Hobby

A hobby is different from work. A hobby is pursued during leisure. It gives relief from boredom and refreshes the mind after tiring physical or mental work.

Hobbies differ from person to person. Manual workers may like to study books or magazines after hard physical work. Intellectual workers may give rest to their minds by playing some light game like badminton or tennis. Many people take interest in gardening, photography, seeing movies etc. during their leisure time. My hobby, how- ever, is stamp-collecting.

I am aware [সচেতন] that a hobby is pursued mainly neither for earning money nor for adding to one’s knowledge [জ্ঞান] nor for gaining popularity. There is absolutely no selfish motive involved in a hobby, it is just pleasure [আনন্দ] through recreation. Money, knowledge [জ্ঞান], popularity and such other gains are only by-products of the hobby. Secondly, a hobby is not intended to take precedence over work. It is only complementary work. It provides new energy to our mind and limbs to do more and better work.

I selected stamp collection as my hobby just by chance when I received letters from my pen-friends living in foreign [বৈদেশিক] countries. Very colourful and descriptive stamps of various designs were fixed on those letters. I was so much enamoured of those stamps that I decided to have stamp-collecting as my hobby. Now, I exchange stamps with my friends and make purchases even in the market. I am a member of a number of stamp-collecting national and international societies which help me in collecting stamps of different countries.

I have with me about two thousand stamps of various countries. Most of the stamps are of rare [বিরল] variety and my friends who see them are all praise them. They are arranged in a number of albums in a very systematic manner. They tell us about different personages, flora and fauna [প্রাণিকুল], historical events, achievements in the scientific and other fields of various countries etc. Some of them denote some festivals or great or important days like the International Year of Women, Year of the Girl Child etc. I love to see them off and on.