::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Star Diary

The Bold & the Stupid

Last Saturday afternoon I was on a bus, which was practically empty. I noticed there were two teenage girls who sat in a row of three seats. A young man, who was quite handsome, got on the bus and after looking around sat down in the empty seat beside the girls. I didn't think anything of it as I assumed he was a friend of the girls to have sat next to them while the rest of the bus was empty.

But to my utmost surprise one of the girls stood up, looked around and told the young man to find another seat. At first he was reluctant to oblige her request but in the end he moved. It was then that I realised what had happened. This young man was a total stranger to these girls and had shamelessly tried to get inappropriately close to them while most of the seats around them were empty. The boldness and confidence of this girl clearly unnerved him. I was impressed by the girl's actions and enjoyed the shameless young man's awkward moment. We need more bold girls like this one!

Solaiman Palash
707 East Jurain , Dhaka-1204

Crooked Smile

Last week my mother took my aunt to get a regular dental check-up in Bangladesh Medical Hospital. My aunt told the dentist about the severe and unbearable pain in her molar tooth. He examined the tooth for a couple of minutes and finally, to my aunt's horror, said he had to remove that tooth at once. If it weren't removed as soon as possible other teeth would need to be removed as well. My aunt was quite upset and afraid despite our best efforts to console her. My mother suggested that we should consult another dentist before taking any hasty decisions but my aunt was stubborn and the next day she had her tooth removed. All was well for a few days until my aunt's tooth started hurting again. When it was unbearable, my mother and I took her to the nearest hospital. Unlike the first, this dentist took much longer to examine my aunt and after some tests he finally told us that the tooth, which was causing my aunt pain, had been left untouched. Sighing, he told us that the first dentist had removed one of her good teeth! We were gaping as he explained that the pain was because a bone had gotten stuck in her tooth and once removed she would be as good as new and smiling again. He prescribed some medication and then bade us farewell. Hats off to our Bangladeshi dentists who rush through their examinations, only to take out our good teeth!

Anthea Taplette
Maple-Leaf International School

Victory Day?

This year victory day was a little more surreal than usual. As I walked out of my house I found the streets of Gulshan lined with Bangladeshi flags, and fliers. Nothing unusual there, except that the fliers were not coloured as they usually are. What did come as a bit of a surprise was that all the arrangements were made overnight. When I came home the night before, the streets were bare and by the morning they were covered in a blanket of paraphernalia, I put it down to faulty planning or a slip up. As I walked to Gulshan-1 I finally looked at the flags and fliers closely and was strangely surprised to find that most of the flags were not Bangladeshi ones, rather Jatiya Party flags and the fliers were not about victory day, they were election posters of none other than H.M. Ershad. His savvy campaign decided to cash in on Bangladeshi nationalism, by plastering his face all over town and placing his party flag (which is somewhat similar to the Bangladeshi flag) beside our country's flag, a sort of juxtaposition that seems awkward even to the average man. The fact that all of this was done overnight was also quite interesting, I assume it was to catch the people off guard and then try and relate victory day in some way to Ershad's candidacy. A sly trick indeed.

Munirul Islam
Gulshan, Dhaka