 Road to Eid: Cow Tales
Vital Stats: 3 teeth, 3 inch long slightly crooked horns, red fur, a half-moon shaped scar on the neck.
Day of the Grass
This morning, while I was grazing on the grass, I had a sudden epiphany. The sky is not exactly blue. It is more like azure. I kept looking at the sky till my eyes watered. I looked down to sip some of the weird water. They smell kind of funny. Even the flies don't zoom around it anymore.
I consulted with the chief of the stables: Tiger, the Black Bengal Goat. He said, “The sky is always too beautiful. It's the work of men that puts layers over our eyes.” He then sighed and looked at me sadly. He has been in that funny mood for a while. I chew on the grass a bit more and think about what he means.
 Day of the Thatch
The Owner has been taking a lot of care of me lately. Today he took me to the pond and washed me. Each droplet of water sticking to my fur gleamed in the sun light. I saw the cow next door, the wonderful Miss Belle, giving me an admiring look. I mooed at her in a lazy, uninterested, but totally hot way and shook my head slightly. She looked away; probably to hide her cow-blush. I totally know when cows flirt. The Elder used to say that the cows of this generation have no manners at all.
I thought of The Elder and what he told me a few months ago before he disappeared. I was his favourite student. He used to tell me stories of the great Dhaka. He told me of our Destiny; of the Cow-dream. Once every year, a huge noisy chariot comes and takes all the good behaving, able bodied cows to Dhaka. “The chariot shalt be the sign of Dhaka,” he always finished dramatically. One day he too was Selected.
Dhaka must be a great place. No one ever wants to come back.
Day of Extra Food
Mhew! I can't eat any more today! I am too full and drowsy even for grazing. At this rate I will soon grow fat. I wonder how much Belle would like my cowly abs. Tiger, the Black Bengal Goat, put a damp cloth over my fantasies with his sullenness. He said everything will come to an End in Dhaka. Whatever. It sounds like a movie tagline to me.
Meanwhile, I smell the weird liquid on everything I eat (the mayflies won't even sit on my dung. I find it very disrespectful). Tiger says it's a special formula to nourish me. “You Ria,” he calls it. He might be right. I think I heard the Owner saying something like this to the stable boy. I moo at Belle next door. She moos back. She plays banjo with my heartstring so fine.
The next day, I am on board the chariot to Dhaka.
(To be continued)
By Jawad
The week in re(ar)view
Trained to kill?
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Chairman Prof. Mizanur Rahman was asking about the credibility of extra judicial killings. In case you're wondering, that's killing off bad guys 'cause you think they are bad. It's a great concept in comic books; in reality, as all things slightly iffy, it can go out of hand.
“Rab members are adequately trained. So why do people die from their gunshots and why the bullets don't hit their legs?” Dhaka Reporters Unity president Parvez Khan posed the question. The answer lies in action movies. Bad guys always end up falling in front of the bullets. Read the small print in movie posters: based on true stories.
We're split up
The government is supposed to be like a stick wielding nanny handling kids who just don't want to play together. Some of these kids want to play with rocks, some with paper and others with lizards. Rock, paper, lizards. That's not how you play the game, that's not unity. A government wants to keep people united. But ours wants to split us up. The government has decided to divide Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) area into two parts - north and south. As if we already didn't have enough divides such as rich vs poor, English medium vs Bangla medium, rickshaw vs car users, Shakira vs Mila, etc. And now it's going to be them versus us. This is how the wall came up in Berlin. |
E-voting is unbreakable
Votes determine not who is liked more by the common people, but who is smarter, trickier. We're talking about the people who rig the votes. That's the worry surrounding Narayanganj City Corporation elections. The Election Commission said the use of Electronic Voting Machines will deter people from doing what they usually do. Voting is to take place October 30th. But we'll find a way. Do we hear someone say, “Challenge Accepted?” Around 4,500 members of Rapid Action Battalion, police, Ansar and Coast Guard will be there in case someone cracks the code.
Tree wins for once
Cops finally did something for the voiceless. They stopped a tree from being chopped down. They halted chopping down of century-old trees along a road at Birishiri in Netrakona in compliance with a High Court order. In the meantime, Birishiri Jubo Samaj yesterday formed a human chain protesting the tree felling. We're all for saving trees. It's apparently where we came from and at the rate land prices are spiking, that's where we are going.
5 years too soon
Did you know the Bangabandhu Multipurpose Bridge, the one everybody loves to speed across, has faults? The biggest fault being that it has no drive-through shwarma stand. Or pizza. Or biriyani. Nothing. Aside from that major obvious fault, it also has many minor ones, like cracks. They've been there for more than 5 years. It was so bad that trains had to be slowed down. Moreover, a train with two locomotives cannot cross the bridge now. The freight trains must have empty containers in between the loaded ones.
But finally, the repairs are about to be done. Who's doing it? A company called China Communication Construction Company have been hired for the Tk 243 crore job. Time frame? Within a year. Watch this space next year. We're talking bets already.
By Mood Dude
How Hipster are you?
Q.1. Which one is your favourite band?
a) Metallica
b) Snow Patrol
c) Death Cab for Cutie
d) Panic at the Disco
 Q.2 How did you acquire your glasses?
a) Ordered them from the great bidesh
b) Bought them from Elephant Road
c) Stole your grandma's bifocals
d) They are the same ones you've been wearing since third grade
Q.3 What do you like best about winter?
a) You don't sweat like a smoked hilsha all the time
b) You can go on picnics because the weather is nice
c) Winter means winter vacation
d) You get to wear your scarves and topis
Q.4 Your favourite website is -
a) Facebook.com
b) Tumblr.com
c) Pitchfork.com
d) Cracked.com
Q.5. You think you are a photographer because -
a) You did a few courses in photography
b) You own a Canon Mark 2
c) You don't think you are a photographer
d) You have a Nikon digital camera, take photos of water droplets and edit them in Picnik
Q.6 Your favourite accessory is -
a) Cheap watch you bought from Farmgate
b) A bowler hat
c) Striped vests
d) Bling bling
Q. 7 What type of facial hair do you have?
a) A moustache
b) A goatee
c) A Dumbledorean beard
d) Wolverine sideburns
Q.8 You believe yourself to be -
a) A con artist at heart
b) Better than everyone else
c) Go with the flow
d) Unique and underappreciated
Q.9 Do your friends ever borrow your music player?
a) All the time, for every party
b) Only when they are really bored
c) Usually, when they're with me
d) No, because they don't know half the artists featured
If you scored between:
9 - 17, then consider yourself lucky because you are not hipster. That's good for now, but whether or not you fall under other stereotypes is another matter.
18-26, then you seem to have hipster-ish inclinations, but are not quite hipster yet. You probably enjoy following current fashion trends like stripes and hats. Maybe you even listen to some obscure bands, but so do most of the people. Don't be worrying yet.
27 36, then you are Hipster. You dress up weird and attract stares as you walk down the footpaths of New Market. Sometimes you are even mistaken as the Walking Fakir and followed for short distances. But you think you are immune to these, because although you walk in crowds, you are so not mainstream.
By Anashua
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