Feature

Bangladeshis- the most tolerant!!

Samantha Saberin

You may ask, why? Well!! We tolerate all sorts of political, natural, economical, educational, administrative calamities; we tolerate load-shedding, unemployment, poverty, corruption, (recently) mugging, robbing, inflation and many similar things with a very patient nature.

According to me, Bangladeshis are the most tolerant people in the whole world. You may ask, why? Well!! We tolerate all sorts of political, natural, economical, educational, administrative calamities; we tolerate load-shedding, unemployment, poverty, corruption, (recently) mugging, robbing, inflation and many similar things with a very patient nature. That do not mean we don't criticize these- we do; but that's all we do! We do nothing effective to out an stop to these.

Since the last couple of political regimes that we have had, we are tolerating changes, re-changes of documents of the history about the birth of “Bangladesh”. Our politicians might have thought that those people who were alive then and still are (alive to tell the tale) going to tolerate this hypocrisy. Surprisingly this hypothesis has proven to be true, as we all kept silent and actually did nothing about it. Moreover, we tolerated those traitors who were responsible for thousands of deaths and atrocities committed on the Bengali people in '71.

Those war criminals who thought that they were forgiven and forgotten even after committing those heinous crimes, now had got the nerve to claim that they did nothing wrong!!! This has happened because we were silent for so long. So, this is the time to speak up. It's like now or never!

And I am here to object to those who are using the name of Islam for any kind of unjust act. A person being a leader of any Islamic party cannot claim some criminals to be innocent!! By doing this he is actually hindering the image of Islam. Islam is a religion of peace, unity, justice and humanity.

So, no person can be eligible to be a leader of any Islamic political party who supports crimes and shelters criminal

(Student of University of Dhaka)

Kazi Hayat Reza

The gloomy sky decided to let go of all its emotions by crying down upon the city. The people all quickened their paces to seek shelter from the downpour. In minutes the steady patter of raindrops on the tin roofs and asphalt streets were the only sounds to be heard. In the now-barren streets a solitary figure appeared. He paused to gaze up at the sky and let the rain soak him. The cool moisture was most welcoming to him and he allowed the rain to wash away all the pains, sins and sorrows from his mind.

He lowered his head and splashed down the road. He looked through the sheet of falling raindrops at the fogged glasses of the buildings with their inhabitants huddled round their TV sets. He had nowhere to go, no one to return to. He looked away and continued trudging down the street. He arrived at an alley where he observed an old man curled up inside his makeshift home of polythene sheets and salvaged bamboo sticks, striving to keep himself warm and dry. The rainwater was swiftly rising and all the old man could do was stare hopelessly at the water; he had no power to counter nature's might. The man felt pity for him but he could do nothing. He simply looked away and kept on walking.

Up ahead he observed a stylish lady shepherding her two well-groomed sons quickly towards an expensive car. Suddenly one of the boys decided to take a quick shower and ran straight into the downpour. His mother, incensed at the transgression, promptly seized the boy roughly by the collar and shunted him inside the car, complaining loudly about the state of his expensive outfits. The man observed all these in silence, lowered his eyes and moved on.

The man entered a side street. He looked around and observed all the rainwater streaming down the blackened walls and windows into the open drains. A few curious faces peeped through the curtained windows but soon withdrew, uninterested. The man walked on. Abruptly he stopped, stood motionless, staring at a peculiar feature on the ground. The rainwater from the walls all collected into a small twisting rivulet. Other rivulets formed, some strong and thick, some thin and feeble, some already drying up. All joined together into one thick principal channel.

To the casual observer this might have been passed off as just another characteristic of a heavy shower, but to him, who had seen so much, it was the quintessence of life itself. All the waters in the tributaries, all the drops that fell to the ground were like people; their state of life, their state of health, their very existence. People often distance themselves building barbed walls based exclusively on materialistic considerations. But are they as different as they claim to be? They all spring from the same source, and eventually they will end up at the same source. Just like rainwater.

A sudden crack of lightning brought him back to earth. He gazed one last time at the stream of rainwater and slowly walked into the hazy veil of rain, disappearing from sight.

(A-Level Student)