বাংলা 
English 
Monohor Shah's home was in Lahini Para of Kushtia district. He was seven or eight years old then, and he would go to study at a pathshala in his own neighbourhood. The pathshala was a single thatched room, a bamboo-fenced classroom for seven or eight pupils.
He studied up to class three or four, and after that his schooling ended. Monohor Shah's father used to sing dhuwa songs. One stormy night Monohor went with his brother to gather mangoes in a neighbouring orchard; when the boys did not return for a long time, his father went looking for them and was crushed to death under a fallen tree. Four or five years later his mother too passed away.
His elder brother Motaleb Khan somehow kept the household of six brothers going. When Monohor was 22 years old, Anowar Shah of Pabna and Tuakkhel Shah, another Baul of Dumdama in Kushtia, came to their village to sing pala-gan. Monohor was swept away by Tuakkhel Shah's songs; he had found an unknown land. That was the beginning; today he is more than 60 years old. Tuakkhel Shah would sing while the young disciple Monohor sat beating the joari.
At some gatherings Monohor would take up the song with Tuakkhel Shah –
Inside the cage the unknown bird,
how it comes and goes.
In this way, song after song, 49 years of his life went by. Even today he sings “Lalon's songs” in the same measure. Age has dimmed his eyes, and he walks slowly, yet this fair-skinned old Baul leaps along, unawares, to the rhythm of song. For Monohor Shah of a once-prosperous family, his profession is simply the songs of Lalon.
