Published: 12:05 AM, 13 April 2026
Classical Features and Contemporary Writing Trends Characterize 'My Life Plus Minus'
Professor Dr. Mohit Ul Alam has been faring magnificently in the domain of pedagogy for more than four decades. He illuminated thousands of pupils in University of Chittagong, Jatiya Kobi Kazi Nazrul Islam University (JKKNIU), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) and Premier University, Chittagong. Mohit Ul Alam’s autobiography My Life Plus Minus is an exposure of the author’s retrospective glimpses of his own life with a noteworthy scale of confessional underpinnings. Mohit Ul Alam has alluded to celebrated Indian writer Khushwant Singh’s memoir “Truth, Love and A Little Malice”, English fictional giant Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and American author JD Salinger’s best-known book “The Catcher in The Rye”. Recalling these three particular literary masterworks outlines Mohit Ul Alam’s narratology in his autobiography which, in my view, contains a blend of happiness, some agonies, a few tragic components, a considerable extent of gratification and remorse for lost innocence.
In some chapters of My Life Plus Minus, I found the author chasing certain illusions by looking back on the rosy remembrances embedded in the past. It reminds me of Franz Kafka who once said “Reality is heavy for people. So they rent illusions and call it happiness”. Living in the middle of a world ravaged with war, genocides, human rights abuses and stark discrepancies, getting hold of happiness is like running after a wild deer. Mohit Ul Alam affirmed in the book that the content in his autobiography is made with love and it holds malice to none.
The sound of harmoniums coming from a house located close by, a gentleman with red-inked pen going through English newspapers and underlining errors and the delight of sitting together around the dining table for lunch or dinner, sound so nostalgic and to some extent mournful when we see small and isolated families devoid of unison in the mechanized and insociable surroundings that enclose us today.
A remarkable feature in My Life Plus Minus is Mohit Ul Alam added footnotes at the bottom of almost all pages of the book. As a student of English literature, I would love to juxtapose it with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s iconic style of illustrating marginal notes in his poetry which offered interpretation of certain words and phrases applied in his verses. Being an outstanding cynosure in the field of English language and literature, Mohit Ul Alam proves in every chapter of his lifesketch that he holds a robust command over the classical features as well as contemporary literary trends.
The history of Bangladesh, the proclamation of independence, the glorious Liberation War of 1971 etcetera have been movingly described in this book.
Mohit Ul Alam tells us about one of his personal woes in his autobiography. He fell in love with a Hindu girl named Bonosree but the tragic end of this chapter breaks our hearts where the author wrote “Soon the Liberation War of Bangladesh broke out, and I never saw Bonosree again.”
Mohit Ul Alam also recollected the ruthless assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and he furnished textual references to show how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US government played a vicious role at the back of this political catastrophe in Bangladesh’s history. Intertextuality is a major modality in My Life Plus Minus. Mohit Ul Alam introduces readers to a broad spectrum of famous books in his autobiography. These bibliographic allusions raise My Life Plus Minus to the height of a lofty imperishable work.
Mohit Ul Alam narrates his trip to America in March 2018 with his spouse. They visited the Universal Studios, Hollywood Boulevard and Harvard University among some other attractive tourist destinations across the United States.
Mohit Ul Alam pointed out a blazing stigma in Bangladesh’s academia which categorically unveils the author’s unpalatable experience when he was Vice Chancellor in Jatiya Kobi Kazi Nazrul Islam University. The poor oversight to improve academic standard and malicious administrative units in lots of universities around us can be in no way denied. These detrimental things heavily obstruct the growth of sound teaching quality in universities.
My Life Plus Minus contains an album of a good number of photographs bridging up the past with the current times. Mohit Ul Alam carries forward the luminous literary legacy of his father Mahbub Ul Alam (1898—1981) who was conferred Bangla Academy Award and Ekushey Padak in recognition of his contribution to the enrichment of Bengali literature.
Mohit Ul Alam has so far authored more than fifty books consisting of poetry, short stories, journal papers, translated works and essays in both Bengali and English languages. He acquired his PhD degree from Dhaka University on William Shakespeare in the year 2000. He is at present holding the post of Dean in Faculty of Arts in Premier University, Chittagong. Mohit Ul Alam is currently one of the senior most Professors of English literature in Bangladesh.
Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury
is a contributor to different
English newspapers
and magazines.
