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TO THE EDITOR
Ongoing traffic month
Traffic month is going on in the city with only visible banners sponsored by Grameenphone when the traffic controllers are roaming around in the streets in a happy mood as usual. No sign of activities were seen to regulate the pedestrians or the traffic. Behind the billboard police personnel are shouting over microphone to make the traffic month successful creating sound pollution. Number of community polices are seen in the street to help the DMP traffic personnel to do the Eid banijja.
Previously there used to be traffic week. I don't know with what idea it has been stretched over a month. Maybe one week is not sufficient to do the Eid banijja. Therefore it has been dragged up to Eid ul Fitr as I understand.
Few days of traffic month have
passed without any significant change. If traffic day, week, month remains same every day than why not to declare the whole year as traffic year?
Ahmed Sujon
On e-mail
Our second hand airline
How long will Biman carry on with a limping fleet of ageing and sick aircrafts? These days we regularly see newspaper reports of Biman aircrafts stuck up in New York, Brussels and other airports for mechanical or other technical faults including a tarmac traffic accident in Dhaka! Humorously, we may say that it is a case of patchwork with wire and chewing gum keeping things together as done by flight pioneers in early last century! Jokes aside, I take my hats off to the cockpit and ground maintenance crew for their ingenuity in keeping Biman flying at all! Even the near fatal crash of a DC 10 in
Chittagong, possibly related to landing gear fault and an overconfident and questionable commander (as reported in the press), has not woken up the government from its deep slumber. Now the detention of a DC 10 at New York at the insistence of FAA for unreliable technical standards has also not upset our government. Who in this case is responsible for shattering Bangladesh's image overseas? Maybe, the opposition parties have managed the FAA to ground the DC 10, if the usual government logic can be a yardstick!
Airline passengers have just one option left, and that it is not to fly Biman at any cost! Unfortunately expatriate Bangladeshis living abroad possibly have lesser options, but I am sure they are also getting wise to the fact, as reflected in the large number of such passengers using other airlines!
May be the authorities can save money by either privatizing Biman or winding it up. Otherwise one can just
see an international incident coming up which will take Biman's image to a final nose dive (aeronautically speaking).
S. A. Mansoor
Gulshan, Dhaka
Wet underarm of BD celebrities
TV commercial models, actresses, newscasters, singers, nearly all of them are an embarrassment to me with their wet underarms on the TV screen. It is not only embarrassing it also tells me that they most likely smell bad if you get close to them. Can't they afford to buy an antiperspirant or deodorant? Excretion of sweat from underarm creates bad odour and in today's world this is not acceptable. In the US many people take a deep breath when they see an Indian looking face (Bangladeshi, Indian, Pak) approaching because they are offended by either body odour or curry smell. Although generalising people is not right, then
again who would want to take a chance? Even when I lived in the US and attended Bangladesh conventions, concerts, and other programs, I used to take a deep breath and hold it in as long as possible in the elevator when I would see Bangladeshi artists taking the elevator with me. Dear Editor, it is a serious matter, I hope you understand.
A few simple cautions can improve their image: first of all use an anti-perspirant and deodorant. Deodorants only attempt to conceal the odour, but an anti-perspirant will stop the sweat completely. These are widely available in Bangladesh and even local companies are manufacturing them. Secondly, keep clothing well away from the cooking area and have them dry cleaned or washed regularly. Finally, do not spray cologne or perfume on dirty clothes. It makes them smell worse. Perfume and cologne should only be sprayed or used on the body. Even in years past Mahatma Gandhi and both of
my grandfathers used natural remedies to stop odours.
Ehsan Imdad
Banani, Dhaka
Only the dead have seen the end of war
I live away from home. Thanks to technological development, now we can know what is happening in our country before the people of our country know! It is possible because of the time difference we enjoy. Sometimes I really don't feel that I'm thousands of miles away from my family, friends, in one word from my country. I thank the newspapers, their journalists for their courage, dedication, and innovation in telling stories. But sometimes I wish I didn't have all these to read. When I was in Dhaka I used to read only one or two newspaper, here I read or try to read as many as possible. Unfortunately some stories, not some the main stories of everyday in Bangladesh really, make me sad. I am not talking
about all the bomb blasts and corruptions and political cartoons; I am talking about stories like the fate of Dipali. I can't believe how low a human can feel about herself when she has to take her own life just to be free from life itself. As if to her life had become a burden, a burden about which God forgot to tell her. Those of us who live as expatriates, we leave our country to live a better life. At least we had something called life back in Bangladesh, but for Dipali we couldn't even ensure that basic need, which was her right. A teenager and her family ate food by rotation just to stay alive! Where as a fellow human being, a fellow countryman I should hide the shame. God forbids, we are not like many African countries, where nature is cruel with us. We have resources, we had become selfsufficient in food before, then why do we have to read stories of Dipalis? Do we really know how many Dipalis are there in Bangladesh? After her death now many are promising support for
her family, I thank those from the bottom of my heart and pray for their well being. I read that the neighbours learned many of the stories of the family's poverty. My question is for the neighbours to feel the pain of hunger of that family, they had to wait for Dipali to give her life? Where was the local initiative, where was humanity? When would we realise that small initiatives are what Bangladesh need?
This is the month of Ramadan, I am sure already the country is in full flow of yummy Iftars. Many of the parents are already having a hard time to pick the perfect, unique dress for their child. And yet we have stories like Dipali's. I always believe only the dead has seen the end of war. Dipali's tender shoulder was just not strong enough to fight any more, so she had to end her war against life itself. This Ramadan Dipali has taught me what life is all about. Did you all learn the lesson, too?
Nayeem Hossain
California, USA