RS Street-smart guide: Street food
By Orin
So we see you strolling through the Dhaka streets and unsuccessfully trying to dodge people on the way. We admire your valour. It is not every day we get to see people unfortunate or desperate enough to go out more than thrice a week. You got mud on your shoes as a prize for your undying love of adventure or poverty (because you walk), your jaded eyes only see the destination through the hundreds of people in front of you and just when you start to feel invincible you realise you are hungry. Or maybe you just want to have a good food time with friends on a budget, but who does that?
First off, look around you and scan the neighbourhood. How many courses do you want in your street food meal, or is it just a snack? You are likely to get mostly snack items, so don't bother with the first part of the question. Through our extensive field work, we have found that these are the items you are likely to find, in order of frequency of appearance: Tea, Fuchka, Jhalmuri, nuts(badaam silly), Bhelpuri, Akher shorbot, poppon (popcorn), aachar (pickles), noodle bhaji, deep fried shrimp carcases and muffin ( about as available as unicorns, but was spotted once).
Now that we have our menu down, we can move onto the guiding part.
Rule #1: Eat all the food at your own risk.
We think that we Bangladeshis have eaten everything available in a chemistry lab: melamine to formalin to Hydrogen disulphate, but then Dhaka street food surprises us. You even cannot say what made you sit in your porcelain throne for hours when parents question you. If you are one of the truthful kinds then of course you are screwed. Fortunately most of us aren't. But yes, parents aside, foods that are available at low prices, served by people with such impeccable hygiene sense cannot surely go wrong in the stomach, right?
Rule #2: Nothing is at it seems. Everything looking too good to be true, IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.
Rule #3: You are never too old to eat anything as old as you.
But the oil in the frying pan is older.
Rule #4: Those who prepare the street foods are more gangsta than you. Be aware.
Once we witnessed a street vendor cleaning his pots in the puddles that form when there is no rain. They are the Chuck Norris of food world.
Rule #5: The water in juices stopped being clean right about the time when Buriganga water stopped being clear.
Bottom line: Newspapers > Tissues.
Wonderful
By Neeha Noireeta Hossain
There was a boy named Rahim. He was a son of a poor farmer. His mother loved him. His father loved him, but could not feed him properly. So he thought of keeping Rahim in the deep forest. His mother gave him a ball of string and said when you go out you will use this ball of string, then if you are lost you can come back home. One day the farmer said Rahim come with me, I am going to the forest with my cow because he wants to eat.
So he went with his father and with the ball of string. He used the ball of string. His father said you rest under the tree, I will feed my cow. Rahim went under the tree and fall fast asleep. When his father saw him asleep, he sadly went away. When he woke up he understood that he was lost. He took hold of the ball of string and after sometime he saw a chocolate door. He thought to have a bite. As soon as he was about to give a bite an old dwarf said, “Stop, stop, stop, if you want to go in, you have to answer my question. Name an instrument that we cannot see or touch only but we can hear?” Then Rahim thought for a while and said it's our "voice". "Right, right, right, you can go in" said the old dwarf. Rahim went in and saw a lot of chocolate, ice cream - there were mountains of ice cream, flowers of lollipop. He ate and ate. After a while he saw a golden door. There was a Fairy. Rahim was eating a lollipop, it slipped out of his hand and it fell on the pond. The fairy bought a very big lollipop and said “Is this your lollipop.”
Rahim said, “My one was very small.”
The Fairy said “You can enter the Golden Palace. Because you told the truth.”
Rahim asked, “Golden Palace ?”
As soon as he saw the gold. He asked, “Can I take some gold.” The Fairy said its all yours and gave him a big bag. He took as much as he could.
He got out of the Golden Palace and chocolate door. Finally he followed the ball of string and went back home with the gold and lived happily ever after.
Inspiration - Various fairy tales
The writer is an 8-year old student of Class II, SFX Greenherald Int'l School
People said things. We said things. We all had a merry time. But no cake.
Muzakkir Hossain
Guys, you have to think about making a mobile version of your RS online web page. Reading it using a phone is really annoying.
Ehsanur Raza Ronny The plain boring version we have now is optimized for phones in the sense it has very little data to load. We're planing an upgrade which will have both high end fancy flash stuff as well as a streamlined mobile version.
Tazin Islam
My iPod... SHALL BE MY DEATH!
GET A ZUNE, like Osama. Then the ridicule of the tech community will be your death. - RS
Taskin Faika
Power of three eh? was i the only one who checked whether it had 333 words or not?
The Rising Stars The writer also had 3 names. As did the title. And it was the third piece on page 3.
Shafeen Mahmood
The other day I saw one of your book reviews of the book 'Flipped'. Don't know if you know or not, a movie was made of it.
Yes. We have one of our writers reviewing it. - RS
Ahmed Samira Niha
Can you guys do some spoofs on Twilight? I kinda miss those.
Twilight has gone the way of the Paris Hiltons of the world. It is journeyed beyond contempt to boredom. - RS
Sajid Khandaker
The first 4 words of this week's edition: "There were two boy". Intentional or not, a mistake has been found!
Ten points to Gryffindor! - RS
