Aaj Himur Biye

Aaj Himur Biye (Today is Himu’s Wedding) belongs to Humayun Ahmed’s much-loved Himu series. Himu is one of Bangladeshi literature’s most distinctive characters — a young man in a yellow panjabi who walks the streets of Dhaka barefoot, carries no money, takes nothing seriously, and yet keeps drawing other lives into his orbit. His aunt wants him to settle down. His uncle, a senior police officer, treats him as a permanent disappointment. Himu, for his part, is busy with whatever is in front of him.

This entry in the series sets up exactly what the title promises: a wedding day. The reader meets the bride, the family arranging the marriage, and the people who pass through Himu’s life on the day everything is meant to change. Whether it actually changes is, as always with Humayun Ahmed, more open than the surface plot suggests.

The Himu novels are short — often a single afternoon’s reading — and they are best read in any order, like a series of conversations with the same friend. This one is among the funnier and more affectionate entries.