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| My words from a lifetime ago, back in black and white. | Photo: Md. Tanjilur Rahman |
I used to write Op-Eds and features for the national dailies in Bangladesh. There was a unique kind of magic back then—seeing my name in print, holding the fresh ink on newsprint, and carefully cutting out every single feature I wrote to build a collection of my work. I used to feel that the smell of a broadsheet with my writing carried the sweetest perfume.
But as time went on, life shifted priorities. At one point, feeling like those old articles belonged to a chapter I had closed, I threw the whole collection away. Eventually, I stopped writing altogether during Covid-19 pandemic. the COVID-19ber my last write-up was a review on the Shesher Kabita, a novel by the most famous writer in Bangla literature, Rabindranath Tagore (the first Asian Nobel laureate and author of the national anthems of Bangladesh and India).
However, after so many years, the past unexpectedly knocked on my door. Out of nowhere, my friend Md. Tanjilur Rahman sent me a few photos on WhatsApp. He was digging through some old papers at home and stumbled upon clippings of my old features that he had kept all this time.
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| Owe this man (Tanjil) a big cup of tea for keeping my archives alive. |
Looking at those pages brought back a rush of memories I thought were gone forever. It turns out, even when you throw away your own history, true friends have a way of holding onto it for you. The clippings in his collection are not yet faded.
I guess I owe him a pretty big "thank you," don't I?
- MD. MIZANUR RAHAMAN MIZAN
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