Munna remembered silently

Monem Munna

As the change of wind in the late winter announces the arrival of spring, another year enters its last season, reminding that it was the time the country had lost a great footballer.
But there was not a single programme in the capital yesterday that could take the fans down memory lane on the third death anniversary of Monem Munna.
With time passing by, people's grief fades away otherwise no man would have been able to carry the burden of the dead.
For a footballer of Munna's calibre, it is too soon to pass an anniversary so silently.
Abahani, the club where Munna reached his peak, however, are planning to reminisce all their late players including Munna, his old pal Pushkin, Rabiuddin and organisers and officials in a commemorative meeting soon.
Still, it would have been befitting had the Dhanmondi outfit, who lifted the season's first football title just three days earlier, did anything yesterday to pay tribute to the 'last man standing' in Bangladesh football.
A milad mahfil was held at his home last Friday while his hometown colleagues -- the local Sonali Otit Club and the Munna Smriti Sangsad -- organised a milad mahfil yesterday.
Arguably the best defender in the country and a living legend, Munna was just 39 when he passed away at the Bangladesh Medical College Hospital of critical kidney ailments.
He was the 'last superstar' of domestic football who could attract big crowds on his own and also led the national team to win their first ever trophy in a foreign football tournament in 1995 in Myanmar.
The central defender played 12 years for Abahani and during that period, also became a household name in Kolkata where he donned the East Bengal shirt from 1991-93.
Having decided to hang up the famous sky-blue shirt in 1997, the one-time highest paid footballer in the country became Abahani manager before kidney related complications cut his life short.
Ironically, Munna's wife Yasmin Monem Suravi has to go through the pain of observing the anniversaries of their marriage and her husband's death on the same day with son Azman and daughter Dania beside her.