Fakrul Alam (notice the missing h) is the youngest of the trio that also includes Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaiser Haq. They have been friends for more than four decades. They are almost of the same age. They are the most creative among our teachers who are still active. Even readers expect me to write simultaneously on all three of them. This time I have a powerful reason. I remembered Syed Manzoorul Islam and Kaiser Haq when they reached sixty in January 2010. Then a few readers enquired, 'What about Dr. Fakrul Alam?' I assured them that I would write on him when he reached sixty in July 2011. I am sorry that I am a little late in keeping my promise.
Fakrul Alam was not a known name when we discovered him as a young lecturer when we were sophomores in the Department of English, University of Dhaka, in 1975. Syed Manzoorul Islam was known to me as an essayist even then. Kaiser Haq was my boyhood hero at St. Gregory's High School. I proudly remember that Manzoor Sir recognized me even during my admission viva! I felt so happy! I had regularly contributed to the Young Observer page as a school and college boy. I guess I was more famous as a teenaged writer than I am now! We first saw Fakrul Alam after our admission. He was Kaiser Haq's classmate and best friend. Very soon we felt that all three of them were our favourite teachers. All three were liked equally by us.
Dr. Fakrul Alam is an outstanding academic now. A friendly teacher like him is rare. I enjoyed a lot doing tutorials with him. He was a very affectionate teacher. He was very fond of his students. My friend Farhad Bani Idris and myself got a lot of affection from him. Farhad later joined the department as a teacher. Now he teaches at Frostburg State University, Maryland. A handsome person like Fakrul Sir has reached sixty too! He was so friendly that we never considered him an elder. No wonder he looks younger than us these days. He swims and plays tennis. He is a little shy but is always ready to fight for a just cause. His moral strength inspired us. He was a sportsman and loved to talk sports with us.
A well-known scholar, Fakrul Alam is our internationally known translator. He enjoys translating Rabindranath Tagore and Jibanananda Das. He is perhaps the best translator of Jibanananda Das in our land. He is a very capable editor. Read a number of his Six Seasons' Review and find it out for yourself. Recently The Essential Tagore, jointly edited by him and Radha Chakravarty, took the literary world of Calcutta and Dhaka by storm. It is the best anthology of Tagore I have ever seen English translations of Tagore's songs, poems, short stories, novels, plays and letters by the best translators of India and Bangladesh. A wonderful book of 819 excellent pages one can leave for one's grandchildren. It was published jointly from Harvard and London on Tagore's 150th anniversary of birth. Politics and Culture: Essays in Honour of Serajul Islam Chowdhury is an excellent anthology on the life and works of the legendary professor-writer, jointly edited by Prof. Alam and Prof. Firdous Azim and published in 2002. Fakrul Sir has edited a few other important books too. We can also mention here his Dictionary of Literary Biography: South Asian Writers in English. It was published by Thomson Gale, Detroit, in 2006.
Fakrul Alam had his education at St. Joseph's High School, Notre Dame College and the Department of English, University of Dhaka. He belonged to the 1973 batch of M.A. but the examination was held in 1975. He taught us during the second half of the seventies and the very early eighties. Later he went to Canada for his Ph D from the University of British Columbia in 1984. His dissertation was 'Daniel Defoe and Colonial Propaganda' and his supervisor was Professor Ian Ross. Earlier he did another M.A. from Simon Fraser University in Canada and the dissertation was 'The City in Melville's Fiction'. This time he was supervised by Professor Robin Blaser. He returned to teach at the Dhaka University from October 1984. He was a Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Associate Professor at Clemson University in 1989-1991. He became chairman of the English Department from October 1994 for three years. He taught as a Visiting Professor at Jadavpur University in early 1996. He was Dean of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and Professor, Department of English, at East West University during September 2004 September 2006. He was Visiting Professor at Viswa Bharati in January 2011.
Among Fakrul Alam's published books, mention must be made of at least three. Imperial Entanglements and Literature in English was published in 2007 by Writer's Ink, Dhaka. Jibanananda Das: Selected Poems was published by University Press Limited, Dhaka in 1999. Nobody translated Jibanananda Das better than him in this part of the world. Daniel Defoe: Colonial Propagandist was published by University of Dhaka Publications in 1989. He has also written on Rabindranath Tagore, R K Narayan, V S Naipaul, Edward Said and Bharati Mukherjee. He has received a lot of honours and professional awards. He was Jury Member of Commonwealth Writer's Prize for 2003 (Eurasia region).
Fakrul Alam has always been a sincere, hard-working academic. Very popular with students and colleagues, he has been an excellent essayist, editor and translator. His works have been widely appreciated at home and abroad.
What has kept Fakrul Sir so young? He must be the youngest looking sixty-year-old in Dhaka! Only controlled food habits and physical exercise? A loving wife in Nazma Apa? He smiles and adds, 'Spending your day with young people helps, you know'. His bright students have also kept him young and handsome. His sisters dote on their only brother. Old students like me have also remembered him all these years with great respect and affection.

Junaidul Haque writes fiction and essays.