In January, the coldest month in Bangladesh, we had to pay a visit to Chattogram, the port city located in the South-Eastern part of the country. The sojourn was not without a purpose. The result of the Higher Secondary Examination has already come out. After examination, for relief for a while, students might go for an excursion. Chattogram is pejoratively a nice place for site seeing. But I went not for any pleasure, but for taking part in the largest battle held every year of this time for gaining a seat for higher education in a public university, Chattogram University. Anisur Rahman, one of my fellow warriors whom I was acquainted with few days back at a mentoring centre, accompanied me for his own gain, speaking frankly.
We boarded on a train full of warriors, leaving hardly any space for the commoners. We sang, danced, shouted in the train to pass the cold night and especially our drowsiness and travel sickness. I was especially heavily feeling tired for the long trip I had taken last few days. I came out of home five days back, spent a night in Bogura, two nights in Rajshahi and the last two nights in Dhaka, now setting out for Chattogram boarding on the train Bijoy Express.
We got to Chattogram University at dawn, getting hardly any hour for a sleep, badly needed for soundness of the body and mind after a ten hour journey and 170 hours for me! I entered a huddled room only to stumble on a line of bodies laid motionless and sat upright down on a small bed, soon fell asleep squeezed aside without my knowledge.
I arose with the gentle stroke of hands of Anis presumable at nine o’clock. The battle should begin at ten. We got some loaves of bread with an omelet for the breakfast after a short shower, queuing some 30 minutes for bath outside the fresh room.
After the war we participated in, we must get back to Dhaka for fighting the next war in Jagannath University, fairly recently a college turned university. We got to the station a bit late to miss the train before eyes, thus invoking the curse of the Road Master awaiting us the next hours we were forced to undergo.
Missing the Intercity, we got into a local express train at 3.00 pm. Finding any place nowhere to sit, we stood at a corner. We went to and fro for overcoming the numbness we developed from standing motionless like a thumbed tree. Finally, we intruded into a cabin to open the lock of our fortune.
A middle-aged woman exchanged some glances with us. She hired one side of the whole cabin. Two of her small daughters were sitting beside her on the long non-demarcation row of seat. Two daughters could easily make some room for an adult to sit for some time, I murmured and could read the truth of it in the eyes of the mother. We were two. The woman was surely moved by our cause, but hesitant to offer the seat anyone bereaving the other of us, I could effortlessly guess.
The woman finally came to a decision. She offered both of us to grab the seat keeping the daughters on our lap. We were yet to decide on the point but forgot not to show our gratitude towards the magnanimity of the unknown woman by unveiling the curtains of our eyes like Jerry of ‘Mother in Manville’.
I offered Anis to take the youngest daughter in his lap to sit. He could not but accept. After a while, he stood and freed the place for me. We passed hours by exchange. At a point, the woman was deeply moved by our cause, and pressed us to decide between the daughters to take into the lap and sat on the seat at our comfort. Anis forced the oldest daughter, aging between 9-11 years old, into my lap. I was embarrassed! The mother moved her eyeballs, showing the eyes conspicuously reddish. I was seized by panic. But the mother consoled me with her gentle voice, which sounds, “sit at your ease.”
13 years have passed! Now, we live next door to each other. The older of the two daughters has got birth a baby boy. The voice still resonates in my mind, “sit at your ease.”