::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Star Diary

Face to Face with a Fraud

A few days ago, a few of my friends were standing in front of our hall early in the morning. Suddenly a man appeared looking for a student who happened to be one of our senior. The senior was not present and so my friends asked him why he was looking for the student. The man said that he was in trouble and needed the senior student's help. It seems that his mother was dying of diarrhoea and he badly needed some money for her treatment. He knew the senior student and according to the man, they belonged to the same village. The man further added that he was working at the academic building, an extension to our university. Hearing this, my friends scraped together around 500 takas and gave the money to the man. The man promised to return the money within a few hours. However, the man never returned. In fact, the senior student, when told of the incident, was shocked since he had never even heard of him. In fact, the man never worked at the extension building either. He actually cheated money out of my friends at the cost of his mother.

Siddiqur Rahman Apu
Khan Jahan Ali Hall
Khulna University, Khulna

Thief in the Crowd

Last Friday, despite my exams, I forced my father to take me to the 'Thai Fair 2008' held in Bashundhara City market. We were irritated to begin with because of the usual traffic congestion and the huge crowd of people at the entrance gate. We were further more disappointed when we went inside to find that most of the things there were available in any ordinary shop of Dhaka with three times less the price at the fair. With nothing better to do, we decided to tour the market rather than the fair stalls. As I rushed among the throng of people (mostly men) down the escalator to buy CDs, both my parents and my brother shifted their attention to me. At that very moment, my father felt a slight shove on his right shoulder. Alarmed, he quickly felt for his panjabi's pocket and discovered that he had just been robbed! The 5000 takas that he had brought with him were all missing. It is hard to imagine that mugging is common in such a renowned place in Dhaka. I would advice people to be more careful in these crowded fairs and not to wear panjabis when carrying a lot of cash.

Mohua Morshed
Maple leaf Int. School, Dhaka

A Victim Everyday

One morning, I was on my way to Baridhara DOHS. I was in a rickshaw, which was stuck in a jam. As my rickshaw neared the Bon Vivant Hotel, I came across a school van, in which the children were screaming in fear and hiding their faces. I was wondering why they were behaving this way, when I found what they were actually looking at. In front of the van, two women were in a rickshaw, waiting for the traffic to move on. The women had burn-marks all over their face and body. As the children were crying in fear, the women were trying to convince the children with a smile that there was nothing to be afraid of and that they were just like anyone else. I was, in fact, surprised to see how beautiful they were, especially in their thoughts and attitude. It is very difficult for an acid victim to resume a normal life and takes great courage for the victim to face the society. The government should seriously think about punishing the people who go about throwing acid at innocents.

Md. Zelhaz Ahmed Tipu
Badda, Dhaka