Bangla

Recently Bangladesh is once again on the headlines due to the natural calamity which struck the country. The scenes of utter misery that are shown in several reports has left many viewers like me deeply sad. I feel attached to the country due to two reasons: I speak the same language “Bangla” and had I been born some few hundred kms to the east of Calcutta , today I might have been the citizen of that country. The common past shared by our countries is a strong tie. While doing the M.S in the university in Alsace I had an opportunity to do an interpretation exercise which involved Bangla. It is so rare, and hence it’s precious for me. The professor of our interpretation class asked me to do a simultaneous interpretation of the Nobel Prize winning speech of Mr. Muhammd Yunus who adressed the audience in Bangla . Even if it was just a classroom exercise, I would always remember that day with pleasure. A few months later I witnessed the other extreme when I was called upon by a humanitarian agency to interpret for a family of Bangladeshi refugees into French. Well, life do present us with many surprises. I consider myself lucky, to have seen both both bad and good ones.