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A favourite book...

17 August 2006, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Kamrul Hasan, BUET
17 August 2006, 18:00 PM
When I was 18 years old once I went to visit one of my kith and kin in his house in a remote village. After passing some days there, on the day of returning I was waiting at the railway station for the train. The train was a little bit late on that day. However, I was wondering around the platform. After a while I saw a man on the platform with a book in his hand. As I am a book-warm I thought that reading a book would help me pass this boring time. I went to that man and requested him to lend me the book. The man treated me very heartily and gave me the book for reading. I sat on a tool on the platform and started reading the book.

After reading some of the pages I felt that it was a superb book. I was turning page after page and was praying in my mind that the train did not come. But after a while the train arrived in the station and I had to return the book to its owner and felt immensely sorry that I could not finish it. During the train journey I was regretting that. After returning to my hometown, I visited every bookstall but failed to find a copy of that book.

After 10 years, at the home of one of my friends I found that book again. I became so much excited that I instantly started reading the book and this time I started reading it from the first page again. But alas! I quite surprisingly observed that the same book did not seem to me so good on this occasion, which had given me immense pleasure once and which I had been looking for so eagerly. After reading the first few pages I just abandoned it.

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This story of Bonophul (Bolaichand Mukherjee) pinpointed the natural evolution of human mind in course of time. Many things in life which a man might have cherished a few years back may not attract him any more. Thus we can recall that famous quote again, "Human mind scatters its interest as though made of thistledown and every wind scatters and moves it."