Bookmaniac

Online (and event based) source of writings from West Asia. It was Feb 21st 2009 - UNESCO observed International Mother Tongue Day - I was in my car at a parking lot in Bellevue WA, tuned into NPR station waiting for the rain to stop. It was rain­ing like normally you would expect at this time of year. The radio anchor Simon Scott from NPR’s weekend edition was interviewing Greg Anderson and David Harrison the creators of new documentary “The Linguists” who raced to different parts of the world in search of “endangered lan­guages”. According to the duo, some 7000 languages will be dying in near future. That was an eye opener for me and I needed to do everything I could to make sure I pass on my mother tongue “Bengali” to my offspring. Although Bengali is not close to being endangered, the feeling of a language becoming "dead" made me claustrophobic. It seriously bothered me thinking how it must feel to people if their language was going to become extinct one day. This thought haunted me for months—eventually I ended up creating Book Maniac (formerly Boi Pagol - but with more global touch). I also co-founded Dishari Foundation with like minded individuals.