Tousif, Safa and Toya Spend Three Days at Sylhet's Lalakhal, a Place Full of Memories for the Actor

Actor Tousif Mahbub's birthday was on 27 October. Although work usually falls on his birthday every year, this time he had kept shooting closed in advance. His plan to travel with his wife and friends took him to Lalakhal in Sylhet.

Tousif said, 'This birthday I wanted to disappear, and I managed it. I travelled my own way. Since my friends are always beside me on my birthday, I asked them whether they would come with me. Safa, Toya and Siam (Ahmed) agreed.' Siam Ahmed, however, could not make it in the end because of his busy schedule. Toya was accompanied by her husband, actor Syed Zaman Shawon.

Lalakhal is a place full of memories for Tousif. His music career ended there, and his acting career began there too. He said, 'We had a band then. In December 2012 I performed at Lalakhal, travelled back to Dhaka by bus all night, and at four in the morning went again to Lalakhal for the shooting of Oltime Dourer Upor, the drama that started my career. This place is the end of one career and the beginning of another.'

Safa Kabir never wants to miss a chance to travel with friends, and she agreed as soon as she got the proposal. Her friendship with Tousif dates from the shooting of Adnan Al Rajeev's Oltime Dourer Upor, while her friendship with Mumtahina Toya grew during the shooting of the serial Super Girls.

Lalakhal's blue water charmed Safa. She said, 'I have not seen such blue water as Lalakhal's anywhere except St Martin's. The environment is extraordinary. Toya and I woke up in the morning, watched the sunrise and walked around. We missed Siam and sent him videos of the beautiful moments.'

For Safa, the trip was a journey to prepare herself mentally. In her words, 'It felt as if I had become younger. I am thinking that if I could come here once every month, it would work for me as natural medicine.'

Across the three days of adda, Toya's laughter hardly stopped. Toya said that when taking photos with friends, stopping the laughter is much harder than striking a beautiful pose; in the end there were more photos taken mid-laughter than posed ones, but those are the photos that feel best to look at later.

The friendship of more than a decade is now like family to them. Safa said, 'Now we are much more than friends — part of a family, you could say. Toya, Tousif and Siam are special to me.' Tousif said his friends are a place of trust for him; when the flight landed, they gave him the duty of collecting the luggage and brought a cake and other surprise items from Sylhet town, none of which he knew about.

After returning from Sylhet, all of them have become busy with shooting again.