I have read the write-up ‘Poetics and politics of jokes and laughter’ by Azfar Hussain in your Eid special magazine. The writer has wonderfully explained the fact relating to jokes.
   No doubt, it is important in our daily life to cut jokes. Joking sometimes act as psychotherapy. Proper jokes can cool down an angry man/woman instantly. Jokes breed love. Jokes can improve our relations as well.
   Sarwar Chowdhury
   Abu Dhabi

Talking of World Bank, the Bank is desperate to put or at least is trying to put on a softer kinder mask after all the misfortunes most of its clients suffered under its ‘guidance’. But a bank is a bank and nothing could change or else the bank would commit suicide.
   So the World Bank must find and keep clients, must sell its ‘knowledge’ to its eager clients. Yet, it is amazing how the World Bank changed nothing. The World Bank remains the ‘old faithful’ to its old ideology and unable to bend to accommodate specific differences in its diverse clients. World Bank is still practising ‘one-size-fits-all’ formula. When it demands extension of VAT down to small traders, it confirms its inability or unwillingness to recognise the ‘local’ to bend the ‘global’. There is a big gap between what it preaches and what it practices. And most of all, the World Bank knowingly or otherwise claims to have ‘knowledge’ which in fact it has no monopoly of. Pity, the World Bank with its large pool of resources, including human talent, is unable to achieve a higher rate of ‘development return’ because it remains trapped in its own ideological faith and its propensity to make one size fit all — much against common sense and real experience, sometimes called wisdom not written in text books on economics. So the damage its brilliant academics just out of universities have often done to the unsuspecting and gullible clients is enormous but without lessons learnt.
   Let the autonomy return to the clients; let the borrowers be the judge on what and how. The World Bank could yet emerge as the best partner only if…
   Husain
   Dhaka

You know, many years ago, in the middle of an oral examination, an examiner caught me off-guard by asking me a question about racism. He (he was a Bengali) said that when any white people categorise us by the colour of our skin, we quickly come to the conclusion that s/he is probably racist. Yet when young men in our countries are ready to marry, they all want fair/pale (forsha) bride! Isn’t that racist? I must admit that I simply couldn’t answer that question. The question is actually more complicated than it appears.
   Also, while on the subject of grace and beauty, (this is a question for gentlemen) have you ever told any man that he has a beautiful wife? No? Why not? I know it’s a queer question, but gentlemen, can we please stop questioning the question and concentrate on the answer. You will not find a single man on earth who doesn’t want a beautiful wife and there are plenty of lucky men who have managed to find themselves very beautiful wives. Yet if you (if you are a male) go to one of those lucky guys and tell him that his wife is beautiful, there is a good chance that the next time you open your eyes the first thing you will see is a ceiling, followed by faces of nurses and doctors! Then you will slowly realise that you are actually in a hospital, although you have no idea how you arrived there. So, what is it with us men, huh? We want beautiful wives, we get beautiful wives, and then when someone mentions that to us, we lose our temper! What’s going on? And if that wasn’t baffling enough, what would happen if you told someone that his wife is ugly?
   Come on, now, gentlemen, don’t be cheeky and stop avoiding the question.
   Azad Miah
   Oldham, UK