I Am Asif

সিলেটে এই নিয়ে ৪র্থ বার আসা , আর প্রতিটা সফরই রীতিমত unique! প্রথমবার , সেই কত বছর আগে ! সেবারই প্রথম ট্যুর এর মজা ' র স্বাদ পেয়েছিলাম । মজাটা আরও অনেক বেশি হয়েছিল কারণ ফ্যামিলির আমরা ৫ জন ছাড়াও সেবার সাথে ছিল আমাদের প্রিয় দাদি , আরও ছিল আমার cousin লাকি আপু । সেই ট্রিপের খুব বেশি কিছু মনে না থাকলেও , সেই ট্রেন এর যাত্রাটা খুব মনে পরে । আরেকটা দৃশ্য ভেসে ওঠে ঝাপসাভাবে । পাহাড়ের উপরে , সবুজের মাঝখানে একটা বাংলো , চারপাশের ঘাসে ঢাকা চত্বরটা ফুলের গাছে ঘেরা । কিনারে গিয়ে ফুলের ঝোপ দুই হাতে সরাতেই ... ।। সুবহানাল্লাহ ! নিচে বহদুর পর্যন্ত ঢেউ খেলে নেমে গেছে চা - পাতায় ঢাকা এক সাগর ! এরকম দৃশ্য সেই প্রথম । ঘুরে বেরানোর প্রতি আমার constant আকর্ষণটা মনে হয় তখন থেকেই শুরু ।

This post is not a very good idea. How can it be? I've decided to mention just a few of my 'friends' here, out of so many. Section A of our batch is like a freak show. Each and every character is unique and has his/her own set of ideas, morals, attitude, pros and cons. So it would be better if I could talk about them all. But instead I'm just going with my short list. For a couple of friends, staying together in the same school, college and university and always in the same section is rarity probably in the whole world. Yet, starting from class four at Udayan School, going through the time at Dhaka City College together and now here at AUST, me and Shuvro have spent 13 friggin years together. Amazed? Even I can't believe it's been that long. But the irony in it is that despite spending such a long time together, me and Shuvro never got to be close friends. Our conversations mostly comprised of me hitting on Shuvro, giving him a healthy dose of pochani , or oth...

Monday morning we started later than we wanted to. We were actually pretty damn tired from the extended amount of walking on the previous day. We checked out of the hotel and kept our baggage at Nahiyan's place, and took a public transport known as tempo here in our country, towards Jaflong. On our way to Jaflong we feasted our eyes with the sight of the huge mountains that are visible across the border, over in India. Well, "the mountains are always higher on the other side of the fence", hehe. The shear magnitude of the mountain range clicked the inquisitive part of my mind, it made me wonder, what secrets lay hidden in those deep valleys covered with trees. There must be places within those mountains and forests that no one has ever set foot upon. Truly Allah's creation is way wider than our thoughts can be. Jaflong is a place that combines sand, stone, and crystal clear water in a fascinating way. It is a tourist spot, yet the place is busy with labor, men ...

The spot that played the chief role in bringing us to Sylhet was the Madhabkunda water falls. On our second day, we started real early towards there in our rented microbus, right after Fajr prayer. The road to Madhabkunda was a beauty itself. Curving this way and that, climbing uphill and going down again, we wished all of our roads were like that. At about 8:30 in the morning, we reached the gates of the Madhabkunda Eco Park , from there a walk of about half an hour in necessary to reach the falls. While walking towards the fall, we already started to feel that we're really gonna like this place. We could see the water from the fall running over the rocks below, at one point we got down from the path into the water just to get our feet wet and take some photos. We kept walking and admiring the beauty of the place, and then we saw it. The water fall itself. The stream of water running down from the top of the hill is like the grand jewel in the crown that is the whole surrounding....

Me, Pulak and Rumman have been calling each other constantly, planning a trip to Sylhet . We all needed a big break, a breath of fresh air after the turmoil that we went through last month. We planned to go to Srimangal directly, instead of going to the city of Sylhet first. We wanted to have some fun on the way, so we booked train tickets. On the night of April 10, Friday, the six of us, me, Pulak, Rumman, Imran, Kanon and Rocky all gathered at the Kamlapur Rail Station in time. As scheduled, our train started for Srimangal at 10:00 p.m. Our seat arrangement was the best we could ask for, six of us facing each other. The whole night we spent awake, gossiping, laughing and constantly hitting on each other. We had some great laughs while playing chor-pulish, a famous pen-and-paper game in our country. It was a moonlit night, so as the train passed beyond the urban areas, the surroundings got more and more spectacular. I spent a lot of time just looking out from my window into the h...