Three years is a quite a long time not to see a friend. We haven't seen Rafi for almost that long. For us, the class of 1989, Rafi had been the brightest star. For those of you who did not have the pleasure of not knowing him well, here is a little brief on him.

For every class in St Joseph, there are one or two students whose names identify a batch. Rafi was that student of our class. If anyone wanted to talk about somebody in our class, he/she would say, "He was in Rafi's batch". That kind of says the popularity of Rafi among us. He was ever enthusiastic, always full of high adrenaline and a person who whose energy charged up everybody who was around him. Whether it was Interact Club's arranging a concert for flood aid or whether it was raisi ng money for the Mina bazar or whether it was complaining about a teacher's misconduct in class, it was Rafi who led from the front. He was somebody with whom each one of us in the class 89 had fond memories. To top it all, he was the only one from our cl ass to get a place in the merit list of SSC examination. After graduating from St. Joseph, we both went to Dhaka College. His energy just grew and grew. Although we hardly saw him classes, we could always find him in the cafeteria of Dhaka College lighten ing up an adda with his wit and charm. Then he came to Amherst College, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the US, with full scholarship. The Amherst crowd got a taste of a talent that we already knew he had possessed. He started debating. He became a powerful debater for Amherst among other things and took part in debates in different Ivy-League Universities. He was as popular here as he was in Dhaka among the students.

In the summer of 1996 an email with a subject header "Rafi missing" was flashing in my screen one day. We thought it was another of his many pranks. Alas, he was not kidding any more. While spending a day out in the beach in New Jersey with family, he got carried away by the tides and never came back. July 28^th marked the sad end of the brightest shining star of 10 Stars.

--- Asif Saleh