Mahtab Uddin Ahmed

In our country, the word “sorry” is rarer than electricity on a summer evening. Not because we do not make mistakes. We produce them in bulk. From call drops to collapsing bridges, from delayed mega projects to disappearing dollars, we are world-class exporters of errors.

Money lives two parallel lives. For the poor villager, it hides in the folds of a lungi, under a mattress, or in the holy corner of the rice jar, because who needs banks when you have God? Meanwhile, the rich gentleman (read: political or business elite) does not believe in such simplicity. His money takes the first flight out—to Dubai, Singapore, London—anywhere but here. The result? One half of the nation is literally sleeping on cash, while the other half is ensuring that Bangladesh itself remains penniless.

Cash does not leave a trail. It is not about convenience; it is about invisibility

Arif left for Australia, declaring he would “be a manager within months”. True enough, he now proudly manages the dishwashing section at a bustling café. He even has a team: two other part-timers and an industrial sink. Back home, his family tells neighbours he is in hospitality management, and technically, no one can say they are lying!

We have two kinds of brave people. One, the man who casually crosses a six-lane road while talking on the phone, blind to buses, rickshaws, and divine intervention.

Being a CEO is like being the goat at a family wedding: pampered, praised, and then served at dinner. One wrong question or bruised ego, and the corner office starts to feel like a trapdoor. The same board that once called you “family” suddenly avoids eye contact. It’s a shiny job title wrapped in politics, where survival depends more on diplomacy than performance.

“My grandfather was a Chowdhury, how can I be a carpenter?”—a classic Bangladeshi mindset, where jobs involving tools, wheels, or grease are treated like social demotion.

Two shoe salesmen were sent to a remote village to assess the market. The first returned, visibly deflated. “Hopeless! No one wears shoes there,” he said. The second came back beaming, saying, “Amazing! No one wears shoes there!” Same village, same people, same situation, different perspectives. One saw zero demand, the other saw untapped potential.

In Bangladesh, numerous negative stories exist aimed at discrediting AI and discouraging its adoption. One school introduced AI to grade Bangla essays.

A classic and familiar office tale: Meet VP (Vice President) Mojnu. Mojnu bhai, known for his “strict leadership,” has one peculiar habit: never making eye contact.

Let’s begin this serious discussion with two extremely serious incidents, both tragic in their own way. A Sardarjee, celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary, took his highly educated and poetic wife to a posh candlelight dinner.

Eid-ul-Azha was meant to be a lesson in sacrifice, empathy, generosity, and humility. But in our version, it often turns into a festival of flexing, where the size of your cow somehow reflects your spirituality, and the price tag gets more attention than the prayer.

One reason we remain stuck in the slow lane of progress is painfully simple: in Bangladesh, the individual trumps the institution, and the institution trumps the nation.

Meet Imran Bhai. His last vacation was during the 2018 hartal. He thinks “OOO” means “Only On Outlook,” not “Out of Office.” His hobbies include forwarding work emails to himself at 2:00 AM and replying to “Happy Birthday” messages with a Gantt chart. Imran Bhai isn’t alone; he is the unofficial president of Bangladesh’s ever-growing workaholic club.

There is a special breed of professionals in every Bangladeshi office, those who seem to know everything from quantum physics to kebab recipes. They speak with such confidence that even Google starts to doubt itself. But here is the twist: a new study by Stav Atir, Emily Rosenzweig, and David Dunning reveals that the more of an expert you are, the more likely you are to claim knowledge of things that don’t actually exist. Welcome to the glamorous world of overclaiming with “I know it all syndrome” or as we like to call it in Dhaka boardrooms, “Bhai, I already have the idea!” 

If you place a frog in cold water and gradually heat it, the frog won’t react; it just adjusts, thinking “I can handle this”. But as the temperature keeps rising, it reaches a point where the frog realises it must escape. Sadly, by then, it’s too weak to jump. It didn’t die from the heat; it died from not acting in time. That’s the “Boiling Frog Syndrome”.

Over a sundowner near the Sundarbans, “Nabila Apa” mocked her nephew’s AI-equipped drone for wildlife surveying, insisting her binoculars and field notes were unbeatable. By dusk, the drone had mapped three islands; Nabila Apa was still zooming in on a single kingfisher. Moral of the story: whether tracking tigers or deer, embracing AI beats binoculars every time.

The inquiry committee – the corporate world’s ultimate weapon of mass distraction. These panels, ornamented with terms of reference and corporate lingo, have gained global recognition not for delivering justice but for achieving the delicate art of appearing busy while doing absolutely nothing. From New York’s Wall Street to Dhaka’s Gulshan Avenue, inquiry committees are universally cherished by management whenever swift justice must be thoroughly avoided or derailed.

Someone I know once joked, “In Bangladesh, legal process is like a traffic signal -- it exists, but nobody follows it.” I know of a family that has been caught in a legal battle regarding land for decades. It is the kind of dispute that survives elections, grey hairs, and a few judges. They have won every round up to the top court, but the case? It is still pending outside the court. The legal system here is not just blind -- it is apparently waiting in traffic, hoping to dodge the maxim justice delayed is justice denied.

In our days, one landline served the entire moholla – and half the neighbourhood aunties answered your calls before your parents did. If you misbehaved, Amma’s flying chappal had GPS-guided accuracy – one silent glare, one clean hit. Eid was pure magic: a new panjabi, some Tk 10 Eidi, and rooftop laughter with cousins till midnight. Fast forward to today, where kids have personal phones, fear screen-time limits more than chappals, and won’t call it Eid unless there’s a new outfit, a viral reel, and at least 500 likes before lunch.