Glimpse of Bangabandhu through his eyes: ‘Mujib’, a book worth exploring

Reading through three issues of the English version of the graphic novel series "Mujib", based on the life of the Father of the Nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, I was able to go back in time a hundred years when Bangabandhu was born. The colorful animation of the graphic novel showed me how an ordinary boy transformed himself into the voice of a nation. These graphic novels are based on the unfinished memoir written by Bangabandhu himself, while he was in prison serving his term as a political prisoner.

Going through the issues of the series, which have made it to the market, I enjoyed observing the turns and twists of his life, and along with it I also came to know about the history of our country. Before these stories got to the artists' hand, children could hardly have any idea of the famine nearly obliterating a nation before the British colonisation of India was finally calling it a day in 1947. Rarely did they know that Mujib in his prime traveled hundreds of miles to reach out to national leaders with the hope of saving his countrymen from starving.

While growing up in an urban setting these days mostly means getting eyes glued to the screen and fiddling with devices, the life Bangabandhu and his father lived had a world of difference from what we live today. It is interesting to read the story of how the father and the son even quarreled with each other on the playground and that had to be resolved by his teacher. It was a father-son squabble over a game, a friendly gesture between two generations. When the entire world tried to resist Mujib from defying the limit, his father told him to not budge a point from the ideals he lived by. When things were likely to fall apart, rulers wanted him to rot in jail, he heard his wife's voice urging him to write his life stories and journal the experiences he gathered in his life. As his voice for freedom resonates through the hearts of every countryman even today, we would love to have a glimpse of his life through his own eyes. And that makes me wait with bated breath for the next issue of the series to come and for my hands to get on that.

The writer is a student of Class VIII, Scholastica, Dhaka.