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Here's a video interview of Taibu in Bangladesh from November that has surfaced on YouTube (in Bengali though): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2C-QFdJMnY

Looks fit as ever. Kritireon_BD, could you please translate some of the interesting parts for us?

Born and raised in the US, I am fluent in colloquial Bengali which has a fair share of loan words from Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu. However, TV news is always in standard Bengali which, apart from the odd Islamic terms, is wholly Sanskrit based. Thus, I can only understand newscasts at a bear minimum. Fortunately, my comprehension increases 3-4 fold when its cricket news because of the use of cricketing terms, lol.

So I'll do my best here to summarize (I've heard it once on my tablet with the volume down, I'm re-listening on my laptop now to catch stuff I missed the first time):

Reporter: Taibu was one of ZIM's hopes (does 'bishoi' mean hope???). Made his Test debut at 17...became the youngest captain in Test history. His career has been filled with drama (again guessing at the meaning of 'natokiya', lol). He left in 2005, but came back. Now he's gone to Namibia (???).

Taibu: I am in Bangladesh to do business with a friend who is interested in doing business in ZIM. He is a big businessman here. That is the sole reason for my trip.

Reporter: ZIM are playing cricket in BD right now and have been whitewashed, yet, none of this affects Taibu.

Taibu: I didn't leave due to any problems with ZC...I left due to my religious convictions. I don't even keep up with cricket news anymore...ZIM are playing here right now, but I don't watch any of the games. If anyone wants to know anymore about this, he/she needs to spend 1-2 days with me [rather cryptic comment].

Reporter: Taibu is now involved in real estate business and is very pleased with his current state.

Taibu: I don't miss cricket at all. There is fame and money in cricket, but I don't want any of that. I am happy with what I have now.

Reporter: Taibu has 2 sons, and does not want either of them to be involved in cricket either.

"There is fame and money in cricket, but I don't want any of that"

I never realised Taibu had a drink and hallucination problem ............

^that's the only part from what I posted that I'm not totally sure if that's what Taibu actually said.

I thought he went on to become a priest or something? He's now in the real estate business....

Thanks for the efforts to translate Kriterion! Yes, the fact that it was cricket lingo and it is mostly Sanskrit based Bengali, I could get about 20-30 percent too, but not as much as what you have shared. It would have been tougher if it was not Sanskrit based for me

Not sure about the word "bishoi", but yes, "natokiya" comes from "nATakIya" in Sanskrit which means dramatic (nATaka = drama). Also, the reference of Namibia could have been during 2005 itself.

"Taka, Shomman, Jonopriyata" --> Taka = Bangladeshi Currency (means money), Shomman = SammAna (means honour in Sanskrit) and Jonopriyata = JanapriyatA (means fame in Sanskrit). So, your last part seems to be correct too.

Crimson, what is your mother tongue? I know that Bengali is a North Indian language like Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, etc and those languages all have common roots and similar sentence structures. I once understood an entire sentence of Gujarati without even knowing which language it was, lol.

Bishoi I know the meaning of in other contexts, but I never heard it used in this way. Jonopriyata I think Jono = people and priayata = priyo = favorite...so people's favorite = fame/famous.

Kannada, which also has a bit of Sanskrit influence, and I have studied a bit of Sanskrit too. But I've felt that Bengali is the most difficult language to identify Sanskrit influence as the words get distorted quite a bit compared to Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu and Marathi.

Yes, non Bengalis have a very difficult time picking the language. We Bengalis though have a much easier time picking Urdu/Hindi because we can spot the same words much more easily. I had a Pakistani friend of mine once say that Bengali was "perverted Urdu" lol. I taught another Pakistani how to speak and decipher Bengali by just following 3 rules: change short A's to O's, change long A's to short A's, and change S's to Sh's. He thought I was joking until he tried it and he was able to convert an Urdu sentence almost completely to Bengali.

Didn't realize Kannada and Telugu had much Sanskrit in it.

But yes, Bengali's, or at least Bangladeshi Bengali's tend to fluctuate between Sanskrit and Arabic/Farsi based terms. For example the word above for honor, shomman. I didn't know it was the Bengali version of sammana. But we tend to use shomman 50% of the time and the Arabic derived ijjot 50% of the time (izzat = honor --> ijjot). We use both terms interchangeablely.