Under the direction of Pizurul Alam(seated, wearing a white cap) girls from Chandmoni recite poetry.Photo: STAR

Standing at the zero point of Jaldhaka upazila town are girls reciting poetry, telling stories from books or reading out editorials from newspapers. These young girls and their books are the centre of attraction for people of different age groups, some of whom stand beside rickshaw vans where the books are kept. An elderly man is seen guiding everything. These children are from Chandmoni, a home for destitute orphan girls, which has been running a mobile library for many years. The mission of this organisation is to promote the reading habit.
An elderly man, Pizurul Alam (73 years old) directs the girls and the crowd that has gathered there. He is a childless retired AGM of Uttara Bank. After his retirement he set up Chandmoni, a home for orphans and destitute girl children, in his village Choura Dangi, 9 km away from Jaldhaka town.
This home imparts education to its inmates and it is now well reputed for its campaign against early marriage and awareness building among rural folk.
For the last two years Chandmoni has been running a mobile library. Every Monday and Thursday Pizurul comes to Jaldhaka with 300-400 various types of books in two rickshaw vans. He is accompanied by four or five girls from the home to help him. Yet it was not easy going to start with. “At first people had little interest in reading books,” said Pizirul, adding, “So we adopted a different techniqueThe Chandmoni girls began poetry recitation, story telling or read aloud newspaper editorials. And the group gathered a sizeable crowd,” said Pizurul.
Now people do not merely listen to the readers but also peruse the books. They can also avail of a book borrowing facility. Teachers and students of different schools and students are their main readers. In this way Jaldhaka has built up a significant reader community. Today the Chandmoni mobile library boasts of around 500 booksamong them, novels, poetry, stories, science, autobiography and religion. The local Siddikia Library also supplies books.
Pizurul said, “Our vision is to enlighten people by imparting knowledge through entertainment.”
Golam Mostafa, teacher of Jaldhaka College also the president of Nilphamari District non-government Teachers Association said that the mobile library of Chandmoni is a catalyst of change as it struggles to revive the reading habit of people in the small town.
The UNO of Jaldhaka, Shahidul Islam Bhuiya rightly added that the promotion of the reading habit makes for greater enlightenment among a country's denizens. Chandmoni, he concluded, is one step in this direction.