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       Volume 11 |Issue 30| July 27, 2012 |


   Inside

 Letters
 Voicebox
 Cover Story
 Special Feature
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 Human Rights
 Perspective
 Reflections
 Musings
 Travel
 One Off
 Straight Talk
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Star Diary


Photo: Star File

Aggressive Driving

Two of my colleagues and I were coming home from work last week on a CNG. As we were approaching the Rupashi Bangla Hotel, a speeding car overtook our scooter at the bend of the street and in the process, almost collided with us. We stopped at a red light and our chauffeur stopped beside that car and asked them what was wrong.

A man in the passenger seat started arguing rather angrily and told us to step outside our vehicle. When we stepped down, we saw that the man who was on the passenger seat had a baton in his hand and the car belonged to RAB 3. The RAB official told us to apologise for being impolite to them. In turn, we asked them to refrain from reckless driving in future and forget about any apologies from our part. At that point, a photojournalist, who was passing that way by sheer chance, stopped to see what was happening. Seeing him, the RAB official changed his attitude and eventually left the scene.

I have wondered why the people in the elite forces in this country are so senselessly arrogant. Is it the assurance of impunity that makes them break the law?

Farid Ahmed
Jatrabari, Dhaka


Graffiti on a School Bus

I was caught in a long tailback in Dhanmondi on my way to work one morning. The incessant honking and the rickshaw-pullers' unyielding efforts to slide their vehicles through the little space available were getting on my nerves.

As I was trying to figure out a way to reach my office on time, I caught a glimpse of an apparently exotic micro-bus, standing a few yards away from me. The whole vehicle was adorned in graffiti. As I focused closely onto the writings, I was astounded. Obscene words were sprayed in black ink – an indecent act, probably carried out by some miscreants.

But I was really surprised when I saw the logo of a reputed English medium school on its windscreen. It was a school bus and I could see children in uniforms inside. While being stuck in the excruciating gridlock, I couldn't help but wonder why the school authorities neglected the matter. If school buses bore such marks of degradation, what lessons of morality are we teaching our children?

Naome Syed
Mohammadpur, Dhaka


Crime Scene or Regular Incident?

It was nearly eight o'clock in the morning when I started for the streets, hurrying to my school as I had already run late. I was walking by, lost in my own thoughts, when suddenly I noticed a group of young men trying to block the way of an old lady. It seemed as if she could barely walk without her walking stick. I stopped for a while to see what was going on. I could hear one of the men asking for the lady's phone and saying that he needed to make a very urgent call. The lady refused at first, but agreed to give him the phone later. The man started blabbering away on the phone and started to walk fast. Before the poor woman could’nt even call after him, she was distracted by another man from the group. After a while, I saw the woman again, searching for the man who went away with her phone. But it was already too late before she realised that she had been mugged.

I was surprised thinking about the many different ideas that people get in their heads for robbing others. Mugging has become such a regular incident these days that everyone has stopped caring, I wondered as I started for school once again.

Ahona Saha
DOHS Baridhara, Dhaka


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