Close your eyes and try to see

Friday, February 25, 2005

Lets salute the Martyrs, not the pillars

21 February was observed as International Mother Language Day. On this day of 1952 Salam, Borkot, Jobbar and others sacrificed their life on the move to declare Bangla as national language. At the loss of those brave lives we are now speak and use Bangla freely. So we must value their sacrifice and remember them with profound respect.



To keep the memory of the martyrs alive a huge monument named “Shaheed Minar” was built at the place of their death. With it’s nice design, this monument is standing proudly and depicting the pain of losing the lives and the joy of getting our mother language as national language simultaneously.

‘Shaheed Minar’ is only a dating place for couples all around the year, except 21st February. It gets thousands of flowers only on this day. People, who rob this with their shoes, walk all the way barefooted to come here. That’s how we used to pay respect those beautiful pillars, while the graves of the martyrs remain almost empty. Not many of us care about those holy graves. What is the value of pleading to those pillars?

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Sunday, February 20, 2005

Avoid Banglish

There are hundreds of words in Bangla language that came from other languages. English is dominating of those languages. Though words like chair, school etc have corresponding Bangla words, they are no longer used. Now those words are treasure of our own language. This flow of words from a language to another is very natural. In recent days this flow became a must, because of the on going technological revolution and easy transfer of information.
This flow of words towards Bangla from English has nothing alarming. What is a matter of anxiety is the use of genuine English words in Bangla structured sentence. Some people think that injecting English words while speaking in Bangla present them as smart. They probably don’t know how weird those sentence sounds. Teachers of various schools and colleges like to term this kind of mixture as “Banglish”(Bangla+English). Practicing English is good but as I think Banglish have nothing fruitful with it. We should avoid this kind of mixture and practice our own language as it is. Can’t it be our promise for this year’s mother language day?

Updated Note: This writing is also published in The Daily Star's To the Editor page.

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Saturday, February 19, 2005

From Pizza Hut

“Welcome. How many of you sir?” These were the first words for me, on the entrance. I got stunned by the fluency of English and smartness of the waiter and found it same from all the stuffs. A question came to mind about qualification of those boys cleaning the floor, table and speaking English simultaneously. I am talking about my first visit to “Pizza Hut”, the most talked restaurant of Dhaka. You may feel easy to term it a food center rather than a restaurant cos of its friendly and easy environment. “Its decoration, waiters behavior and everything is no different from Pizza Hut of India or other countries” says my brother-in-law and the sponsor of the dinner. The big flag of Bangladesh right at the middle brought some deshi mode, which is a rare scene for any food shop or restaurant. About the food quality, it’s as good as expected. But the beef pizza with chili deserves some praise. You can check it out if you don’t fear extra chili. What everyone fears about ‘Pizza Hut’ is the food price. But from my view they hasn’t fixed any extra value to the menu. Although our bill for 4 persons crossed 1300, complete economical meal for a person can be accomplished within 150. And you can’t expect cheaper offer from a world-class shop.

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Late Valentine

Love is strange, You can curse it and avoid it as much as you want, but at the end of the day it will catch up with you. Like it or hate it, that's love for you.

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Thursday, February 10, 2005

What I can’t write here...

When I first started my blog one experienced blogger advised me not to disclose myself in the blog. Then I didn’t find the significance of not disclosing myself or not informing my relatives about my blog. So I announced my dear persons about what a blog is and advised them to read mine. That made me bound in writings. I can’t write about personal and secret facts. I can’t always write whatever comes to my mind. The Black Blog is a blog that remembered me of this shortage. In this blog the author wrote about his personal life openly in a smart way. Yesterday I found this blog and became interested about it.

Actually blogs about problems and high thinking are not always enjoyable. So blogs like Blue Bird Escape and The Black Blog attract me. Here they made blogging an art by just telling about their life, nothing else. I miss this opportunity much, though I may not present it so attractively.

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Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Stadiums misused

It is a common phenomenon to place political public meetings in playing grounds. Now the politicians got a step ahead to place those in stadiums. BNP being in power utilizing the divisional stadiums for their conferences where Tareq Zia is the main attraction. First they started building toilet in Rajshahi stadium. Then started hollowing out Chittagong stadium for pan dale, which is one of the two international cricket stadiums of Bangladesh. They have also planed to dig a part of Rajshahi stadium to build a so called "Mrittu kup". These will surely postpone the upcoming national athletics and other sporting events scheduled in those stadiums. The ruling party always yells about their contribution to sports and probably this is how they make the contribution. The fact that made me upset is, no one is opposing this and trying to stop them. Can't we do anything to stop the misuse of those stadiums?

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Insecure Leaders

Recently bomb attack on ex finance minister Kibria and his death have brought a big question mark about the security of VIP leaders. Although the leader of the opposition enjoys all protocol and security of a minister, other top opposition leaders don't get any security from the government. Especially in public gatherings and processions there should be some security measures taken. You may say that, these measures can't protect the attack. It's true as cops did nothing to protect the leader of the opposition on 21 august attack, which caused death of Ivi Rahman.

Bomb attacks in public gathering is not a rare case now in Bangladesh. Bomb can bust anywhere anytime. No one can predict about it, even the detectives. Those foolish detectives and so called investigating committees never succeed to find out the criminals involved with those attacks. All those cases just withered away and the leaders are always in danger.

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Executive class: now on Road

The hi-fi Volvo AC buses are plying between Dhaka-Chittagong for about one year. Recently Shohag has introduced buses with a step ahead. The bus has two different classes, normal class and business/executive class. The first two rows contain three seats in steed of four. Those board seats are executive class seats. All other facilities for the normal class and executive class are the same. Here are some exceptional qualities of the service -
  1. All seats of the bus contain 5 switches for body massage. Turning on each switch causes vibration in different part of the seat. Its really interesting and unique feeling.
  2. For each passenger there are options to enjoy digital music of 4 channels. One of them used for the sound of the TV where movies and plays are shown.
  3. The interior of the bus has been decorated keeping similarity with airplane. Especially the design of overhead luggage rack is quite attractive and different from Volvo bus of other services.

Knowing about this service on ads I became interested to make a journey on it and went to Dhaka from Chittagong on a normal class seat. What amazed me was the demand of ticket. You should feel lucky, if you get an executive class seat, though it costs 550tk comparing to normal class costing 370tk. Though busses of more than 10 companies are starting for Dhaka with a gap of an hour only, they nevertheless felt short of passengers. This is where this route differs from others.

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Thursday, February 03, 2005

Curse on Picserver

My page is seeming fade without the pictures. All the spaces for pictures are now filled up with bullshit message of picserver. Picserver is out of bandwidth. Please help the free site..... blah blah blah.
Few weeks ago they sent an email to me demanding money to continue posting free pictures. Its a nice way to continue free service with money. Sorrily I can't effort to continue posting pictures paying money. So you won't see pictures here anymore.
If anyone of you have any idea to put free pictures on the site please please let me know. I am eagerly waiting to find a way to post pictures again.

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