Getting entangled with the critical and the vicious circle of the everyday life sometimes I feel like escaping from the mundane realities. I look for a niche where I wish to get my cloister of solace. Only place I can think of is my fortress of memories. In my citadel of relics, I try to take refuge in my childhood days. My childhood days were as colorful as they may appear to any average adults. I remember the dusty spring midday, lying by my mother; for a virtually mandatory siesta after a greasy and heavy rice meal. These used to be the leisure that would make me restless by stirring the ardent desire to join the local boys playing innovative games in harvested paddy field. The indistinct chirping of the birds throughout the high canopies at the back of my father’s official residence was like the call for my freedom from the captivity of my mother. In Ramu, a remote administrative unit at the southeastern part of Bangladesh, life was slow and sometimes even at a halt. No impulse of the modern life and the happenings in the big cities could touch their modus-Vivendi. This was the period I started knowing people other than the family. I began to form my own ideas about the characteristics of various men and women to distinguish them from others. Definitely, it was in an innocent, harmless yet in a confident way. I was so sure of my postulations, that I would exhibit my likings and disliking to people in my own childish way. It often used to put my mother in an awkward situation before the persons of my self-explored disliking. However, my father was quite naive to such matters and would waive out the complaints of my mother with just a shrug. He, to the squints and chagrin of my mother, would term my behaviour as the sign of my cognitive development. There was this government officer junior to my father, whose appearance would remind me of a walrus I saw on the TV. Especially his big torso, irritatingly guffawing face and gluttonous eating style posed a deep sense of repulsion in my mind. The day I saw him first and observed him bursting out in laughter even over some silly comments made by my father, I rather stared to get an uncomfortable and disrespectful feeling about him. It seemed like an act of obsequious sycophancy towards his immediate boss; my father. I feel little surprised today when recollect my state of mind as a five years old boy in those days. Therefore, I had this thing about critically judge ones character and evaluate him on that basis. This has nothing to with the real person he or she used to be. I was not in a position to value judge people over their deeds. I was just liking or disliking them as per their demeanor; for I was too young to look for the real personality traits or judge their good and evils. So, his portly physique, tobacco stained teeth and the chubby sweaty face could never soften up my perceived evaluations. Often he used to come to see the cricket or the football matches in the 20 inch color TV we bought. It was I believe the first color TV in the Black and White realm of that area. My mother was always busy with the snacks and pakodas to relish the never-ending appetite of the spectators. One peculiar thing I must confess, His adopted son Milton was our great companion and the ringleader of all the local kids. His curly hairs and ostensibly innocent face was something we were in love with. His proficiency in tree climbing and tremendous flexibility of body in dodging away the opponents during the sports made him our hero. He had all the innovative and unique ideas to plan a new adventure every day. Be it drinking the juice from the earthen pots hanged on the Date trees; a heinous crime for the children of our age, puffing the Bidi in the secret congregations over rooftops in the lonely afternoons, or vain labor to catch doves by laying indigenous traps, he was always at the forefront. His pouty leaps and flat nose did not earn him much of respect amongst the girls in the locality though. However, he was for sure our role model. When Milton first arrived in the colony on a rainy evening, riding in the van with the furniture and the family belongings, he looked tired and disoriented. His mother wearing a maroon Burkha looked quite aged to be his mother. His father with his oily hair and the plaid trousers was flatly unattractive. I heard someone indiscreetly saying, “That boy is adopted, the couple could not have their own baby in years”. I heard the same voice whispering to someone that, they had bought the boy by 2000 taka from his real parents. Days were as usual and we had been playing in the mornings, before we would go to the school and after we used to finish Arabic study with the mosque Mowlana in the afternoons. Milton was our guru …..