On some nights there's the perfect full moon,

Making me want to roam around in solitude;

But instead I wrap the coverlet around me and recoil.

As if there is no connection between me and the astonishing moonlight!

—           Shankhanil Karagar (A Prison Blue as Sea Shells)

If these lines do not give you goose bumps, then there are thousands of other 'orb of the night' quotes from Ahmed that will. Humayun Ahmed, the exponent of Bangla literature, has expressed, over and again, his blatant fascination for the heavenly body in all its grandeur. His fixation with the magnificent silvery light and idealism somehow diffused in us, and we learned to fall in love and discover the splendour of a moonlit night.

On every full moon, I look up at the sky

At least once!

Wondering if it's the one that persuades wayfarers

To leave home?

—           Kobi (The Poet)

Ahmed is known for shattering the popular West Bengal style of writing prose – the densely woven classical form. Post 1971, the country needed leaders in every aspects of life and Humayun did it with the pen. He expressed the sentiments of the middle class, their unfulfilled desires, dreams, emotions and wonders.

Thousands fell in love with his fluid colloquial language, humour and emotional overtones of young men and women of our society.

Nature has an extraordinary ability to inundate

It floods the natural world with the blazing light of the full moon,

Rain, hailstorms,

Incredible love and tremendous pain

—           Misir Ali

Ahsan Habib, Ahmed's youngest brother, and the editor of Unmad, once said that the silvery moonlit night has lost its charm once Humayun Ahmed was gone. To him, so did the appeal of the splendours of nature.

That was just from family. There are hundreds and thousands amongst us who perceive and fall in love with the disk of the night.

Driven out of my home

I go sinking in the moon outside;

A house full of moon-monochrome

But I drive my hand in empty ride.

—           Nondito Noroke (In Blissful Hell)

Ahmed made us believe that even in this apparently godforsaken world, there are still pure souls —Himu, Misir Ali, Shubhro, Rupali, Neela, Dilu….

And they just might be snippets from his own identity, one that always associated himself with the full moon, the undulated seawater, the drizzling rain, and croaking frogs!

Photo: Sazzad Ibne Sayed

Location: Mermaid Beach Resort, Cox's Bazar