Star Diary

Photo: Prabir Das

ATM Booth Horror

One of my colleagues entered the ATM booth of a well-known private bank opposite the police station in Motijheel. The booth had two more ATM machines which were occupied. As soon as my friend collected the money from the ATM machine, the two men who were earlier busy punching numbers into their respective machines, appeared next to him. One of them had a shot-gun in his hand and they both ordered him to hand over the money he had just taken out. Claiming to be sources of the police, these guys warned my colleague to make no noise about this incident or they could implicate him in a false case. Seeing no choice, my colleague handed over the money to them and watched as they hurried towards the police station. It is sad that the law and order situation in our country is so poor that a normal citizen would rather hand over money to looters than get the police involved. The concerned authorities need to seriously look into this matter or the situation might turn even worse.

M. Noray Alam Rasel
Via E-mail

***

An Insipid Misogynist Comment

I had gone to a musical instruments store some time back and was looking at some classical guitars since I would be joining a music class soon. While the shopkeeper was showing me the different types of guitar, a young male customer, sitting on a stool with his guitar, trying to tune it, suddenly asked snidely, 'Can girls even play the guitar?' I was pretty bemused by the comment since later in class, majority of the people who performed turned out to be women. It's very disheartening that even in this era when women are successful in every field, some men in our country try to undermine their achievements by saying such ignorant, misogynist things.

Samiha Matin
Uttara, Dhaka