Thank you

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”

The tearing-skin at the bottom of my feet had goosebumps where the heel gripped it. I was breathing in cold and serenity. Pellets of darkness clouded towards the whiteness of my eyes; few movements from people sounding like the rage of an unlabelled cyclone - poverty. An under confident, class four student, the thought of delivering a speech on a much-hyped topic petrified me to hallucinations; given that if I scored well, that would land me with a highest grade in English.

Stammering, stumbling, miss-pronouncing words and forgetting the existence of anything such as enunciation this scared dot in me drew the line to the end of her speech. It was a cherry blossom one. Made possible by the resonance of the hands of a familiar person, with two big and one small vein; his pistachio eyes boxed in a moon-glass. Smart, bold and extremely emotional, Rashed Sir, my first RAM of knowledge, helped me to believe in myself with an array of praises to follow.

If it was not the standing tall of that moment itself, I would have been someone else, maybe spectacular or absolute crazy. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. William Shakespeare. T.S Eliot. He introduced me to the three dimensions of literature, to the world of wordsmiths where a scribble in the pen can create and destroy zodiacs. Most free periods marched away with us talking with indifference in the voice, beside rain-drenched tins and calculated miles away from the vigour of nonchalance. Someday, sometime when paper planes landed on the grill of window slits of active class-rooms and ayahs expanded their gaze to the haze of a kokil’s house on the distant tree log, I left. Owing my tormenting gratefulness to him, I really left. Kazi Hosneara miss: mesmerizing pretty, outspoken, there was a cliché accompanying her name like sweats on a brooding month, which I from the start of my un-stable class nines tried succumbing. Another new class to graduate, a speaker would emerge into the podium to thank this renowned miss for helping him create a niche for himself. To unleash my potential. To my utter dismay, things turned the violet way down for me in that year: all scurvy and unpredictable.

Mathematics is a passion that one nurtures in the heart like an adorned cobalt aquarium or a gold-bead-with jacket. Tap a finger and you are awestruck from matrixes to permutation. She advised that I believe in myself. A tiny step, her long one, we crossed the bridge for the meadow. Until and unless the drapes dangled down, the final exams ran down its grim pipe, she persistently kept inputting on me. Like we feed morsels of grease to a dish cooked on blazing fire. Never knowing the flame with which it weeps gently. For this, she is a wonderful mentor. Her neatly worn light hue silk saris, long hair made into a bun and the bumping friendliness of body language; her personality was stunning but more than anything the ease with which she taught you to love was it. She taught me to love. Mutter those three words with confidence that I would live up to their grandeur. She taught me to love words, not a language. She taught me to love skills, not rules. She taught me to love the emotions in a book, not its story. She taught me to paint freestyle, dance freestyle and write freestyle. Ayesha miss, I still remember the suppleness with which you blew a kiss on the overcrowded breeze on the last day.

[P.S- Thank You Tazeen miss for being the best Bangla guidebook in this entire world and bringing me up as a patriot.]