jlt#4

There is something wonderful about writing pages about your misery. And then deleting all of it just before you wanted to click on the publish button.
Misery is not to be shared. There is enough in the world without my added tuppence, no?
Its strange how I haven’t taken my life for granted yet…

18 Bangladeshi students paid us a visit on Wednesday.

It was supposed to be an idea exchange program about cyclone shelters. There were presentations and design displays. Apprehension, pride and mostly relief. And M.R and Arpan Da actually believed that 40 twenty something students were discussing ramp heights in that huddle. Lol.

We were expecting them to be very alien and vindictive and snobbish… Goodness knows why!! They proved us wrong and made us happy.

They were one of us. In design preferences, proff mimicry, clothes, gadgets and Facebook fetish. Exactly like us. The guys shy and the girls desperate to buy saris for their mums and call their boyfriends when they got back to their hotel rooms. And there language sounded so familiarly sweet.

They were a happy, bubbly lot. All praises for our city, studio, phuchka, Gariahat, traffic control. We gloated like we had created all of those ourselves.

The warmth was incredible. And no matter how cliché it may sound, it did feel like we were meeting old friends.



It is strange how I was meant to be one of them. How I was supposed to know Comilla, Shylet, Dhaka, Rajshahi, Jessore better than just in political maps. But am not and I don’t.
I’ve been thinking. And I’m still not sure how I feel about it.
Thankful? Regretful?
Plain nostalgic, I think, about my country that I never got to know.