The day, May 16, 2007, we had lost our beloved father Shahabuddin Ahmed.

His Life was brimmed with work. He was the second son of my grand parents. From his very childhood, he had a very sharp memory and keen sight. These two things helped him to become a writer, an intellectual. Most of his time, he had spent writing on Kazi Nazrul Islam. According to him, Nazrul is a Great poet among the greatest. Having a sharp memory he had memorized 1500 poems including Sangskreet, Bangla, and English. In our childhood we used to listen to his fluent recitation on different types of poems, sometimes from Ramayana Mahabhrot of Valmiki, Meghdut from Kalidas, Maghnadbodh Kabbo of Michael Modhushudon Datta, Bangkim Chandra, Sharat Chandra, Kobi Guru Rabindranath Tagore. He had also gone through Charjapod. As he had run through the bangali literature, he had also gone through other country’s history and literature. In English literature he read Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley,Keats, Byron, Yeats, T.S Eliot, Charles Dickens, Edger Elen Poe, Christina Rossetti, Robert Frost, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, Dante’s (Italian poet) Divine Comedy, Ezra pound, Edmond Spencer. From French literature he had studied on Victor Hugo, Boudelaire, Moliere, Joseph Rouget, Gye de Maupassant, Arthur Rimbaud, Virgil’s( Roman poet) Aeneid,Homer’s( Greek Poet) The Iliad and The Odyssey. In Russian literature he also read Dostoyevsky, Maxim Gorky, Tolostoy’s(The greatest poet of all time) Anna Karenina, War and Peace,etc. My father was also very good in translation, He had translated Idiot written by Dostoevsky which was lost first time from Bangla Academy, He had also translated Three Daughter of Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment and other books. He studied on Philosophy, he had read Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, he had also gone through the Persian great philosopher Zarathustra of 1500 B.C. He read Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher Franz Kafka. He had great knowledge on History and Geography too.He also had knowledge on German and Arabian literature such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He had vast knowledge on Omar Khayam, Rumi. Most Importantly, he had a vast amount of knowledge on The Holy Qur’an, Hadith and The History of Islam. All these knowledge helped him to understand Nazrul as a poet, that’s the reason he used to say, ” It is Nazrul who is the greatest of all the time”. Please pardon me, of course it depends on person to person to choose who is the best but as my father touched different literatures and had much knowledge on them, it makes me think Nazrul is one of the greatest to touch the pen. May Allah bless my father Jannatul Ferdous.

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