Blunder Blender

A blender, or liquidiser in British English, is a kitchen appliance used to mix ingredients or puree food. The term typically refers to a stationary, upright electrical device, which is to be distinguished from a hand-powered or electric mixer that may be used for similar purposes. Blenders are also used in laboratory applications.

Can you think of something that did not exist in 2000 but you simply cannot exist without its existence now? For me, a thing like that would be Wikipedia. Life with and without Wiki is so different that it sounds impossible live without it. When there was no Wiki, some of us would buy the book version of encyclopedia britannica for ready references and instant enlightenment. Later on, some geeks started buying MS Encarta instead. The software looked nice, but it took too much shelf space and hard disk space. So no encyclopedia for me. Back then, if I needed to know about something, frantic google search was the best alternative. But now, for a simple definition and basic information, nothing can beat Wiki.

Before leaving KSA permanently, my mom bought a number of kitchen appliances and utensils for taking along. She thought electronic gadgets would make living in Bangladesh a bit easier. She brought a Moulinex blender. Thanks to Wiki again; I just came to know that the company got bankrupt in 2001, but was later resurrected by a consortium.

For those who are familiar with the device, you already know what a blender does. For those who don't know; please check the "Idiot's guide to Earthling" before landing (and intruding) in our precious planet. Alternately, you could have given a bit more concentration and read the definition I gave in the first paragraph of this article.

This event happened a long, long time ago, so I exactly don't remember how it happened. However, the inevitable became reality and the blender blade broke down. Hence the device became unusable. after giving faithful service for a respectable period My mother did not bring any spare, and there were no Moulinex service centres in our country for making things easy.

At that time, my sister was learning to paint. She used to go to a local painting school. My dad is an architect, and I think his creativity and drawing skills were passed on to me and my sis. to some extent However, it was more prevalent in sis because within a very small time, she started painting really nice pictures. My sketching and painting skills were confined in whatever I was required to draw for my drawing courses. Occasionally, I would also copy some Disney characters and paint them on huge hard papers.

I was really good at copying. Every year, during my, my cousin's and sister's birthday party, I would draw Mickey, Pluto, Minny, Donald and some others in to the hard paper and paint them using my Staedtler color pencils that I brought from KSA. Me and my sis both were crazy about the Staedtler color pencils. We had two boxes; one with 24 colors and a picture of a Kingfisher upon it. This box was brought from KSA. The other box was a gift for my sister on her birthday ; my dad b0ught it from New Market. It had a polar bear on the label and contained 36 pencils; as far as I remember. I still have a memorable photograph of my sister intently painting something whilst sitting on the bed with the color pencil box in opened state. The bed sheet is maroon colored, and everything looks very cute, nice and colorful in that photograph. And yes, she was tiny back then.

All these sketching and painting was less than a hobby to me. My real hobby was playing video games and later on, listening to music. So I wouldn't draw unless it was needed. However, even today when I see a pencil, pen and paper and I get some free time, I start drawing something. I wish I gave art a bit more time. Maybe I wouldn't have ended doing the boring and non-creative job I am doing now. I might have quit drawing, but drawing never deserted me. That is what happens with your best of friends. You may leave them, but they never leave you. Their wishes will always be with you. I have experienced a number of situations, where my drawing ability helped me remarkably. I was not betting on drawing to get 99 in my economics mid term, nor was I expecting to become part of the most creative team during a training. All I had to do was draw a cartoon character who held a vicious looking axe in his hand, but was brandishing a child's smile. I even forgot to give the character (affectionately called "Kopa Shamsu") enough hair.

My mom was kind of lost, now that the blender blade is gone. She ransacked the town but couldn't find a suitable replacement. To make things worse, no one was arriving from abroad in near future; so chances of "importing" a replacement was thin. At that time, Nana (my grandfather, father of my mother) decided to go for Hadj; which came as a blessing to us. During his pilgrimage trip, he could easily check some electronics shop and get the replacement blade.

But the real problem was to ensure that Nana is asking for the right thing. How to do that? We thought about different ways and means, but no feasibile solution came out. None of the ideas could be implemented with existing resources; even taking a pic would require 2-3 days as the picture would have to be developed in the studio. Of course, we didn't have digital cameras back then!

We didn't have much time, so I decided to take things in to my hand. I took the blade from my mother, and sat on the dining table with my sketchbook and a Staedtler HB and a 6B pencil. HB was for drawing, and 6B was for applying shades. Back then, most Staedtler pencils came in a yellow-black colored design, but the 6B pencil was blue with a few black areas.

I'd love a 4B, because 6B is too blunt, and it is very hard to work with. Still, I made good use of my tools and within an hour or so, I came up with a passable image of the blender blade.

I polished the image by applying shade and I also cleaned up some extra shades and outlines. I was really glad with my work, and I gave it to my mother. She was surprised, but did not ask any further questions.

My mom took the image and went to grandfather's. I did not go. My father went there from office, and finally came back home with mom. By then I almost forgot about my art. Seeing my dad, the day's event came back in to my mind, and I went up to him and asked "dad did you see my sketch of the blender blade? was it okay?".

My dad is very scrooge like, when it comes to giving compliments to his children. Maybe he thinks this as a good way of raising children--if children gets more compliments, they will become proud and they will no longer feel motivated to get better at what they are already good; fair enough....Now.

Anyway, as an extremely rare incident, dad gave me a whole hearted praising that day. He said "The sketch was really good. It looked just like the real blade".

If I would get compliments every day and night, I wouldn't have spent so much time writing about that day in my blog. So I guess my father's strategy was good, and it still is.

Okay, there were no blunders with the blender that time. But I stole the title from a friend of mine. Why? I don't know. Maybe it sounds nice, that is why. This blog is dedicated to her.

This Boy

November 6, 2003
This boy started his first full time job in Grameen Phone as an officer, Market Research and Development under the Sales and Marketing division.

July 26, 2005
Last day of work at GP after serving a 1 month notice period. No tears, no hard feelings--just a little bit of sadness and a lot of hastiness to get away as soon as possible.

July 27, 2005
First day in banglalink in a senior position. Lots of new hopes, lots of disappointments. Who knew Value Added Services would be this much fun?

April 2007
First "real" promotion; the boy got promoted to VAS Assistant Manager. He ruled.

April 2008
The boy heard that he was being transferred to Market Development division as Assistant Manager, Market Development Postpaid.

May 1, 2008
This boy started working. He knows people has great expectations regarding him....will he be able to prove himself, once again?

Wish me luck!

Ancient Rainy Days

I often thought about writing something regarding rain. How important is rain, to me? I spent my childhood in a desert infested country; Saudi Arabia. In that country, it rains twice or thrice a year and rain is never a too welcome phenomenon over there. I remember seeing scared people staying back at their homes on a rainy day and evening. I was quite young back then. We returned to Bangladesh when I was just 8 years old. It still amazes me how much memory (with often adequate and clear details) is still left with me, even after so many years.

Like on one particular rainy day, I remember traveling in our blue Honda Civic car. Mom and dad went to shop, and I was taken along. That was obvious, as there were not another soul in our house who could take care of me while the parents were away. The time was around 7 PM, and it was heavily raining.

Anyways, our car stalled in a traffic red signal. When the signal turned green, dad started the car. Just beside our car, another car was standing. A typically dressed turban clad Arab guy was driving that car. Suddenly, there was lightning. This is probably my earliest memory of experiencing a lightning. I saw the whole car getting white, and in that extra light, I could see the frightened look of that Arabian person. He stopped the car with a loud screeching noise. I wasn’t too startled at the sound of lighting. Now when I’m looking back to this very old memory, I guess the lack of fear in me was caused due to two reasons. Firstly, I come from a country of rainfall, and rain and anything related to it is programmed in my genes as “non-harmful”, beautiful elements. Secondly, perhaps I was taught about rainfall and storms some other time by my parents. Or at least I had some pre-conceptions about the phenomenon. I clearly remember fearing neither the rain nor the lightning.

I’d wait to see the rainy days. I still don’t know why this happened. Maybe the genes had to do something with it?

On such a rainy evening, my sister was born.

When my mom had to be transferred to the hospital, dad had to leave me with another Bangladeshi family. As I have already mentioned, leaving me alone at home was out of question. So, I was dropped off to the home of Kamal Uncle. For me, it was a bittersweet situation. I was somewhat friendly with the daughter of Kamal uncle, but she was older than me and had different priorities. Back then I was really fond of playing with toy cars, but I was not allowed to bring more than 3 cars. My mom bought me these cars just before leaving for the hospital. All three were jeep cars. But one can only play a while with only three cars.

Mou used to go to school early in the morning, and return really late—almost in the evening. I was excused from going to school. I was a student of class 1 then. That was year 1987. The teacher game me a lot of home work, but I didn’t like doing them at all. I think I didn’t finish all of the homework whilst staying in that place.

My tenure in their house was mostly a bitter experience. Throughout the day, I’d remain extremely bored. Kamal uncle was a serious person, and I didn’t like her wife at all. The lady would talk too much, and she’d always try to make some stupid jokes, which I seldom found funny. The TV preference was weird, too. Kamal uncle used to watch NEWS and anything and everything relatively boring. To make things worse, I wasn’t allowed to turn on the TV whenever I wanted to, as “Uncle would get angry if I touch the remote”. So I was missing all the cool cartoon shows that I really wanted to see. Also, my favorite channel, CTN (Children’s Television Network) was not available there. However, I vaguely remember watching a new series called “Thundersub” in a channel.

On one particular day, I wasn’t allowed to have dinner till late in the evening. Uncle was apparently bringing chicken, which the aunt would apparently cook for me. Also apparently, “I will not touch rice if it is not accompanied by Chicken” (murgi na thakle to chele bhaat ey haat ee dibe na)—this was one statement made by the woman, for which I’ll never forgive her.

That was a moment of revelation for me. I realized that I wasn’t really wanted or welcomed in that house; at least not by this lady. She took me in just because she had to. Although, the statement above might seem deceiving; anyone can assume that she was actually caring for me, and waiting for the chicken to arrive. But actually she was highly annoyed, and her vocal tone showed it.

Haha…or maybe this is just a childhood grudge that I’ve just brought up from my memories? I don’t think I will get an answer to this question in this lifetime. Sadly, we have no sort of communication with this family since we returned to Bangladesh. In the beginning, we would get some news, like they moved to Malaysia, Mou married a Malaysian guy, etc. etc., but it’s been a while since I last heard anything about them.

So, I had to wait till about 10 or 11 PM to get dinner. I was a 7 year old kid, and the hunger was unbearable for me. I tried taking things in to my hand, and I was caught while spreading cheese on a piece of bread. I was just going to take one piece of bread. But Alas! The foul lady appeared from nowhere and scolded me. “Have patience! Uncle is coming with the chicken”. I was like duhhh.

The funniest bit is, Mou was fed and sent to bed a long time ago, because she had “Classes In The Morning”. That incident angered me even more. She was given whatever food was available (which was not that bad), but I wasn’t given anything then.

No matter how bad things were, I heard the best news of my small life during that stay. One evening, I was taking a bath. There was this somewhat huge bowl in the bathroom, on which I was sitting and playing with water. The bowl was filled with water, and I was also occasionally turning on and off the shower. If anyone’s reading this, don’t laugh! You have to remember; I was a 7 year old kid only. The door was ajar, and suddenly I heard the voice of Kamal Uncle. He was saying “Tonmoy, tomar ekta bon hoyeche”. This means, a baby sister is born! I was so happy! I was always hoping for a sister from the very beginning. I was not told anything silly by my parents about this birth; like “Your mom is sick” and stuff. I knew that I’d be having a bhai or a bon, and I was hoping for a bon. I was happy, and when I was sure that all other members of the household are quite far away, I came out of the bowl and did a few jumps of joy. I came out of the shower, and that’s the last memory I have about my staying in their house.

I was moved to another house for the rest of the days. These days were happier, and I had a better time staying there. I even lost a tooth during that period. But that’s a different story.

Wasn’t this going to be my earliest memories of seeing rainfall? Well, I just told that story. Hope you liked it.

HSC Math Exam

I had to photocopy and attest all my certificates and mark sheets a few days back. I needed the documents for submitting with the MBA admission form. Due to this, my sister got a chance to look at my SSC and HSC scores. This was not a good thing for me at all, as my results were horrible for HSC. Especially the math exam--I managed to score only 49 out of 100. It was a narrow escape! Let me revisit that period today.

It was back in year 1998. Yes, I was over confident. Over confidence got me. I would always give myself a false feeling of safety that there will be enough time for gulping the readables. However, it didn't happen that way. I found myself in fear of failing two subjects just 3 months before the exam. Since then, I devoted most of my time in those subjects, so that I don't fail. This created an imbalance in my exam preparations. With two subjects taking up most of my time, I could not revise some other subjects properly. Math first paper being one of them.

The HSC exam taught me a good lesson in managing multiple projects (!) at the same time. Although at that time, I had no idea that someday I will actually be managing multiple projects. Am I ashamed of my poor HSC results? Not at all; they taught me a lot.

So as the HSC exams approached, I finally realized that I need to tough mathematics. But at that time, my brain got in to a kind of numbness whereby no matter how much I like to study, I ended up doing other stuff. And I had all these note books, where I had all the math problems solved and copied nicely. I thought these note books will be my savior--they gave me a false sense of protection.

How wrong I was. At the final hours, I force adopted a strategy of memorizing all the theories so that I can answer them instead of solving maths. Eventually, when the exam day drew nearer, I was done with memorizing the most probable theory question answers. Back then we had an option to either answer theoretical questions or solve maths. Most students would answer the maths, as they took less time and hereby they could get more time for revising and attempting all questions.

But me, being a short sighted fool, started off with answering two theoretical questions in a row. It took me about 90 minutes to finish writing these two answers, but they did not represent more than 30% of the whole script. Thus, I was left with 70% work to be completed with 50% time. I panicked, and started solving problems hastily. The result was disastrous; I failed to get the correct answers for 2 or 3 different math problems. This disheartened me, and by then I was dreading failure and extreme embarrassment.

Thanks to God, I soon recollected myself, and utilized the remaining time in solving some problems which eventually secured my passing. The passing number was 33, and I got 49. I think the examiner was a bit lenient and he gave me a few extra points.

I partly blame my Maths teacher at college for this dismal performance of mine. Why? Because he was the one who inserted the idea of answering theoretical questions in to my brain. He also lengthened the answers by adding his own stuff in it, which I actually memorized. His answers were nice to look at but too long for a 3 hour exam.

When I got out of the exam, I was confident that I will pass. I also knew that my marks will be really bad. This fear haunted me until the day I received my results. Surely, no one was happy to see me failing to achieve star marks. But no one realized that I was the one who was suffering the most—all my friends, my cousins and almost everyone I knew did better than me. I was the star kid in the BBA coaching centre. I, almost always, scored the highest marks in the tests. Well, after the results, things changed. People started giving me pitiful looks, and my confidence level was really shattering.

My family supported me, but I expected more support from them. Ah well, maybe they did the right thing. They reacted really badly, and I was almost always reminded how I disowned the family and what a disgrace I was. Sometimes I thought about putting an end to this torment, but I was too cowardly to commit suicide. So I had to bear with it, and I emerged as the winner.

But that's a different story.....

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.