terms. Feel like talking to someone? Go over to his house instead of calling him.

The first phone I used was an analog number. Surprisingly enough, I still remember the number. It was 508654. This phone was connected in my grandmother's home at Dhaka University staff quarters. My grandfather was a “Shohid Buddhijibi” of our great liberation war, and he was also a teacher of the English department of Dhaka University.

Later on, we moved to our own home in Khilgaon. First me, my mom dad and sister moved in to a flat, sometime in 1989. Later on, my grandmother and uncles occupied two other flats. Since then we've been living here. The analog phone number was soon transferred here. The number got changed to a 40xxxx number, soon. But it wasn't before a long time that we actually got our own phone number.

The generic handset from TNT was not a good looking one, in any aspect. The buttons were okay, and it was the first digital handset that I got an opportunity to experiment with. Previously I've seen one at my Khala's home, dialed numbers for a couple of times, but that was pretty much it.

I think the first call I received was from my choto mama. He asked me "Bashar number koto?", and I failed to answer. I hesitantly said that it's a new phone, and it's normal that I'll forget the number. But he kept on joking that "Nijeder number jano na!", etc. etc.

Since then, this phone accompanied me in times of sorrow and happiness. Cell phones didn't dare to intervene in to my life until I was 23, and we got the phone when I was 15 or 16, I guess. I received the good news of getting my first job via this phone. Our number and handset both got changed one time each, but it still felt like having the same phone.

I got called by the GP HR via this phone, for letting me know that I got a job in the Market Research and Development department. That phone call actually changed my life. From the lazy shy confidence lacking guy, I changed a lot, just because of that job of mine. I also got called by HSBC for the internship. However, I received the Banglalink job offer in my GP cell.

The phone used to be in elsewhere. But since 1999, it stays very near to my PC. I got the internet connection that year (a dialup, understandingly). I faced a lot of enmity from the family members, because I used to hog the telephone line in order to get online. I grew myself an email and chatting obsession during that time.

I also talked a lot with my buddies, Pintu and Murshid. This would happen before getting the internet connection.

Year 2000, March 11.

I got my first PC in the year 1999, after getting myself admitted in IBA. I worked really hard for getting in to IBA, and my dad promised me a PC if I could get in to a good institute. It was a Saturday evening, a quiet evening. Most of the people were not at home.

Back in 2000, we used to live as a big joint family. Four of my uncles, my grandmother, two of my aunts, and their families--we all lived together or nearby. On that day, me, my cousin Shomi and Muhaimein were sitting in my room.

I was playing the game "Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain" on my PC. Shomi was helping me out by sharing useful tips. It's a third person action game, i.e. you can see the game character from a third person view. Raziel, the hero of the game is a resurrected vampire, who was banished from his family for trying and getting a pair of wings. He was thrown in to a sea of Lava, and now he's back for revenge over Kain, the guy who announced the banishment!

Anyways, Muhaimein was also watching carefully and admiring the graphical beauty of the game. Suddenly the phone started ringing. The digital phone had a nice cring cring sound; which is a lot better than what can be heard from an analog phone.

I paused the game, and reached out my hand towards the receiver. My aunt was on the phone. She also happens to be the mother of Muhaimein. With tear soaked voice, she gave me the worst news I had to hear in my 20 year old life--the death news of my grandmother. Well, I did hear the news of my uncle (boro mama) losing a leg in a road accident, but I was a lot younger than, and I absolutely failed to understand the situation fully.

I did not cry. I delivered the bad news to my cousins. Shomi gave a disappointed and surprised look, Muhamein gave me a look of disbelief. I quit the game, turned off the PC, and stood up in an awestruck manner. My mind was at a loss, but I was still remained cool. The news was so unexpected and shocking, that I couldn't believe it. I wonder how I actually turned off the PC, in a systematic manner. Instead of just kicking or pushing the shut down button, I actually had the nerves to use Alt+F4 and the normal procedure.

Dadu was sick, but not that sick. She was a diabetic patient, and also had aasthma and other comclicacies. She was being diagnosed for aasthma and the local doctor suggested that she should be hospitalized. She was suffering from a mixed effect of diabetes and aasthma, which proved too tricky to be treated home.

Just the day before her death, I went to visit her. She was receiving treatment in Samorita hospital in panthopoth, and I was a student of IBA then. I went to Samorita from DU via baby taxi (yeah, those things were still there). I don't remember whether I had someone with me, but most probably I was alone.

I knew the room number, and I went to there to find a number of my family members surrounding dadu.

By the way, I wrote about dadu once before:
The Song of My Life: Soul Reaver...Sigh...

That was the last time I saw her alive.

Year 1996-97

1996 was an important year for me. That was the year when I passed SSC and joined Notre Dame College. I was perceived as the meritorious and talented guy among my friends. I did have an edge in English, but I was not that good in other subjects. In fact, I always hated memorizing, and most of our curriculum is memorization based. When I was younger, I had guilty feelings for not studying well and memorizing a lot of things. I'd always keep on reading the things, but I never wanted to memorize them. I can boast now that I read through all the stories and chapters of most of my school books, which included stories that were not in the syllabus, chapters that were not assigned, and theories that were skipped because they were too complicated.

My result was not satisfactory. Most of my friends did better than me, and one close cousin of mine also got 33 marks more than me. All these incidents made my parents really mad at me, and I would be bashed every now and then.

Sigh, I spent my entire childhood under constant bashing from my parents. This all started from class 8.

I liked Notredame College for many reasons. Before joining the college, I went there only once. The auditorium in Martin Hall would get rented out as a mini-community center on weekends, and I was lucky enough to get invited on one such marriage. I had an impression that a special permission is required for renting that place, and I never tried clarifying this.

My dad was an ex-Notredamian. He told me stories about how the fathers used to teach them English, math, Physics, etc. subjects. Hehe, in this context, I remember a definition which I heard a long, long time ago. Who is a father? A father is a person who has no children, but considers everyone as his children. This might sound corny if you read it or hear it in an amusing manner, but if you look in to the depth, it’s actually a nice concept. As everyone is your children, you can’t harm anyone, and you’ll share the same level of affection for all.

I loved the orientation session. We were the freshers, and the second year big bros gave us a wonderful reception. The stage was set near the basketball ground. It was a typical wedding ceremony type setting, with the entire place surrounded by big pieces of clothes and decorated by lots of wooden chairs. I had Murshid and Pintu with me, the two guys from school who also joined NDC with me. I never quite looked back at that day as a very memorable event of my life, but now I think it was actually an interesting day.

Some of our "to be" teachers came up to the stage, and shared their wisdom with us. I vaguely remember a few words from the principal Father J.S.Peixotto's speech. He talked in English, and he was wearing a fotua. He seemed like a serious person to me. He talked about the heritage of the college, about the high standards of the education system that was being followed, and also some small rules and stuff. After a few more speeches, the 2nd year guys did a mini cultural show, with a few songs and recitations. After that, all the teachers and staffs were introduced to us. One by one, all of them arrived on the stage, and waved hands at us. That was the time when I realized that there were lots of Christian teachers and staffs in the college.

The Physical Instructor (Mr. Nurul Huda, if my memory doesn't betray me) got the highest hand claps and applause from the students.

After this, all of us were asked to form a huge human train. Yes, the batch of 1200 plus students formed the train, in a very disciplined and civilized manner. Then we went on a college tour. If you have gone to NDC, you'd know that our college is quite a huge place. From the entrance, a walkway leads to the main building. At the left (just beside the gate), there is a parking lot, which is used for parking cycles and motorcycles. However, I haven't seen a single bike parked there, in my 2 years of college life. This parking lot (!) is placed over the green pastures of a huge playground, which serves as a source of envy for any Dhaka based university other than DU. We walked over the field, and reached the far end of the field, where there is a school for orphans, and also a vocational training institute for the same. I surprised to see a big piano in a room over there. Apparently that school gives out piano lessons as well. I didn't think that I won't be visiting this place once again until almost 600 more days. Hehe, this is a bookmark, okay? I'll talk about this incident some other time (why and when I had to visit this place). Clever writers do this all the time...they keep these little bookmarks and small references all over their writings, where they get back at a later, convenient time. As I'm not a clever person, I am blatantly mentioning this here. Or maybe because I don't have a great memory? Damned MS Word...I know the last sentence is a fragment. Fragments are meant to be used. I love fragments, they make writing more interesting and personal.

Okay, let me get back to college. From the piano school, we went to the physics lab. I was quite thrilled after looking at the numerous different scientific devises in the lab, as I always dreamed about doing the science book experiments on my own. The physics lab was situated in the ground floor of the main building. Eventually we visited the bilogy lab and chemistry lab on the first floor, and the classrooms of the second floor. All the labs have probably been moved to the new building by now. When I passed out, the new building (which is called Ganguly Bhobon) was just erected, and only a handful of classrooms were operational. The biology lab was moved there, though.
We descended from the main building, and marched towards the left of the main building. This would be right side of the entrance. The college canteen was on the right side. It looked nice and clean, and there was a table tennis court adjacent to the canteen. At the far left corner, there stood another building called Martin Hall. Later on, I jokingly named this building as Motin Hall, just to give it a Bangali touch.

So what's with Martin hall? Martin hall was, is, and will be a very emotional place for me, throughout my life. It was basically a housing facility for some of the poor, resident, Christian students of NDC. But it also hosted the auditorium, library and computer center. The latter two had been shifted to Ganguly Building during our stay, and probably the auditorium has been shifted as well, by now. Sigh that was nine years ago, and it still feels like yesterday.

I always had an interest in computers, and to be more precise, in gaming. I was a member of the NDC computer club, and my first training at computers began there. I learnt DOS and operated Win 3.11 there. Bookmark 2....will talk more about NDCC later.

Martin hall was the last stop for us. We returned to our classroom after that. A teacher named Gabriel Manik Gomes came in, and told us something very serious, but for some reason, I had to be desperate in order to hide laughter. He said "All religions are basically the same...Muslims say Gibrail, we say Gabriel, they say Isa, we say Jesus, they say Musa, we say Moses. It was a true fact; Jesus was actually the same person as Hajrat Isa (Alaihewassalam). But the depiction of Jesus as God's son is wrong, according to Islam. Anyways, he left soon, and after some time, we were allowed to roam around and have fun on our own.

I liked the college very much. I knew I'd love it. I knew it very moment when I stepped inside. A place so beautiful can't be bad. Alas...I had similar thoughts for IBA as well. Anyways (again), I think I'll talk with Murshid and Pintu and try and get back some more memories of the day. I meet them every Friday, on our weekly adda. But unfortunately we couldn't meet today.
I am sad for this. Can I survive without my friends? God knows.

Why Another one?

If someone asks me why a second (actually a 5th) blog, I don't have a very convincing answer to give. But as the blog namesuggests, I plan to write about my past life here. Yesterday, when I was coming back from my maternal uncle's post-marriage reception, I suddenly started missing my second mama, who died about 2 years ago in a terrible road accident.

A few of my near and dear ones have died. I think I'll write about the memories I have with them, in this blog.

Why blogspot again? I dunno, maybe because I love this place too much.