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Writing back

19 August 2004, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Mahfuzul Haque, Department of English, University of Dhaka
19 August 2004, 18:00 PM
I am writing this letter to clarify the 'ambiguity' which Durdana Ghias detected ( "Read only for Pleasure", DS Aug 11, 2004) in my letter "Not for Adolescents". Actually, this ambiguity, this self- contradiction, is my creation to demonstrate the contradictory selves existing within me. It is true that I am tired, exhausted, and want a 'change' but whenever I see the alluring movie clipping , I just swoop on it. It will be pedantic of me to elaborate it by comparing my condition with the condition of "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". Dr Jekyll was trying to retrieve his previous state of life but he was not successful. The story is certainly exaggerated as the writers do it to focus on the vulnerability of a condition. I fear people would laugh at this eccentric comparison but my condition is rather like this.

I just cannot call our parents 'wrong'. The main cause of the urge they felt to forbid us to read Masud Rana was perhaps that they wanted to stay aloof from the intrigues of the content. They perhaps wanted to keep our thinking fresh. It is true that the content in Felu Da or Sherlock Homes (from which I was never kept away) has few intrigues but they were not as crude as in Masud Rana. Dr Watson was always there in utmost tension for his dear friend Homes and Topshey never wanted to part with his beloved Felu Da but this human love always absent in Masud Rana. They were much more intelligent and ingenious in their thinking than Masud Rana. I am also a pleasure seeking person in reading so I left reading Masud Rana because I do not get much pleasure in Masud Rana but even today I get pleasure from Sherlock Homes and Felu Da.

So I compare our parents with the father of our teenage fantasy Robinson Crusoe, who forbade Crusoe from endeavouring the life of a sailor. Crusoe did disobey to undergo a miserable part of life. The theological interpretation of the story proclaimed that Crusoe's father was a god-like person and, and Crusoe had to suffer for evading the words of his father.

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When a person goes by instinct, he hardly leaves any place for the judgement of merit of a thing.