"It's a kindness that the mind can go where it wishes."
I love where I come from. My hometown is rife with memory. It is always holding a place in my heart, one that’s sticky with nostalgia. I always love to go home to see the faces of nature and human being! I adore home! Somewhere in the middle of all this familiarity and joy sweeps an icy breeze of realization. The place that was once so perfect, warm and inviting — the place that holds and protects all of my longings — begins to feel like a dream.
Memories sustain our conception of home, and there’s a bittersweetness to recognizing that these memories will always live out of reach. There are no new ones to be made. This realization is a moment of growth. It happens in every coming-of-age story, and we experience it when we venture into the outside world.
This is the first time in the last 3 years, I’ve been able to visit my hometown Madaripur in winter. I call this town home not because of the amount of time I spent there, but because of the quality of memories, I hold there. Walking into and through the town, my thoughts were flooded with long-forgotten memories. It was a little overwhelming and hard to process and processing memories that had laid dormant for years was, to say the least, emotional. I was reminded of people, places and experiences that took place all over the town.
Whenever I think about Madaripur, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Padma river. Literally, this river makes me a poet always!
I always try to read the face of nature and face of the human being. I love colors.. I love water, but sometimes I love to see water in black and white, although here was dense fog!
The one thing I am missing most that is Lakepar. I have thousands of memories here. I could not count precisely how many evenings we were here for addabazi! I think those we have been grown up in this town we can separate this place from our child and adulthood memories. Still, it’s mandatory to be here if I am in this town.
You may say it’s twilight… but I have seen the haven at evening …. the beauty of Lakepar!
I already said river make me poet … This is the Arial Kha River. Arial Kha gives a message to us, and that is “beautiful things are calm, might be small but able to make your thoughts big and always welcome you inside of it”. A winter evening waiting for twilight wearing a pink mask……!
It’s good to remember the past so that no matter where we go or how much time has passed, we always remember our roots, where we came from and what made us the person we are today.
I am not longing for any physical place. I am longing for the memories that swim idly in my mind. I no longer feel overpowering homesickness; instead, it’s become an intense nostalgia!
Istiaque Ahmed, From the Diary of Madaripur, 5-7 January 2017
