Childhood’s end
I have very fond memories of reading the Misir Ali novel Devi as a junior high student in the late 1980s. Well, I should say I had. I remember being, let’s say unsettled, reading it then. I re-read it recently, and found it to be totally dull.
Now, it’s completely unfathomable to me why some things — Sheikh Mujib’s role in history, or Argentina vs Brazil in football – generate such strong reactions among Bangladeshis. Humayun Ahmed falls in that category. And I have no opinion on him. But I was disappointed by Devi recently, which on re-reading turns out be rather boring, with Misir Ali not being a particularly memorable character.
As it happens, that book isn’t the only paranormal work of fiction that I have/had fond memories of. A few years after first reading Devi, I watched The X-Files for the first time. I think it was early 1994. I hadn’t started university yet, and came home from addabazi quite late one night. Everyone at home had gone to sleep, and I wasn’t sleepy. I switched on the TV, and saw couple of FBI agents investing some weird stuff in an Arctic scientific facility. I was hooked.
I think that show jumped the shark in 1998, when the movie came out. But the few years before were must-see-TV. Those were also the early years of the internet (at least for me), and I recall many an online discussion about how Mulder and Scully should evolve (if you must know, I was a strong “noromo”).
Should I watch those old episodes again?
The movie I do want to watch again is 2001: A space odyssey — not just because of the Dark Side of the Moon. Basically, I want to watch this without the influence of any intoxicant.
The alien contact in the X-Files was malevolent. In 2001, it was, I think, benign. I doesn’t seem to be benign in the new Ridley Scott movie?
Hmm, a super-intelligent alien race trying to mess around with the evolution of life in earth — this is the stuff of classic science fiction. Perhaps I should blog a bit more on this.
leave a comment