Star Diary

Costly FREE SAMPLES

Afriend of mine, who despite belonging to an elite family, loves to eat local, junk foods like roadside muffins, sweets, pickles and French fries. Although his friends and family keep warning him not to devour in those unhealthy things, he never listens. The other day while he was returning home from his university, a salesperson came to him and offered him some free samples of mango pickle, without thinking, he ate those and sat in his car. After around half an hour when he was not responding to his chauffeur, the latter immediately stopped the car, checked on him, and found him unconscious. His chauffeur called the parents and took him to the hospital and admitted him to emergency. At first, the doctors could not figure out the main cause of the incident but later it was found that, it was the pickle! It had some sort of addictive drugs in it and this highly dosed sedative drug had made my friend faint. Nothing fatal had happened to him but it could have gone much worse. Although the pickle was free of cost but his hospital charges came out to be fifty thousand taka. It is aptly said that nothing's free in this world, even the free samples.

Rahim Abu Ali Sajwani
North South University, Dhaka

Unacceptable Luxury

On the night of December 20, 2010, I was coming back from my law chamber around 11.30 pm, when I saw a building decorated with thousands of electric light bulbs hanging from the roof top. Perhaps the decoration was for some wedding ceremony. The very next night, around the same time, I saw another building in the same place decorated with massive lighting. It seemed a huge wastage to me as our country is suffering from mammoth electricity deficiency. While many of us cannot even switch on a single bulb due to load shedding, a group of people waste a high amount of electricity just for entertainment and luxury. And this sort of show-offs is not always occasional; shopping malls, clubs, hotels take in a lot of electric resource from the national grid while the general people pass night after night in void darkness. If people like them turn a bit sensible, we can save a lot of electricity. We should always keep it in mind that it's not just the Government's responsibility to build a great nation; we-the people- equally share the job. The Government merely reflects the kind of people we are.

Rowshan Ali
Dhanmondi, Dhaka

A Familiar Corruption

Afew days ago, one of my friends and I were going to hospital by a motorbike to visit a ailing uncle of mine. Suddenly, two policemen stood up on our way, moving their hands to stop our bike. As we stopped, one of them snatched the key and asked us to show the license. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring the license as we were in a hurry. So, we tried to convince them of our emergency and requested them to give us a chance this time. But they didn't listen to us; rather, they strongly refused to let us say anything further. Few minutes later, one of them took us to a corner and told us to pay him 300 taka. He even threatened to hand our bike to the police station if we did not 'pay' him the amount. I was just dumfounded at how easily two men at duty were asking for bribe so openly! Having no other options, we had to bribe them 300 taka. While leaving we saw them stop another bike and the biker straight away gave them a 500-taka note and got away without any further interrogations. I had just experienced something I always saw in the movies. But with the thrill, I got a bit perplexed about the price of not being able to show one's license; is it 300 taka or 500?

Md Mazharul Islam
Kashiful Uloom Madrasa
Madhupur, Tangail

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