High Street Mugger Barclays Bank (Hardcover)

Exactly six decades and a year ago, on a sultry summer day I met the author in the lush green campus of Sylhet MC College. We were freshmen in the college (Eleventh grader) coming as young lads from High schools on completion of Matriculation Exam. Ours was the last batch of Matriculates (1962) as this countrywide unified public exam system was discontinued thereafter. Musabbir Ahmad, as I distinctly remember, had been a jolly good fellow, witty and known for leg-pulling of the closest of the close buddies. Those were the innocent and exuberant adolescent days of our lives, long lost in the endless passage of time. Those days are never to come back.

After leaving the college, destiny placed us in different trajectories. He went to England, working hard to build up a restaurant business that over time developed into a robust business venture. While as a career civil servant I was passing my years with various assignments at home and abroad. Albeit not in regular contact, I heard that my friend, Musabbir was presiding over a roaring restaurant business in London town, expanding steadily with new outlets.

Decades later, our paths crossed again, thanks to the good gesture of our longtime mutual friend Mr Nuruzzaman (Runu), now based in Montreal. But this reunion was not one of celebration. I found Musabbir thoroughly exhausted and devasted from the shock of losing all his achievements in England. He told me about his consequential fighting lengthy legal battles in the courts of England spanning over years. In the process he lost not only a thriving business but much of other assets he had achieved over the years. His dream was shattered.

It is the Odessey of my friend fighting a lone uphill battle that has been told in this book. He got entangled in protracted lega battles involving bank loans. His story telling might lack poetic touch or literary flavour of high degree but he was candid in his narratives. What touches the mind of a reader is the author's yearning for not being heard properly in the courts of law. The Fundamental Principle of Natural Justice demands that no person be punished unheard. Whether that principle was upheld in his case and whether he was given a fair hearing are issues that will haunt the minds of readers. There is an old adage that says, 'mere adjudication is not enough, the aggrieved must feel that dispensation of justice has been fair and the parties have been treated equally.' Readers will hear the heavy sigh of a helpless man emanating quietly from the deep core of a bleeding heart whose lifelong achievements have been snatched away in broad daylight on bustling streets of the iconic city. The silent cries of a deprived heart quietly reverberate throughout the pages of the book.

The book appears to have been sent for printing in haste. Osterbly, there remains scope for further editing and more reading the manu. But the author, in his eternal wisdom was in a hu to publish his untold story without any further delay. Well, he has strong rationale too. At the age we have reached, when it not prudent to leave things unattended for longer time. ery

I hope the readers would like the premise and the background were a real-life story was born, flourished and then abruptly e fed unsung. The book will remain as a 'must read' for the future entrepreneurs, startup forerunners and for those ambitious individuals who dream of building business establishments in a distant land having an unfamiliar legal, cultural and ethnic settings.

Mr Musabbir Ahmad's book will be a guide for those brave men and women who dare to dream.