Star Diary

The Ultimate Killer

Traveling by car one day I noticed a child approximately 10-12 years old puffing a yellowish liquid from a poly bag sitting on the road divider. The content inside the bag is a deadly and easily available drug known as Dandy.

A large number of street children (Tokai) who earn their livelihood picking garbage on the roads are becoming drug addicted. The invention of this recreational drug has been developed recently. In fact any observant individual may notice that in many places in Dhaka, street children are openly inhaling this deadly stuff.

Dandy is a cheap method of taking drugs by pouring glue inside polythene and then inhaling the smoke with their mouth. At a cost of 25-30taka per bag, a huge number of street children can afford it and more often they share one bag between themselves.

Dandy is required for manufacturing footwear and so it is legal and easily obtainable.

Health experts warn that within a very short time these addicted children will suffer from liver and lung problems for inhaling the smoke of glue, which is much worse than the smoke of Cigarette, Marijuana, Heroin or Yaba. Unless concerned authorities take pragmatic measures immediately, the latest drug phenomenon shall get out of hand.

Nice
Banani, Dhaka

Returning home one evening, a distressing scene caught my eye. I noticed a blind beggar sitting under a tree and crying. At first, I decided not to bother, as beggars often use crocodile tears for the sake of their profession. But there was something about this old man and my instincts told me that this man was not acting.

As I moved closer, I realised that his tears were very real; there was no way that the old man could have been acting. I approached him and to my shock, I learned that some monster/s had taken advantange of his blindness and stole his begging plate from right under his nose.

Prolay Chakravorty
Govt Shah Sultan College
Bogra

The Sky's Still Blue

How often we seem to think that the news and the events being reported on the television channels are taking place in an alien world and that we live somewhere far far away. However, reality struck its claws back hard when on my trip to my nana bari (maternal grand father’s house) on the second day of Eid, we actually found a long queue of people on an “indefinite” wait for the bus! Maybe we were lucky that we got a bus to our destination almost immediately, perhaps not the most comfortable one but anything would work then. We saw person after person being jammed into the vehicle throughout almost the entire route and whenever we thought there was absolutely no more space the conductors of the bus would cram more people in, they would holler around and just stuff in a whole bunch of people who would again fit in almost unbelievably as everyone contributed their last inch of space in co-operation.

As even the driver and the conductors joined in the Eid adda, what was amazing was that no one seemed to complain about the arduous journey where loads of them had to constantly maneuver to even find space to ground their feet while standing all the way to their destination. As it suddenly appeared to me, this, in a strange sort of way, reflects the ability of our nation as a whole to still make do in spite of all the limitations that we constantly face with each sunrise, but the sky, somehow, still appears blue.

Tasnim Jara
Chowdhurypara Khilgaon,
Dhaka

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