Pretty inconsequential

Sir — What has Keisha Castle-Hughes done to deserve a place on the front page (Picture on Jan 29)? Yes, the 13-year-old’s first name rhymes with the generic name for Japanese pleasure-women, and she is the youngest best-actress Oscar nominee for her first film,Whale Rider. But has she won the award yet? Anna Paquin won a best supporting actress Oscar for The Piano in 1993, and she was only 11. And in the Oscars, the best actress and best supporting actress categories are pretty much interchangeable (remember Meryl Streep won the latter for Kramer Vs Kramer). How long will we drool over pretty faces?

Yours faithfully,
Nandita Basu, Calcutta

Road incense

Sir — “Even spacecraft meet with accidents” was how the transport minister of West Bengal, Subhas Chakraborty, reacted to the horrifying accident on January 20 on Bijon Setu (“Brake-less bus runs berserk”, Jan 21). Instead of offering condolences to the families of the dead and injured, he tried shamelessly to disown responsibility for the abysmal condition of the Calcutta State Transport Corporation. The cause of the Bijon Setu accident (“brake failure”) only testifies to this. The state government organization flouts at will the fundamental rule of grounding a vehicle once it has been detected with a fault. We know our ministers have hearts of steel, but how could Chakraborty let go of this chance of making token gestures?

Yours faithfully,
Govind Das Dujari, Calcutta

Sir — Whatever Subhas Chakraborty’s shortcomings, the general-knowledge value of his comments should not be ignored. Were it not for him, we would never have known that WTC was an accident. But what do you call it when a mishap happens even after repeated warnings, as it did on Bijon Setu?

Yours faithfully,
S.S. Almal, Calcutta

Sir — The bizarre accident on Bijon Setu stands as an ugly example of the recklessness of the drivers of buses and mini-buses. Every day, we witness buses and mini-buses running at break-neck speed, trying to overtake smaller vehicles or buses on the same route, regardless of traffic rules. Safety of passengers and pedestrians comes last on their list of priorities.

While the drivers can be faulted for their rash and negligent driving, the man on the street is not beyond reproach. More often than not, the pedestrian is either crossing the road during a green signal or ignoring the zebra crossing, or stopping buses at points other than the specified bus-stops. The recent move of the traffic police to monitor the movement of pedestrians is welcome, but for the move to be successful, the bus stops should be relocated away from the main crossings.

To start with, a bus driver’s licence should be cancelled and the bus-permit revoked if he stops the bus at street crossings. Further, people waiting for buses at street crossings should be fined on the spot. Mobile police patrol vans should move around the city with speed-checking instruments to catch vehicles exceeding the prescribed speed limit. This practice has already come into effect in New Delhi, and has had a significant deterring effect on errant drivers.

Yours faithfully,
S. Ram, Calcutta

Sir — Considering the fact that only 60 out of the total fleet of 1,100 buses of CSTC are road-worthy, would it not be appropriate to re-christen it as Calcutta Scrap Transport Corporation (“60 of 1100 fit for the road, Jan 22)?

Yours faithfully,
Abhijit Bhattacharya, Calcutta

Telephone, please

Sir — An African friend of mine, who works on an AIDS project and was visiting India for the first time, was perplexed with so many STD signs at every corner, and took them for counselling centres for sexually-transmitted diseases. While STD also denotes subscribers trunk dialling, wouldn’t it be less confusing if the public telephone facilities could be denoted by the sign, “Telephone”, particularly since most of these places also provide international subscribers trunk dialling and local call facilities?

Yours faithfully
Asit Kumar Mitra, Calcutta