I came to know Selim Samad back in early 1980s through the introduction of two of my friends, Hasan Ferdous and Afsan Chowdhury. Both Hasan and Afsan had been working at the time for the launching of another of our common friend Enayetullah Khan's English language weekly Dhaka Courier. They included me in the team as an absentee member and through this involvement I came to know Selim Samad, who had been a school friend of Afsan and came forward to support Courier during its crucial launching time.

Since then, we kept a long-standing cordial understanding whenever we came in contact with each other, in Bangladesh or somewhere else in the wider world. I remember his detailed and fascinating confession about a slow developing emotional relationship that he once had with a Chakma lady who he came to know during his days in Chittagong Hill Tracts. He somehow felt closeness with the presence of my wife and told her at one stage that she resembled her; and jokingly made a comment that he was about to join the rank of the select group of young Bangladeshis like her husband who had been fortunate enough to be in marital bondage with a lady from that broader ethnic group and somehow fate did not play a fair game with him.

This was typical Selim Samad, who did not hesitate to move from a serious topic to a much lighter and hilarious one to make the overall atmosphere less burdensome through his humorous attitude and comments. This is probably another reason that in later days brought us closer despite the geographic gap standing between us. He mostly remained in Bangladesh, though trying at one stage to settle down in Canada. Like our friend Afsan, exile identity did not bring emotional comfort as if they had been always listening the whispering call of the country; and both returned and settled down at the home turf, getting involved in journalism, and in Afsan's case the additional responsibility of teaching. I and Hasan, on the other hand, dragged in to our overseas life and tried to ease the burden by keeping regular contact with the country, also through our involvement in writing for Bangla newspapers and periodicals published at home.

However, Selim Samad, who I used to address as Selim Bhai and he too used the reciprocal honorific as he called me Monju Bhai, always tried to meet me and my wife whenever he visited the country we had been living and settled down later. He once came to our London home and announced that he was not there to meet us, but to congratulate the newcomer in the family, our daughter Maya, who was born eleven years after our marriage and at the time when we already left Bangladesh. That's why Selim Bhai did not have a chance to see Maya before. I'm still keeping somewhere an old printed copy of that photograph of Selim Bhai holding Maya on his lap.

We met again after a gap of more than a decade when he visited Japan with a group of Bangladeshi journalists accompanying the former PM Sheikh Hasina. He informed me beforehand, probably through our friend Enayet, about the trip and wanted to make sure that we do not miss the chance of seeing each other.

My busy schedule at the time did not allow me to arrange a separate meeting inviting him to our home. However, we did meet during Hasina's press conference at the Japan Press Club and had a long discussion afterward where some of my media-affiliated friends in Japan also joined. One of them was Imad Azami, a journalist from Lebanon, who at one stage all of sudden lost his temper as Selim Samad told him about his brief encounter with the Lebanese politician and leader of the minority Druze Islamic clan, Walid Jumblat. It turned out that My Lebanese friend, who once served as the Director General of country's information service, belonged to the group opposing Jumblat's political standing and accused him for selling out his ideological standing in exchange of some narrow political gain of which neither myself nor Selim Samad had any idea. However, it was once again through Selim Samad's another impromptu witty comment that situation eventually cooled downed and Selim Bhai told me later that this was the exact reflection of the country that he had the opportunity of visiting once in the past.

Later we talked about author Mohiuddin Ahmed's book on General Manzoor and the Hill Track controversy, a large part of which was written based on conversation with Selim Bhai. I told him that the book could have been a much more authentic one should it have been written by Selim Bhai himself, instead of narrating the details to a third person. He tried to disagree and later I realised that since most of his journalistic contribution had been in English, he probably felt it uncomfortable writing a book in Bangla and considered it safer to narrate the story to a well-known author who could easily reach a much wider audience. Though I did not agree completely with his view, however, felt it safer to move over to other topics and we talked about our families and common friends, as I already knew that the popular author Mohiuddin Ahmed happened to be a close friend of Selim Bhai as well.

These are some of the vignette points that keeps on coming in my mind since hearing about the sudden demise of Selim Samad. I also met him a couple of times during my home visits in the past. I remember mentioning once about my own struggle against cancer, which is lingering now almost for a decade. However, I'm still alive and kicking, though going through a gradual deterioration. Selim Bhai never mentioned about his cancer that eventually had taken his life, of which he himself was most likely not aware at the time. This is one of the strange twists of fate, a long-time sufferer of the disease remaining active and still keeping a slower pace, while the sudden appearance of the disease taking another person away, giving him not much time even for the start of a proper treatment procedure.

Anyway, stay in that calm surrounding you are now in, Selim Bhai, where many of your friends of earlier days are sure to join you again sooner or later, probably to get another chance of listening to your impromptu witty comments.

(Tokyo, February 28, 2026)