Reading Bengali Fiction

It all started when I was four; my mom making me recite Sukumar Ray. I don’t remember much of the lines now expect the fact that everybody around me would jovially clap their hands when I finished making me feel very important.
I learnt Bengali in primary school and on my fifth birthday, dad bought me a HoJoBoRoLaw; a book with 5 consonants in its title, again by Sukumar Ray. That evening, he sat with me after the party making me read aloud the first five pages. My first tryst with a story book turned into my obsession and by the time I was ten year old I had become a geeky nerd; digging into one book after another.
The summer of 2005 took me to my cousin’s place. He was way much older than me and was a postgraduate student then and passed me down his old novels that year. It was mostly Bengali collection; and I fell in love with Satyajeet Ray’s writings. Felu da and Professor Shonku captured my imaginations so much that I would spend hours in my backyard creating a spectacular invention or solving little mysteries.
That phase of my life passed away pretty early and before I knew I landed in the realm of serious Bengali literature and suddenly found myself reading Devdas and Parineeta. Both were already on my mind as films I had already seen, but the books actually shook my very concept of actual Bengali world. My mom very soon discovered what I was reading and took that Sarat Rachanabali away and dad brought me Kishor Rachna by Bibhuti Bhushan. It was rather boring and I switched my preference to the more dependable Ruskin Bond; whose stories took me to the faraway land of snows and teaks.
I had switched schools by then and Bengali was no more my school subject. The chapter of Bengali Fiction reading was over in my life. It has been six years hence and I haven’t touched a single new Bengali book. There lies a copy of Lajja by Tasleema Nasreen on my rack. I wonder when I’ll read it.
The book is inviting me all the time. Only I’m afraid to touch it. Afraid to discover a long lost love.