STAR DIARY

Talk back!

Last week for a group project we had to make teams in our classroom. One of my friends did not come to class that day, and when she came the following day, our professor assigned her to a group who had three members and needed one more. As they were discussing their group work and distributing their workload, one of those three boys said, "Amina make sure you use some creativity on your part. Girls are good at only memorizing things, and cannot think outside the box." The rest of her groupmates too agreed, while my friend smiled and assured them not to worry.  As I was going through the corridor I thought to myself that the boys were clearly out of line and aren't worthy of any woman's attention. But, what bothered me furthermore is the reaction from my friend. It is never acceptable for a man to treat or speak to a woman in any of the ways mentioned above. I talked to my friend and told her she would immediately let her groupmates know that it is entirely unacceptable. Walking away without saying anything only entitles men to behave in such a disrespectful way. I told her it is never okay, even jokingly, accept these kind of comments. We are worthy of being treated much better. 

Farzana Nowshin
Mirpur, Dhaka

A New Hazard

This year when I visited Bangladesh, I had an order of bringing a number of electronic devices for all of my family members. The range of the devices was quite interesting. Starting from motorized toothbrush for my three-year-old nephew, to hair straighteners, notebooks and mobiles- my suitcase had everything. While everyone was happy with their gadgets, we almost forgot the ones we are done with. As we had many new gadgets, there were a number of gadgets too that we stopped using and were ready to dispose of them. The ones that we still work went to charity, while some of them were thrown in the trash without even realising what bad that could happen to our environment. Finally we decided to assign a drawer where we can keep all our e wastes instead of throwing them in the bins. But soon the drawer will be filled and we won't know what to do next. This is a very common scenario these days in most of our households. I wish we had some service who could come pick up our electronic items that we are not going to use anymore. 

Farhad Islam
Banani, Dhaka