Dreams
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I hadn't even gotten into university yet. It never once crossed my mind that I'd study statistics. I wanted to read computer science. But I didn't get the chance. So before classes started, I had a dream. A strange dream. I saw the reign of Chandragupta II of the Mauryan dynasty. In his court sat the Navaratna—the nine jewels. Let me explain: the Navaratna in a king's council means nine members, each brilliant in their own field—one a jester, one a poet, one a musician, one an astrologer, and so on. In my dream, one of these nine jewels was Jibanananda Das! I found it quite amusing. This modern poet sitting in an ancient king's court! Then during my university years, I had another peculiar dream. I saw myself going to Sukumar Ray, and he was pouring some syrup for making Coca-Cola into a bottle for me. What an odd dream!
You're thinking I'm making all this up just to fool you, aren't you? If I had some kind of nameplate or credential on me, would you dare say such a thing? How many absurd dreams have you thoughtlessly swallowed and digested in this life! Ah, just because I don't have that badge, you think…
Never mind. Let me tell you a real dream instead. What do you say? Listen, just hear me out! This was the first dream I saw in my life, and perhaps the last that mattered. I was in class three then. I received my first proposal of love. The boy was in class four! He didn't propose directly—sent word through a friend. And we'd never really spoken. The poor thing hovered around me! I was insufferable, I tell you. I carried myself as if I were the supermodel Naomi Campbell! I wouldn't give him the time of day. The boy tried all sorts of ways to get my attention. And I wouldn't even let him come near me. Once I even had my older sister give him a piece of my mind! But the boy was well-known at school among the teachers. He sang well. He was a crush for all the girls in his class.
Around that time, like in a Bengali film, I gathered a little circle of girlfriends. Their sole job was to see that boy and his friends and giggle with their hands over their mouths, elbowing me constantly! I was so annoyed. Turns out these girls fell for him and his friends just like the supporting actresses in Bengali movies! Once it happened that on the school stairs, I bumped into him like a hero and heroine in a Bengali film! That was it—the whole class spread the rumor that I'd deliberately bumped into him!
Anyway, back to the main point. One morning, early. The call to prayer had just finished or was about to start. In my dream, I saw a truck or pickup parked in front of our house, carrying a corpse wrapped in white burial cloth. The body of a tall, broad-shouldered woman. I saw that boy lying across the body, weeping. It was probably his mother. I woke up. I was sweating. What a horrible dream!
I went to school in the morning. First class was with Huzoor Sir. Right in the first class, one of that boy's friends came to our classroom and whispered something to the sir. Later I found out that the boy's mother had died just a short while before! The boy had come to ask the class teacher for leave. I heard he'd wanted to talk to me too. We never spoke again in our lives. The boy's name was Nobel. I heard that later he became a model.
This dream was a true one, worth remembering in my life. Many years later, I learned that the boy's mother was indeed tall and broad-shouldered, exactly as I had seen her in my dream. She had died of a heart attack.
# The Gift
The saddest part was that the boy had spoken about me to his mother the day before she died.
I knew nothing about that boy before the dream. So how did everything match up? I still haven’t found any explanation for this dream!
## The Suitor
—
One afternoon last year, out of nowhere, my sister’s school principal turned up with two colleagues and swept my sister and me into his private car. We were heading to Gulshan. To his brother’s place, he said. But the purpose of our abduction remained a mystery. Off we went to an unfamiliar destination, speeding through the city. We arrived at a palatial home and sat in a luxuriously appointed drawing room. Every piece of furniture, every knickknack spoke of aristocracy. It took another twenty or thirty minutes of waiting for the purpose to become clear: I’d been brought as a prospective bride for the brother-in-law of the principal’s husband. Within moments, the boy and his mother would arrive at the girl’s house. They also lived in Gulshan.
The boy’s father was a massive businessman—one of the top ten richest men in the city. Usually that alone was credentials enough. In this society, there’s only one measure of a man’s worth: money. Here, men are weighed on the scales of commerce like merchandise. By that standard, this pampered son of a wealthy house, subordinate to his father’s empire, was a gleaming, desirable, supremely valuable product for the girl’s family.
The boy sat across from me on the sofa. He’d gone to North-South International School. He spoke only in English, never Bengali. When I saw him, my head spun. I couldn’t look at him for shame—not shame for myself, but for him. His massive frame labored under the weight of his bloated belly; his trousers clung to their precarious edge, making a futile last stand against humiliation. To marry and have to bear this bulk—I could barely look at it now, let alone imagine the future.
His mother was extremely modern, extremely gracious. She’d cooked biryani and saffron vermicelli and pudding with her own hands. That’s what wealth does—it operates differently. Later, I was taken to a separate room so the boy and I could talk alone. He was the indulged son of the rich—vapid, affectionate, utterly malleable. Whatever he asked, I answered with calculated confidence. I even ventured that I wanted to study abroad. I thought that might discourage him. But it had the opposite effect. He looked at me with doubled interest. I didn’t know what to do.
After a while, I offered up, with a certain flair, “My Facebook name is Nishigandhabithika.” The poor fellow, seized by redoubled enthusiasm, fumbled his expensive mobile out of his trouser pocket—wedged precariously below his navel—and began searching with feverish speed. But God, in His occasional cruelty, had other plans. The boy had no capacity to search for Bengali names in Bengali script. His fancy phone didn’t even have a Bengali keyboard installed.
And that’s where the rich man fell silent. That’s where wealth and pretense ended. Because his English-ringtone phone had no app for the untouchable language that is Bengali. After many failed attempts, he pleaded with me to send him a friend request instead. I hummed and hawed, and that night I took my leave.
The boy consented. Therefore, his mother consented. Therefore, his father—why wouldn’t he?—consented. The girl also consented. She particularly loved his future mother-in-law and his sister. Everything was settled. Except the boy himself was still unwelcome.
**P.S.** This morning the principal called my sister. The boy—the one named Saka, massive and hulking—had a stroke last night and died.
## Character
Character has nothing to do with profession.
People say teachers have bad character, others say doctors do, or police, or something else entirely. I don’t believe any of it. Every profession has good people, and every profession has bad ones too. My friends list is packed with high-profile names. Plenty of them message me trying to get my attention—I block most. Let me tell you about three cases.
**1.** A doctor’s son who lives in China. He got his medical degree there. He used to bother me constantly in my inbox, bragging about connections—saying he’s related to this person, that he’s close to that one, how his family is so powerful, and if I stay in touch with him I’ll gain so much! When I didn’t reply, he sent me obscene videos. I blocked him.
**2.** This man’s a teacher at a public university. Quite famous. Writes regularly in papers like The Daily Star, First Alô. You see him on talk shows all the time. He speaks beautifully—listening to him is mesmerizing. Around fifty. No wife now, though he may have had one or more. He writes wonderfully on Facebook and has published books. Countless women admire him, naturally. And here’s the thing—he gives *me* time! With genuine warmth, even. *Too* much warmth, actually. So much that it doesn’t feel like kindness anymore; it feels like a nuisance. He keeps asking to meet, wants to give me foreign gifts, talks about sending money through bKash. I’m too intimidated by his stature to even block him.
**3.** A Facebook celebrity. Verified account. Everyone knows his anxiety about the country, society, current affairs, statecraft, politics. He messages me sometimes. When? At special moments. Maybe when he’s feeling lonely. Maybe when he wants to see a woman in a sari. Maybe when he’s been drinking and needs someone private to turn to. He’s made a near-art form of bothering women!
There are many others. Some I block, some I don’t. Why don’t I block some? I enjoy analyzing human nature. I like seeing up close the distance between a face and its mask. I like watching these towering figures come undone before a girl, beg forgiveness… it fascinates me. Yes, you’ve guessed right—I’m a bad girl. And you men, every one of you, are something else.
—
**Himu**
**———————**
In my life so far, I’ve known three ‘Himus.’ But each one exists in the enclosure of a different relationship.
Fifteen years ago, I met the first Himu—my ex. He was the most innocent, upright man I’ve ever known. Modest and devout. But we shared one trait: we were both fiercely stubborn. It was stubbornness that made me lose him. I broke up with him out of sheer stubbornness. The boy was an orphan, poor, a fighter. After the breakup, he wept for a year, then married and settled into a life.
I once read in a poem by Kamini Roy: *”The Creator does not neglect a man’s tears.”* I think I’m still atoning for the hurt I caused him by sending him away. Yet it’s also true—our marriage would never have been happy. By society’s measure, he was beneath me. In this world, happiness is gauged only by numbers and status. To love someone so much less educated, so much poorer, and walk against the current—it was too great a challenge for me to take on.
Society would never let me be happy.
—
Even after all these years, he hasn’t forgotten me. Even now, he calls sometimes to check in. My mother and brother have both passed—I’ve prayed the funeral prayers for them both. He prays for them every day. I don’t feel romantic love or affection for him anymore. What I feel instead is trust, friendship, respect. I’d thought that if I ever got married, I would invite him. To be honest, I’ve spent half my life in caprice, stubbornness, willfulness. I’m an intensely emotional woman. The kind of person who doesn’t think in logic but acts against it—always. How many times have I stumbled into danger! Yet somehow, some great power has rescued me each time.
And still, I’m not particularly grateful to the Creator. After all the scars life has given me, here I am now, suspended between belief and disbelief in God. I cannot fully believe, yet I see no reason to disbelieve. I, who act against logic in all things, only in theology do I search for logic. I find no logic in so much of religion. And whatever I cannot find logic in, I cannot practice from the heart. Yet there were moments when I offered myself as a sacrifice at God’s altar. Through meditation and prayer, I built a bridge of communication with God. I entered some strange world—neither real nor unreal. In this communion with the divine, I felt myself a woman of impossible strength, a superpower woman. I want to surrender myself to God again. I want to reestablish that connection. I need mental redemption and peace. I need healing.
—
Now I’ll speak of the second “Himu” who entered my life. This person is either a god or a demon. I have never met anyone so inexplicable in this lifetime.
It was late last year. I fell into a severe depression. I didn’t have the courage to take my own life, and besides, I was at least somewhat afraid of the afterlife. What could I do? There was nothing left but this half-life, this slow suffocation. So I threw myself into prayer. I’d pray two extra rakats at each time of prayer, weeping to Allah for a warrant of death. I’d walk carelessly through the streets, hoping for an accident.
One day at a bus stand, I stood without flinching in front of an oncoming truck. The truck was bearing down. A woman standing nearby, trying to cross, scolded me: “The way you’re standing there—what if the truck hits you?” I said flatly, “Then I’ll die.” She replied, “You won’t die—you’ll be crippled.” Her words frightened me. I stepped back. I was ready to die, but I was not ready to be paralyzed.
It was in exactly such a time that one day I received a message from a stranger in my inbox. Let me be clear: I don’t accept friend requests from everyone. I add people who write, paint, sing, or are involved in some creative work. Someone could be at the highest level of society, but if they lack creativity, I’ll never keep them on my friends list. I feel no attraction to conventional people without creativity. I also have a mental issue: if someone messages me in my inbox with just a casual “hi-hello,” I unfriend them immediately. But if they write anything else or ask me something genuine, I don’t do that.
So this stranger wrote something like this: I teach philosophy as a hobby. I want to run an experiment with my teaching technique. If you’re interested, I’d like to teach you.
# The Teacher
Maybe you yourself could be a philosophy teacher!
When I saw this strange message—someone volunteering to teach in this day and age—my brow furrowed. And the first thought that crossed my mind, as it does for every self-interested Bengali, was: Will he charge a fee, or teach for free? Ah, how cheap knowledge has become for us! So worthless that we want it handed over for nothing. As if wisdom were something too trivial to be bought with money—at least, not for Bengalis. So I replied to him. I asked why he wanted to teach, what his intentions were, whether he expected payment. I sent the message with these questions.
What he wrote back in response—I don’t think I need to record that here. You’ll understand it all from what comes next.
The classes began. On the virtual platform, this man had many students. Among them were people in their sixties and sixties. I joined as a new student myself. His teaching method was quite different. First, we had to send a picture—not of ourselves, but of something from nature that we liked. Along with it, we had to write something about ourselves that we’d never told anyone. We also had to write something about the life of the person closest to us—thoughts that we could never have dared to speak aloud to that person. There were many other strange things too.
That was the icebreaker session of our interaction! After that came what he called “thought-projection.” This meant sharing with him things about myself and the world around me that I didn’t understand, but wanted to. The condition was that we couldn’t borrow anyone’s philosophy or theory—we had to write entirely in our own way. Then came the writing assignments. He would give us various topics to write about. Not by looking up references, not by asking anyone else—just whatever came into our heads, we had to write it. If nothing came, we had to force something out. He would send links to certain articles, and we had to write about them entirely in our own way—no copying a single word from the article. If there were mistakes in our writing, it didn’t matter. He would immediately point out the error, explain why it was wrong, and how it should have been written, all on a notepad which he’d photograph on his phone and send us.
Oh yes, I should mention his four conditions—the rules we all had to follow. First, we could never ask him for his phone number, but we could call him anytime on Messenger. Second, we could never ask to meet him in person. (It’s worth noting that he never posts his own picture on Facebook.) Third, whatever we discussed in private messages or voice calls with him—no one in this world except him and me could ever know about it. Fourth, even if by some chance we ever ran into him in person, we could tell no one about it.
Doesn’t it seem mysterious? Be patient and read on. You’ll come to understand this man of mystery better.
One day I messaged him saying, Brother, I have so many problems with my English! He sent me samples of various basic English rules and exercises. He has a large library. He searched through it carefully and sent me a list of books that would help me learn the nuances of English easily. After that, he took it upon himself to teach me English! Not only that, he would check whether I was actually studying the way he asked me to. He created exercises himself and sent them to me. He’d give me topics and ask me to write about them in English and send them back. Whenever I made a mistake, he would patiently correct it for me.
# What’s Wrong and Why: An Explanation with Examples
The passage you’ve shared is actually quite well-written—the narrative voice is clear, the character is vivid, and the emotional arc is compelling. However, there are some areas where the prose could be tightened and made more elegant. Let me point out the key issues:
—
## 1. **Redundancy and Over-explanation**
**Problem:** The text sometimes explains what it has just said, weakening the impact.
**Example:**
> “কোনও কাজে নিজেকে ইনভলভড করতে হলে তা-ই করতেন।”
This repeats what was just said about solving problems.
**Better approach:** Trust the reader. State it once, powerfully.
—
## 2. **Mixing Registers Awkwardly**
**Problem:** The use of English words (“ইনভলভড,” “ইনবক্স,” “ভেরি কনফিডেনশিয়ালি,” “ডেডলাইন”) interrupts the Bengali flow without clear purpose.
**Example:**
> “উনি প্রতিটি আলাদা আলাদা করে পড়েন, এবং প্রতিটির ব্যাপারেই প্রতিজনের সাথে ইনবক্সে কথা বলেন।”
**Better:** Replace with natural Bengali: “প্রাইভেট মেসেজে” or simply contextualize it differently.
—
## 3. **Parenthetical Asides That Break Rhythm**
**Problem:** The long parenthetical about the narrator’s brother’s death, while emotionally important, disrupts the flow and feels grafted on.
**Example:**
> “(আমার বড়ো ভাইয়া যখন মৃত্যুর সাথে লড়ছেন…)”
**Better:** This deserves its own moment, separate from the parenthesis—perhaps as a short, poignant paragraph that breathes.
—
## 4. **Conversational Filler That Clouds Meaning**
**Problem:** Phrases like “ব্যাপারটা এমন” (the matter is like this) and “একদম সব সময়ই!” (absolutely all the time!) are colloquial padding.
**Better:** Use them sparingly for effect, not as a default habit.
—
## 5. **Weak Verb Constructions**
**Problem:** Passive or indirect phrasings dilute urgency and clarity.
**Example:**
> “আমাদের উনি রীতিমতো সম্মোহিত করে রেখেছিলেন।”
This is good, but later:
> “এবং সেটা অবশ্যই আমাদের কাউকে জানতে না দিয়ে।”
**Better:** Make it active and direct where possible.
—
## 6. **Repetition of Structure**
**Problem:** Too many sentences beginning with “উনি” or “আমি” creates monotony.
**Example:**
> “উনি ছিলেন অনেকটা… উনি কিন্তু বেকার নন… উনি ফেসবুকে একটা গ্রুপ খুলেছেন…”
**Better:** Vary sentence openings and structures for rhythm.
—
## **What Works Well:**
– The concrete details (9-to-5 job, Facebook group, Manick Bandyopadhyay reference) are excellent
– The emotional honesty (“ভয়ে আমি ফেসবুকেই আসি না”)
– The voice is authentic and intimate
– The final paragraph’s vulnerability is powerful
—
## **In Summary:**
This isn’t “wrong”—it’s a **first draft that needs editorial polish**. The bones are strong; the flesh just needs tightening. Cut redundancy, trust the reader’s intelligence, vary your rhythm, and let emotion breathe without explanation. The story of this mysterious mentor figure is too compelling to be cluttered by conversational tics and padding.
There are deeply personal issues I haven’t even told my closest friends, yet I’ve shared them all with this brother. Every burden, every confession—I deposit them with him. This man is a sorcerer of sorts, working miracles to lift my depression.
Through him, I’ve learned to dream again. Whenever I’ve stumbled in this world, I’ve sought shelter at his door. All my fears have vanished! In Humayun Ahmed’s stories, there are certain people who possess a strange power to mesmerize others. This brother is exactly that kind of person. The day my ID got disabled, I called him immediately and handed over my password. Without a second thought, without even trying myself, I simply surrendered everything to him and walked away unburdened. By the way, this brother writes too. He’s one of the few people in Bangladesh who writes poetry in the acrostic form.
Dear reader, you might be thinking—this man must have ulterior motives. Or perhaps a romantic relationship is brewing between us! No. In this world, aren’t relationships of genuine affection the finest? But there are other trustworthy bonds beyond that. This man is one such bond for me. He is my revered, selfless elder brother. At the beginning, I said about him: he is either a god or a devil. Nothing in between at all! I’ve read in Humayun Ahmed’s books that great men have sometimes been godfathers in the shadows. Even if that were true, I wouldn’t mind. I read somewhere that trusting everyone is dangerous, but trusting no one is even more dangerous.
To this day, I’ve never known if this brother carries any pain in his heart. He never speaks about himself to anyone. He is married, a father of two. By family standards, he considers himself extraordinarily happy. For the past fourteen years, he has carried the sorrows and despair of countless people in his chest. By sheer coincidence, he befriends all those who suffer. These people, thinking of him as their own, hand over all their pain to him. And he walks through this city like a Himu, bearing their burdens. When I got my job, the first call I made was to my father. The next one was to this brother. I told him, “Brother, I’m crying!” He said, “Then cry.”
Tears filled his eyes too. He was crying as well. Why, I don’t know.
**P.S.** I haven’t explained why this brother messaged me on Facebook, nor how he knew who I was. As I’ve already said, when I first met him, I was in severe depression about certain matters. My close friend had discussed my situation with her older brother. That brother, Ragib, was a member of the ‘Philosophy Class’ group. He’s the one who told this mysterious man about me. Later, I learned this from my friend and made contact with Ragib. For a time, we spoke on the phone every day. On the day we were supposed to meet, Ragib died in a road accident on his way to see me.
I have made a decision: the man who showed me a path to survival—I will spend the rest of my life carrying his memory in my heart. I won’t need another Himu after this.