That was the golden period of my life. I was memorizing the Holy Quran. That’s the toughest time of our student life. Also, the greatest opportunity of achieving glory.
Day or night and morning or evening- we were busy all the time only with the Quran. Our one and only task was reading and memorizing, listening and reciting, for more than 15-16 hours every day. Without some basic needs like eating, sleeping, or getting freshened there was nothing to do for us.
There was almost no opportunity to play or go anywhere or meet someone we love. And we were happy with that. How? …
That’s a question and an impossible kind of question that no one can understand properly only without us- students of the Quran.
These days, we used to get an opportunity for an extra two hours only on Friday for cleaning our clothes and other personal needs. One Friday when we went to the mosque for Jumah prayer, I saw a magazine. Its cover was amazing.
Although that was a mosque some senior students used to live there, on the 5th floor of the mosque. I took a place nearby that magazine and started to look at the page after page.
A story of the magazine touched my heart, but that was unfinished- a continuous novel for kids. That was the beginning of my out-syllabus reading again after getting admitted to the madrasah.
Every Friday I used to finish all types of works so quickly and be present to the mosque for reading that novel. After some days I felt that I’m in love with ‘reading’. My period of memorizing the Holy Quran was finished within these days with excellent results. So I started to read whenever I got the opportunity, where-ever I went or whatever I found in front of my eyes- stories, thriller novels, comics, magazines, newspapers, and everything.
In my opinion- this continuous and large scale of reading was the main reason for my falling love with writing.
With the help of a senior brother when I learned some rules of writing rhymes, I started to play with matching words and their rhythms, everywhere and about every aspect of life or things around.
That was the starting, actually starting off my childish efforts! I was trying, but I could not get satisfaction anyhow. There was always an unhappy feeling and a kind of tension within my mind.
I wanted to say something to the society, to the people but did not know-how. I was writing whenever I got the opportunity. When my classmates were busy with extra study or to correct and beautify their handwriting, I used to write something or play with words of rhymes especially every morning and afternoon.
My class reports started to become poor and exam results started getting down day by day.
My own elder brother forcefully changed my educational institute, that’s why I went into more depression. I was writing letters to the editors of different magazines to guide me on what to write and how to write, but there were no replies from anywhere.
I was aware of what I am doing, but I didn’t exactly know- what could I do at that moment. Now I can understand what kind of childish acts I was doing. That was my emotion and ambition.
It may wrong in normal thinking, but can be right for the boy who is trying to become a writer. These days I used to write about my golden childhood, different funny incidents of time. I used to write about wrong or right that is happening around me.
And almost all of these were big and long for me as a beginner. That’s why any of my friends weren’t ready to read my writings.
One day I have written a letter in the name of my most favorite poet at that time, but I didn’t know his address. So I sent it to the editor of the magazine in which he used to write almost every month. I kept a coin of 5 taka in the cover and added an extra cover letter in the name of the editor requesting him to send my letter to that poet!
The next month when I opened the magazine, I was completely surprised seeing both letters are printed in the reader’s page word by word with my full name and address.
I was happy and also kind of ashamed. Happy for seeing my own name in the favorite magazine for the first time and ashamed for being my personal letter printed openly. But this situation did not remain the same for a long time. I became fully satisfied and happy just after two days when a senior brother came to our class to find me.
He said his name and I was surprised again because he was a writer and I was familiar with his name. He said to meet him in the afternoon with my writings. After seeing and reading my writings, he said that these are awesome. He advised me to just keep writing.
I returned thinking that he is saying like this for only encouraging me. But he met with me the next morning with three of my writings. He said to make some fresh copies of these and meet him again.
He did not cut or throw away any of my writings but made some awesome changes by adding a few lines or deleting some others. He gave an attractive headline for selected writings and sent these to different magazines.
From that day I started to believe that I can also write. I have something special. That was the moment of my dream.
After that day my thinking started to turn into my belief; and get more and more powerful seeing my writings on the different magazines, meeting with the writers, talking with the editors.
My first article published in the magazine before my age was 15. There were 4 years of long duration between the day of falling in love with reading and publishing my first article in the magazine!
[07/09/2018]
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