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| Volume 11 |Issue 50| December 21, 2012 | |
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Star Diary Magic at BRTC Bus Counter!
The other day, I was waiting with a ticket in a queue for a Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) bus at a counter in Dhaka. After a long hour the much awaited bus appeared and the passengers approached the gate to hop on to the bus. The men in charge of counter started checking tickets and tearing them. Here the moment of magic began, I had bought a ticket for Shahbagh but later I noticed that my ticket turned out to be that of Farmgate. Trying to remember what happened I figured out that the ticket checker had taken my ticket in his hand and while holding the ticket of the preceding passenger, who was heading for Farmgate. He tore the preceding passenger's ticket in half and gave one portion to that passenger. He kept the other half in his hand. Afterwards when my turn came he took up my ticket and pretended as if he halved it in two parts as well. Then he gave me a half of the false ticket (of Farmgate) and in a blink of eye his left hand entered his left trouser-pocket, where he surely put my ticket which was not torn at all. And needless to mention, this way a sold ticket can be sold twice or thrice or perhaps as many times as possible. Abu Hasnat Lame Excuse When I and my friends Sabit and Julius used to attend pre-test preparatory examination in a coaching centre, there was a rule that if anyone missed any test s/he had to give Tk100 as penalty for missing the test. One day, the three of us went to the stadium to watch a match between Bangladesh and Pakistan and missed the exam, scheduled on that day. The following day, when we went to coaching centre as usual, the director told us to pay the fine. We told him that we went to attend a burial function of one of my relatives, which was held in a village far away from town. While we were returning, we said, accidentally one of the tyres of our car got punctured and that was why we couldn't attend the test. Surprisingly, he took our excuse in consideration but with a condition that we had to take the missed examination and each of us would have to sit for the test in separate rooms. We were relieved hearing the condition. But afterwards our relief disappeared when we were given the question paper. We were baffled seeing that there was only one question and it was - "Exactly which of the tyres of your car got punctured?" Md Nafisul Islam Nahin FAKE MEDICINES A few years back, I once had a fish bone stuck in my throat. As it was quite late at night, I gulped a few lumps of rice and went to sleep with the hope that things would get better in the morning. But, as luck would have it, it did not. My parents wanted to take me to a doctor to pull it out but since I was really frightened, my mother got me homeopathic medicine under the influence of our neighbour. The person who recommended the medicine assured that the bone would be gone without much problem and television channels frequently advertised about various homeopathic doctors and the miracles they performed. I took the liquid type so-called medicine per hour, but the bone didn't seem to vanish! Then my parents took me to a doctor of a reputed hospital to pull out the bone. The doctor then pulled it out, stating that the homeopathic medicine actually had no effect! Later that day, as my mother told this to her colleague, she stated that she had consumed homeopathic medicine for a week for fish bone that was stuck in her throat and when she went to the doctor, it was found that she had acquired an infection in her throat because of the medicine while the fish bone remained stuck. It is an irony how these fake doctors give medicines and how the TV channels advertise it to the mass population, when it is nothing but another way to extract money out of people's pocket. Arshi Siddiqui Copyright
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