The Beginning
    Halkhata (account-book updated at the beginning of a new year) A Memoir of Muhammad Abdul Malik (1913-96)  Today is Bengali New Year?s Day, the first of Baishak, of the year 1396 (Roman calendar year 1989, April 14). It is a Friday. Now it is 8 O?clock in the morning.  What does one write in the Halkhata? The accounts of current year or the accounts of the departing year? It is the account-book updated at the beginning of a year. In my Halkhata I want to write some accounts of my life. But can I recall all of the incidents of my life in my account? Nobody can it. In addition, in this age it is natural that I have forgotten most of the matters. Human memory does not preserve each and every doing,- say that of one whole day, - nor does it even bother for that. However, I believe that nothing of this universe is lost, it has been saved in some other universe. On this faith we believe in the divine-writs of our each and every activity. A past incident what is apparently erased from my own memory, has been kept in my ?divine-writ?, -all what I have done till today since my birth. There is the cinema of my life.  

    Long ago from today, in the spring of Bengali year 1319, I came in existance in the womb of a woman, but the exact time and date is not known, and it is impossible to know precisely. But from a simple calculation it can be guessed that it was the spring; there was delightness of blossoming flowers, there were new leaves in the trees. As I was the first child of my parents, at that time it was spring in their lives too. May be that is why the spring had rather a bit too much dominance over my life, Still today I love to become extravagant.   Day by day, by seasons after seasons, I got my body fully developed in my mother?s womb, and I came to this dusty Earth on the 27th of the Bengali month Agrahayan, Thursday night, (Bengali year of 1320).  Then the yearly harvest was very near. What hours of the night were then? It is not known to me.

    I do not know whether there was the moon in the sky. Who were the witnesses at the moment of my entrance, that also I do not know. None of them are living now. If someone was living, I could ask about it. But what does it matter! Does anybody remembers such petty matters? May be, my mother could tell me. But this question never came to my mind as long as she lived. Often it is the mother who remembers many petty matters of her child, specially of the first child,  and as I was the first child of my mother!  When I look at my past life by openning the door of the store of my memory, I cannot see a part of my life. I mean about the utterings and sayings of a child before its commemoration machine called the memory comes to be active. The parents and very close relatives keep those things in their own memories.

    When the simple child has grown up, their talks during the leisure hous imprint the same thing in the blank parts of the memory of the child.  Most probably I had cried just after birth. It is because evrey human child proclaims its arrival by crying. A child not only cry but rather shouts to demand its right to live at the first day of the birth. Its demand to the mother of the right for milk. The mother however gives milk to the child out of affection. Although, now-a-days the mothers do not give much of their own breast-milk; the children more rely on milk from others, somewhat like parasites. But the crying of a child is not for her affection, this is one of its weapons to survive. The child cries on by all of its little strenght as long as the demand is not fulfilled. Of course, a child never laughs spontaneously until its extra demands are not met. However, children use to laugh a few days after the birth. Children may laugh in their sleep before they laugh out of caress. We say that they induce one to give. Some people say that the children laugh in the sleep when they play hide and seek games together with the angels.