Star Diary

Early Morning Catastrophe

It was Friday— August 29, 2011, 6:20 am. Like all other days, I was walking with my friends inside the Sultana Kamal Sports Complex. Suddenly, a shrilling cry for help and someone shouting “chhintaikari” (hijacker) pierced the quiet morning air. All of us walking inside ran towards the gate and saw one of our elderly compatriots and a vegetable grocer being beaten by three young boys. The moment they saw the mob approach, they fired blank shots and warned us not to move one step forward. Then hitting my friend's head with the pistol butt, they seized her purse got into a fancy car and drove away through the double roads of Dhanmodi-10A. The boys were well-dressed and had baton like sticks with them. They did not at all appear poverty-stricken. We were so stricken with horror and fear that we could hardly move. It took us sometime to realise that our friend needed medical attention and surprisingly only a few volunteered to take her to the hospital. None of us went to the Dhanmondi police station to file a general dairy because we did not rely on our law enforcing agency to prevent such crimes from taking place again.

Sofia Rahman
Dhanmondi
Dhaka

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A Reward out of the Blue

My friends and I came to know of a mushroom that causes hallucination. For fun, we decided to try it out, but as safety measure we resolved to consume the mushrooms in the confines of our apartment. One friend however wanted adventure and went out ignoring our request to stay back. A few hours later, he came back very excited. He told us that as he was walking in the city, he saw wide fields stretching to the horizon. One such field was crowded with hundreds of hobbits, he claimed. Since he knew that we would not believe him, he brought home one and locked it up in the toilet. At first we were laughing at his story, but when he said he brought home one, we got frightened. We hurried to the toilet and saw a child sitting there silently. Immediately, it became clear to us that our friend, under the influence of the chemical reaction of the mushroom, had mistaken the child for a hobbit. Sensing trouble we tried talking with the child in vain. So we asked our friend to take us to the field of hobbits. When we reached the place, we saw a few people, packing up after a fair. We came to know that a fair for children with development challenges were being held there. We were also informed that a child went missing and the distraught parents were waiting at the local police station. We took the child there and found that a TK10,000 reward was being offered for finding the child. To stay out of trouble, we suppressed the actual story of how the child went missing. Rather we handed the child over to the parents and came back home with the TK10,000 reward. However, we did not forget to vow never to try out any narcotics in future.

Nisan Akhand
Agrabad, Chittagong