SPREADING THE GOOD WORD
A few days back, a Facebook post shared by Marina Mahathir, the renowned Malaysian socio-political activist and daughter of the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Mahathir Mohammad, was re-posted by many others. Many of my friends shared the story of the Bangladeshi man, Mehedee, who returned Marina's iPad, which she had left behind in the kebab stall where he worked.
26 year-old Mehedee is currently living in Malaysia after completing his graduaton in Accounting and Information Systems from Jagannath University in Dhaka. As Marina offered him a reward for his honesty, Mehedee refused, adding, "All I want is your prayer." Marina praised this Bangladeshi young man's honesty, his rightful upbringing and put an end to her post by wishing him good luck.
Like many others I was enthralled by the post when I read it first. I was happy by the praise received by a Bangladeshi but what made me happier was that honesty, a rare trait in today's world still prevails among us.
This is good news.
Remember the Bangladeshi taxi driver who returned Dh1.2 million in lost diamonds and cash left by his customer? 31 year-old Abdul Halim Mohammed Manu was highly honored not only by the Dubai Taxi Corporation but also by the international media when he returned the property to its rightful owner after finding it in his taxi.
The fact that Manu returned this large amount of unattended money on his own initiative through reporting to the police amazed the world.
I consider that a good news as well.
Last year one of my colleagues from the Star, the former weekend Magazine of The Daily Star reported a story on a poor rickshaw puller who refused to take a hefty bundle of Tk 500 notes from his drunk passenger who kept forcing him to take it. Instead of taking the money, Abdul Gafur, the self-content, honest rickshaw puller drove the half-conscious passenger to his home, tucking all the money in his pocket.
These are a few incidents that I learnt about from the media. I am sure there are hundred other stories that go unreported and unappreciated. In a world where we keep reading and hearing stories of dishonesty and fraud, where we know for a fact that our country ranks 14th in the list of most corrupt nations, where we need to pay double the money for a train ticket to travel anywhere, where we need to keep some extra money in the other pocket for bribing officials and getting our work done, these occasions re-instill our belief in ourselves.
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