আমার মনে হয় আমাদের বাংলাদেশ যে পৃথিবীর অন্য দশটা থেকে ভিন্ন তার একটা বড় কারণ মুক্তিযুদ্ধের পর এই দেশের অনেক মায়েরা ঘর থেকে বের হয়ে সংগ্রাম শুরু করেছেন। বেঁচে থাকার জন্যে সেই সংগ্রামের কথা কতজন জানে? মুক্তিযোদ্ধারা যুদ্ধক্ষেত্রে যে যুদ্ধ করেছেন, মুক্তিযুদ্ধের পর আমাদের দেশের সেই মায়েদের যুদ্ধ তাঁদের থেকে কোনো অংশে কম নয়, আমরা কি সেটা মনে রাখি? একদিন যখন বাংলাদেশ মাথা তুলে দাঁড়ারে তখন আমরা কি বাংলাদেশের সেই অসংখ্য মায়েদের কথা স্মরণ রাখব? যে সাদাসিধে মায়েরা সন্তানদের রক্ষা করার জন্যে সিংহীর সাহস নিয়ে কঠিন পৃথিবীর মুখোমুখি হয়েছিলেন? বুক আগলে তাদের রক্ষ করেছিলেন। আমি আজকে আমার নিজের মায়ের সাথে সাথে বাংলাদেশের এ রকম অসংখ্য মায়েদের কাছে একটুখানি ভালোবাসা, একটুখানি শ্রদ্ধা পৌঁছে দিতে চাই।
বাদল-দিনের প্রথম কদম ফুল করেছ দান,
আমি দিতে এসেছি শ্রাবণের গান।
মেঘের ছায়ায় অন্ধকারে রেখেছি ঢেকে তারে
এই-যে আমার সুরের ক্ষেতের প্রথম সোনার ।
আজ এন দিলে, হয়তো দিবে না কাল-
রিক্ত হবে যে তোমার ফুলের ডাল।
এ গান আমার শ্রাবণে তব বিস্মৃতিস্রোতের প্লাবনে
ফিরিয়া ফিরিয়া আসিবে তরণী বহি তব সম্মান।
Tomader Janya Bhalobasa or `Love You All'-as I Love merely been able to translate the title, which I do not like at all, in the first Bangaldeshi science fiction and one of the best SF that I have ever read. This in the reason why it provoked me into the agonising task of translating it. As you will see, the story is about saving this planet earth, the survival of human race and resisting the four-dimensional beings. Like Humayun Ahmed's other science fictions, the story is brief, though very complex. Aparently a simple story, which in not simple at all. I had to read the story over and over again to have a complete grasp over it, and I will not be surprised if I find anything new while reading it once again. And how I like the characters! They are so live that I see them, I touch them, I feel their presence. I feel sorry for them, I feel involved. I wish I could do something to save the earth.
I looked towards the house. Ma was looking at me from behind the bamboo fence. Her eyes were covered with her sari. Behind Ma was Rangabu. My elder sister couldn't make it from her in-laws' house. Labu was sobbing, the dummy wanted to ride in the car with me. Uncle Rashid was holding him tightly. Dulal was standing off to one side, holding a few of my library books tightly to his chest. He looked stunned. Dulal was my best friend - he still couldn't believe that I was suddenly leaving like this. I had explained everything to him. My library books, our Green Boys' Club football, the articles of the wall magazine. Who knew how he would manage so much alone.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck is a children's novel written by Jeff Kinney and the eighth book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The book's existence was announced at the end of the previous book in the series, The Third Wheel.
Folk Tales tales composed orally by illiterate people belonging to rural communities and passed on from one generation to the next by means of telling and retelling. Because of their oral nature, folk tales often tend to have different versions. Folktales may include fairy tales, called rupkatha or parikahini in Bangla. Although called 'fairy tales', all such stories do not necessarily have fairies but are stories of a prince's adventures and his winning the hand of a beautiful princess or about the rewards bestowed on a kind girl because of her humility, kindness, hard work etc. These stories contain accounts of magical powers, divine help etc. In German, this type of tale is called 'marchen'. Books like Thakurmar Jhuli, Thakurdadar Jhuli, Thandidir Thale etc, edited by Dakshina Ranjan Mitra Majumder, are collections of fairy tales.
Fans were waved in front of the face to keep a lady cool in the steaming hot theatres. Some men complained that the large fans were more like windmills! They were decorated with pictures but also with verses of songs or paragraphs from popular books. (If you got bored at the opera you could always read your fan.) Ladies learned to use fan-fluttering as a signal to people watching. One flutter might mean anger while another flutter might mean love. Fans were also useful to hide a lady's mouth if she had rotten teeth. And they could wave away the foul smell if she had bad breath.
Dresses were worn over wide, hooped petticoats. These came into fashion in 1710 and went out of fashion in 1780- but at the royal court they were still being worn over 40 years later. A writer complained that when one young lady walked down the street she took up the full width of the pavement,
THE DAY ALBERTA got air-lifted to England was the most amazing day of her life.
At first she knew nothing about it, because she was asleep. She had been asleep for the past three months, like most of the other creatures who lived in the Arctic wastes of Canada, while outside the snow fell, the wind blew and the temperature dropped to forty degrees below zero.
I came out of the Old Vic, my friend Hermia Redcliffe beside me. We had been to see a performance of Macbeth. It was raining hard. As we ran across the street to the spot where I had parked the car, Hermia remarked unjustly that whenever one went to the Old Vic it always rained.
"It's just one of those things."
I dissented from this view. I said that, unlike sundials, she remembered only the rainy hours.
Now at Glyndebourne," went on Hermia as I let in the clutch, "I've always been lucky. I can't imagine it other than perfection: the music-and the glorious flower borders the white flower border in particular."
I found the blue china horse for the mantelpiece, and Mum was thrilled to bits with it, even though it had a chipped nose and only three and a half legs. Her favourite armchair came off the skip too, as well as the electric radiator. All we had to get was a plug for that and it worked perfectly. But best of all was the twenty-six inch Sony Trinitron television set that I brought home in a wheelbarrow - my cousin Barry gave me a hand.
Rosie opened the catflap and looked out into the dark street. It was still windy and cold. The wind blew across the top of the milk bottle and made it moan.
Rosie felt sorry for the milk bottle, all alone in the dark on the cold step. She fetched some crumbs from the kitchen and threw them out of the catflap, on to the top step, in case the poor milk bottle felt hungry in the night.
Well, old Brer Rabbit he ran beside her, jabbing with his rake. And at last he got hold of the little girl's belt and hauled her to the bank. There she sat, sobbing and crying, her arms round Brer Rabbit's neck.
“You come home to your Ma," said Brer Rabbit. “You're wet. She'll dry you and give you a good hot drink.”
So off they went together, the little girl clinging to Brer Rabbit as if she would never let him go. And my word, when the farmer heard how he had saved his little girl there wasn't anything he wouldn't have done for old Brer Rabbit.
“There's a sack of carrots over there,” he said. “Take it. And there's a sack of potatoes, too. You're welcome to it. And while you're about it, help yourself to a sack of turnips. You're a born rascal, Brer Rabbit, but you're good-hearted, so you are! Now off you go while I still think good things of you!”
Now, when Brer Rabbit was wheeling home his three sacks, whistling a merry song and feeling on top of the world, who should come along but Brer Fox, Brer Bear and Brer Wolf. How they stared when they saw Brer Rabbit with so much food!
Most teachers are strange and the teachers at St Barnabas School were no exception.
Yet it's almost certain that none of them – not Mr Gilbert, the head teacher, who liked to pick his nose during Assembly, not Mrs Hicks who talked to her teddies in class, not Miss Gomaz who smoked cigarettes in the lavatory – none of them was quite as odd as Class Three's new teacher.
Some of the children in Class Three thought she was a witch. Others said she was a hippy. A few of them thought she was just a bit mad. But they all agreed that there had never been anyone quite like her at St Barnabas before.
Becky, and their four-year-old twins, Nicky and Alex. They lived up on the third floor.
And her dad's friend from college, Joey Gladstone, lived downstairs. Joey and Jesse both moved in a long time ago— right after Michelle's mother died.
Nine people make a lot of dirty dishes, Michelle thought. At least I don't have to wash Comet’s bowl. He licks it absolutely clean.
And she didn't have to scrub the pots and pans: That was Joey's job tonight. She | didn't have to clear the table either: It was Uncle Jesse's turn for that chore.
Michelle's dad glanced over at her. “Michelle! Why don't you want to go to school? I thought you loved Mrs. Yoshida's class.” Danny smoothed a sheet of foil around half a loaf of pumpkin bread.
MANY years ago, a girl named Cathy Dunn came with her family from Dublin, Ireland, to the Lower East Side of New York. Everything in the new country fascinated her: fireworks and el trains and stickball games, and the songs of peddlers calling out their wares in a dozen languages. She loved to watch the policeman go by on his horse and the hook and ladder come round the corner like a long red dragon. But more than anything else, she loved to watch Mr. Coletti, the monkey man.
Mr. Coletti came to Second Avenue once or twice a week with his monkey, Espresso, and his hand organ, a big box on a wooden leg, which tweedled and tootled out a super-confabulation of sounds.
It was a September morning, hazy with late summer, and now with all the years between. Mother was seeing me off at Dearborn Station in Chicago. We'd come in a taxicab because of my trunk. But Mother would ride back home on the El. There wasn't much more than a nickel in her purse, and only a sandwich for the train in mine. My ticket had pretty well cleaned us out.
The trunk, a small one, held every stitch of clothes I had and two or three things of Mother's that fit me. "Try not to grow too fast," she murmured. “But anyway, skirts are shorter this year."
Evan Ross backed into the corner of the den as he stared at his dog Trigger.
The tan cocker spaniel lowered his head and stared back at Evan with wet, brown eyes. The old dog's tail began to wag excitedly.
""Trigger " Evan cried angrily. "Did you eat Monster Blood again?”
The dog's tail began wagging faster. Trigger let out a low bark that rumbled like thunder.
Evan's back pressed against the dark-paneled den wall.
Trigger took a few heavy steps toward him, panting hard. His huge pink tongue, as big as a salami, hung out of his enormous mouth.
“Did you?” Evan demanded. "Did you eat more Monster Blood?”
The answer to Evan's question was obvious.
Trigger had been normal cocker spaniel size that morning. Now the dog stared down at Evan, as big as a pony.
Posy Bates was playing hide-and-seek with the bag lady. It was no ordinary game, either.
"It's in dead earnest,” she thought. 'Life or death, practically.'
She knew for a fact that the bag lady had been reported to the police by Mary Pye's mother.
‘As if it was a crime, being homeless!' Posy thought indignantly. ‘Anyway, she won't be much longer.'
Soon the big lady would have a roof over her head. Admittedly, it was the roof of an old henhouse, but none the worse for that. Posy meant to turn that hen-house into a palace – or thereabouts.
She had not yet broken the news to Daff, her mother, that a bag lady was coming to live in the garden.
Posy Bates was in her favourite hidey-hole, reading
'Posy!' came her mother's voice from below. ‘Where are you?
Posy carried on reading. She had just got to the part where three space invaders were about to land in a playground and take over a school. It was the kind of thing she wished would happen at her school
"Posy! Come along, I want you!
This time Posy did raise her head, just for a moment.
"Take no notice, Punch and Judy,' she said.
Punch and Judy did not reply, for the very good reason that they were both spiders, in a jam-jar.
IN MY YOUNGER and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'
He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought-frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
"What will happen now?” I asked Mamma as we watched the plane take the teacher away.
“Maybe no more school.” Mamma twitched her shoulder a little to show she didn't care. Mamma never went to school much, just a few months here and there when her family wasn't trapping or out at spring muskrat camp. She said she hated school when she was little.
The little plane circled our village and then flew low over Andreson's store and waggled its wings at us. That was Sam White, the pilot, saying good-bye to us.
It was Sam White laughing, too. Sam thought nearly everything was funny.
It was here that he met Dr. Joseph Bell, whose handling of cases inspired him to formulate his own methods of detection. These were to prove a great success with the many detective novels that he was to write in the future.
When Doyle set up practice in Southsea, he thought of writing only as a subsidiary source of living. It was during the periods when he waited for his patients that he first began to write, and A Study in Scarlet was published in 1887. Micah Clarke followed, and finally established him as a writer. Several stories were written, one after the other, the greatest achievement being his creation of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was to become one of the most popular fictional characters in the world, loved for his detective adventures. At one time Arthur Conan Doyle “killed” him in a story, but public protest forced him to bring Holmes back to life.
Doyle, however, continued with his medical practice, and served as a physician in the Boer War. This enhanced his reputation even further, and he was knighted for his services,
Once upon a time there lived a rich gentleman who had a lovely young daughter. As he grew old and frail, he knew that he would soon die and leave his golden-haired daughter alone in the world, so he resolved to marry again.
Unfortunately his choice fell upon a haughty and selfish woman who had two daughters of her own. Now both the daughters were ugly and selfish, and very jealous of their sweettempered and beautiful stepsister, So when the father died, they dressed her in rags and put her to work in the kitchen, where no one could see and admire her beauty.
