Rubana Huq

Your columnist has just completed a little over a month of being a “female” leader of an exporters’ association.

It's an era of innovation. It's an era of efficiency. In one part of the world, they are making “smart” jackets, which are creating a microclimate for the wearers, by using carbon fibre heating pads, and are also using Amazon's smart assistant Alexa to even pre-heat the jacket before the consumers are putting them on.

A friend of mine calls me a “wo-man”. The reason why he hyphenates and breaks the word is a surprise. I asked him why he does so and he explained.

Close to midnight, it felt surreal. Being in the Samsun Airport in Turkey, only 1.5 flying hours away from Istanbul, made me feel as if I were in a new world. It wasn't a world of magical surprise or rapid development, but one thing was for sure: it was a land that told and sold stories well.

I laugh when the western media goes on a rant about us, the eastern democracy, the eastern economy and the eastern human rights condition.

Ever since 1996, your columnist has been in business. She runs a company that has multiple businesses which once grew from one core business of exporting readymade garments years ago.

Half an hour away from home, the air smells the same; the people seem similar, but there's definitely a lack of ostentation. One does not drive through streets of Kolkata in the latest cars; the roads are still swamped with yellow taxis and a touch of Uber and Ola has changed the scene only a bit.

Education indeed. Getting to Phnom Penh took me to yet another learning curve. Not being able to fly out of Dhaka for almost close to 18 hours is a story to share, but getting de-planed and watching passengers reacting to the situation is another narrative altogether.

Conversations end with half nibbled canapés,

Every time a tragedy makes an unannounced entry, our lives turn into a pile of grieving memories. Once struck by loss, one moves on to a totally different plane where laughter is almost immediately followed by a fear of an unknown tomorrow.

The wars that we wage within and beyond our own borders kill us. Yet, we seem to be perpetually living in a state of war where hate speeches flood the internet, trade wars cause the economy to slow down, borders cause tension and perception becomes the truth.

When Accord and Alliance came to town, the brands and retailers had offered assurance of business continuity and were paying for the audits and assessments.

Your columnist was in a private conversation with her daughter stressing on the need of a new oven.

In a world where Martin Luther King was declared as “the most dangerous hero” by the FBI two days after his “I Have a Dream” speech, in a world where Muslims are often viewed as perpetually guilty, in a world where journalists are jailed for doing their job, in a world where the US government can spy on journalists using...

The high-speed train from Hong Kong to Mainland began four days ago. It will now only take 50 minutes to reach Guangzhou from Hong Kong.

In spite of Trump calling Bob Woodward, the author of the book Fear, a liar; in spite of a world where winners have boos raining on them instead of ovation, like in the case of Naomi Osaka...

Very often, we cherry pick what we call discrimination or bias and launch movements. Very often, we voice our views and receive backlashes. Thus, many of us stay on the fence, not choose sides and maintain our general acceptable levels of civic sanity. That is what we do.

Many moons ago, the world believed in philosophy, religion and politics. Not wholly true anymore. We see acute reversals on a regular basis. We have more heroes falling from grace every day—more than ever before.

Children in blue and white uniforms came marching straight towards our cars. Watching them was like watching a sea of protest, meant to sweep us off our shores of comfort.

Let's just think about what Donald Trump recently did. He wooed Putin and tried to stitch the US and Russia together without knowing the difference between Great Britain, England and the United Kingdom.