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Diary
A Miracle of its Kind
This happened during the HSC and SSC examinations. At around 2 pm, the students from the nearby schools were on their way home. Amidst the traffic and the congestion on the street, I finally found a rickshaw and started for home. As we were moving at an extremely slow pace along with the other vehicles, I noticed that my elderly rickshaw puller abruptly stopped the rickshaw and got down, though the traffic had started to move on. He went behind the rickshaw and picked up something from the ground, which did not belong to him since he had not dropped anything. He came over to his side and showed me what he had picked up -- a ruler and a compass. A student must have dropped them while coming out of the school. The elderly rickshaw puller then told me that his school-going granddaughter had somehow broken her compass set, ruler and pencil a few days ago. She had shown the damaged pieces to him and he had promised her that he would buy them for her. But he never got to buy them as he had promised and considered this moment as one of the little miracles that occurred in people's lives. Even though what he had done was not right, I did not say anything about it, since he was so happy about his discovery. He was thanking God for this over and over. Once I reached home, I paid him 10 taka more than the fare. I was glad to witness the miracle and to see him happy.
Wahid Tamzid Khan
Dhanmondi Tutorial
Playing Bluff
 A few days ago, I went shopping in at Town Hall. It was a pleasant evening and I was enjoying roaming about on the streets and was very much relaxed. I realised that I had lost track of time when I found all the shopkeepers closing down at 7 pm. I was heading home when suddenly something caught my attention. What I saw was astonishing. A shaky shopkeeper got together a few customers and got them inside his store before pulling down the shutters. Before doing so, he hung around to see if the coast was clear from police officers on patrol. The technique he used was very clever but I could not fail to think about the cunning intelligence people of our country use for dishonesty when they can use it for good purposes.
Naome Syed
Mohammadpur
Diary from Chittagong
A 'Musical' Ride Home
The other day, I was on my to Sugandha from Mehedibag on a rickshaw. As the rickshaw was moving, I noticed that the rickshaw puller was shaking and nodding his head, frequently and even kept time to the nodding and the shaking! Frankly, this behaviour actually scared me. Eventually I asked him why in the world he was moving in this way. That was when I noticed a pair of wires hanging from his ears. The rickshaw puller, to answer my question, immediately pulled an mp3 player from his pockets and let me know that he was just listening to music. This was indeed a great shock to me since I had never seen a rickshaw puller with an mp3 player before. However, I couldn't help smiling at the rickshaw puller's appreciation of music, which led him to listen to it even in the middle of work!
Shakil Bin Zaman
Little Jewel's School
Chittagong
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