Problem
for New Comers
Nowadays,
life is very complicated. A person who comes from the village
is quite susceptible to fall into the traps of the city
dwellers. Those who come from the village have no idea about
the different destinations and how to get from one place
to the other. They also have very limited knowledge on the
modes of transportation available. I once met this man who
was fresh from the village. He asked a bus contractor if
the bus was headed towards Mirpur 1. The bus contractor
told him to get on the bus as he (the contractor) would
give him the necessary directions to his destination. When
the bus reached Asad Gate, the contractor asked the man
for Tk.5 (which was more then the fare) and told him to
disembark. He then told him to board another bus to his
final destination. The powerless villager got down and was
looking about helplessly. It is sad that there are so many
people who are always out to cheat the poor and innocent.
Zillur Rahman
Green Road Govt. Staff Quarter,
Dhanmondi
A
Serpentine Affair
It
was another one of those sultry June afternoons when I was
visiting a local shopping mall in Uttara. All of a sudden,
I heard screams as I was approaching a corner of the market.
People started to gather around the place where the screams
were coming from, I saw the source of the commotion. Three
young women, all of them belonging to some tribe of snake
charmers--possibly of the nearby Turag river gypsy community,
were openly threatening a group of shopkeepers with small
but very much live snakes. The women were demanding some
amount of money from the shopkeepers. Finally, security
guards came into the scene and managed to force the snake
charmers to leave the mall, creating both a scene of suspense
and comedy.
The
Citizen
Dhaka
Khulna
Diary
The
Frivolity of Traffic Police
It was
a rainy day and I was coming home from College. When I came
to Farighat Bus Stand, I noticed a taxi coming at great
speed and as it passed a traffic policeman by the road,
it sprinkled him with a shower of dirty water from a pothole.
There was another traffic policeman standing beside him
laughing while the victim was swearing at the driver and
his fourteen generations. Whatever deplorable condition
it was for that traffic policeman it made me laugh. Some
policemen are victims. But strangely enough when I came
near at Dakbangla, another incident caught my attention
where two rickshaw pullers were engaged in a little scuffle.
At once a traffic policeman rushed to the scene and pacified
them with slaps. He further continued his assault with his
stick vehemently and inhumanly. I was shocked. I know it's
their duty to keep peace and order on the street but is
it their duty to abuse power and engage themselves in such
inhuman activities? This is a personal matter I know but
this single incident taught me how the men in the saddle
are ill-treating their power over the weak. However their
frivolity gave me two impressions, both contradicting each
other another within a minute and it was tough for me to
balance my emotion so swiftly.
Shamim
Ahmed
Roy Para, Khulna |