All official and unofficial documents related to Professor Momtazuddin Ahmed list his date of birth as January 18, 1935. However, according to his father's family records, his actual birth date was December 17, 1933. He was born on a winter Sunday afternoon around 3 PM, in the village of Aiho under Habibpur police station, in the Malda district of West Bengal...
Momtazuddin Ahmed studied up to the fourth grade at the secondary school in his village, Aiho. Later, he enrolled in the fifth grade at Malda District School, located in the main town of English Bazar, six miles from his village. He lived at the house of his uncle and aunt...
When the son rushed into the ICU, fresh off the flight, his eyes searched for the familiar sight—Momtazuddin Ahmed, the legendary dramatist, who would always greet him with a radiant spark in his gaze, a smile like a child’s secret, and a flurry of kisses pressed to his palm. "Abba, I’m here," the son would whisper, and his father’s face would crinkle with triumph, as if his son’s arrival alone could defy mortality.
But not this time.
Momtazuddin lay motionless, a muted echo of his vibrant self. His eyes, though open, held no light; his voice, a dry rustle. "Ba… ba… you came," he managed, and the son’s heart fractured. He clasped his father’s hand—those slender, ink-stained fingers that had scripted a thousand stories—now limp and cool. Around them, the ICU buzzed with hushed urgency: a cousin reciting Surah Yasin, another trickling Zamzam water onto cracked lips, the rhythmic beep of the monitor counting down.
The son, a doctor himself, watched the numbers plummet. MAP: 47. Pulse: 42. A statistician of grief. He pressed his forehead to his father’s feet, staining the sheets with tears. "Forgive me, Abba." No answer. Only the shudder of a final breath at 3:48 PM, and the cruel green line that followed.
In the silence, he kissed Momtazuddin’s palm one last time—the hand that had penned revolutions, now stilled. A sob caught in his throat, but then, a thought: somewhere beyond the sterile white, his father was already composing a new drama, his words unfurling like dawn over an unseen stage.
"Bon voyage, Abba," he murmured. "Your next act begins."