::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Chintito

Time to Change Our Days

Chintito

Do you think governing this country is easy? Do you really believe that even the most sincere government can solve each and every problem that we are beset with without our cooperation? Do you have any idea what sort of citizens we are? Do you have any idea how our offices are run? Do you know that to have an inkling of our collective problem you will have to read the rest of this piece?

One example of how our government officers manage a situation to save their skin is our Met office. That is why no one takes the weather forecast seriously, unless of course it was traced on the radio in high sea and the signal had been raised to number ten. These days their big ones with fancy names are more or less to the point. But most often the regular forecast is such routine gibberish that one can expect rain, hail, storm, clouds and a clear sky in any area of the country at any time of the day and night, and not. The Met Dept has contributed to the origin of tales such as this:

A man was walking down the street. He had a glove on one hand and not on other. An inquisitive passer-by (we have never been short of these) asked him why he did so. The gloved guy replied that the weather forecast had announced that on the one hand it would be cold and on the other hand it would be hot.

You will also have met people who are always daydreaming, and therefore wasting their time and potentialities. To them their dreams are so very real; the goose is about to lay the golden egg. One such gem of a chap visits his doctor.

Man: Doctor, in my dreams, I play football every night.
Doctor: Take this tablet, you will be okay.
Man: Can I take tomorrow? Tonight is the final game.

Then there are of course the ostentatious people you meet in the park, who walk to make the trees and the plants proud. The water in the lake pleads to hear their footsteps. One such guy goes home and announces to his wife, 'People consider me as a 'god'. This startled the wife. Worried she asked, 'How do you know?' Husband explains without as much as batting his eyelid: 'When I went to the park today, everybody said, Oh God! You have come again!'

Then we have amongst us people who could not care a hoot about the law. That is because for too long these people have got away with murder. One such voter, wearing an expensive imported suit and tie, comes back to his car, parked wrongly, to find a police note saying 'Parking Fine'. He writes a note and sticks it to an adjacent pole 'Thanks for the compliment.'

To make the situation worse we have officers who believe they are paid their salary from the exchequer only to pass orders on to their subordinate. There was this government servant, who told his servant: 'Go and water the plants!' The servant came back to inform his superior, who was munching on a biscuit prior to taking a sip of tea, that it was already raining. Certain that his junior was avoiding his responsibility, the senior officer almost yelled, 'So what? Take an umbrella and go.'

Despite being manned by such inefficient snobs, some of us assume that the government will do everything. And so, we can keep all our doors open and hope that the police will prevent a crime from taking place.

An exasperated man complained to the police: 'All items are missing. The thieves took everything except the TV in my house.' The surprised police officer queried: 'How is it that the thief did not take the TV set?' Replied the man, 'I was watching the news'

Let us accept the facts
- That we will have people, who after buying a new mobile will send a message to everyone saying, 'My Mobile number has changed. Earlier it was Nokia 3310. Now it is 6610'
- That we will have people, who erases the notes from their book when the teacher erases the blackboard, but could go through the public service exam to become officers
- That we will have finger-swollen-to-banana-tree business people, who will own lakh-Taka mobile phone, have King lobsters with a queen, and when the phone rings, say 'Hello! how did you know I was here?'
- That we will have politicians-turned-sports-lovers, who as chief guest will query, 'Why are all these people running?' The nervous chamcha sitting next to him will explain, 'This is a race, the winner will get the cup'. The 'sports lover' does not give up and gives a nomuna of his knowledge by stating, 'If only the winner will get the cup, why are the others running?

In spite of such handicaps, the 'time to change our days' shall have come loud and clear if when a man asks a policeman, “Convert the sentence 'I killed a person' into the future tense” and the policeman can boldly and surely reply “The future tense is’ Needen pawkhhe you will go to jail'”.

(Jokes received by Email)

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