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
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
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