Rubana Huq

Bangladesh has not become the second largest exporter of apparel because of media spotlight. Bad press affects us, but does not kill us, as we know how to rise from the ashes. Negative publicity may dampen, but does not annihilate us as we are far stronger than expected.

In our lives, we try and look for social proofs and replicate other events, other practices, other lives, et al. We also try and promote ourselves, our lives, our products with valuable virility. Most of us use social media to be viral. But being viral with responsibility is a difficult task and being responsible while reporting to the public is even more challenging.

It's called a sprawl. We just happened to experience a mushroom growth. It happened to us when schools, garment factories, stores, boutiques, offices just stealthily popped up in our neighbourhood.

Ironically, access to loans is most restricted to people who really need it, who could actually use it and who possibly have the best intent to pay it back. That was a moment to step back and relook at our entire financing scene.

Does it really benefit opening and reopening boxes piled with grief and tears on a daily basis? How brutally insensitive some of our media outfits become? And how fast are we ourselves spreading rumours and fear that are, at times, unsubstantiated? The stories have to stop, and the gossip must end.

That is what happens every time we turn the other way and decide to be indifferent. This is how we are losing the proud flag of secularism at our end. This is how this year Brussels Airport was struck in March, how Istanbul got hit in June, how we were blown over on July 1, and that is how three Saudi cities got rocked in less than 24 hours.

LISA, a thorough Texan, had left the United States only once for a vacation. She had never travelled the world before.

Uber offers private rides in private cars at your own convenience. It means you don't have to wait for the rain to stop; you don't have to queue up...

When you go to a Chinese mall, you haggle to the last cent. I remember being rudely pulled aside and being told by a Chinese vendor...

The fact that the country's actual default loan amount - including that of written-off loans - in the country's banking sector has exceeded Taka 1 trillion mark for the first time, qualifies us to be one of the leaders of the corporate shame club.

Every time I travel, I get acutely conscious of my habit of praying in public places. This time, I was stopped by security twice and I ended up joking with a Pakistani man.

Rossing thousands of miles to come to the Bay area should have been fun. Contrary to my expectations, the journey turned out to be a straight disappointment.

Neither am I surprised by what the Commerce Minister asked a high-powered delegation visiting Bangladesh, nor am I going to be

We really don't pay attention to the common nouns, do we? Can we really remember the name of the four Bangladeshis who died in Libya in March? Or the ones who were murdered in Maijdee in 2007? What really happens is that these temporary protagonists remain relevant in our selective memories as long as we benefit from it every time we write a report, take to streets to protest, or use statistics in our speeches.

She could have been ours. She could have been our daughter. She could have been returning home after a dinner, stopped at a traffic signal...

He stood there at the reception, with a sling bag filled with documents. He worked for a courier company. He was 10 years old.

Yesterday was the time to tell all our families that our daughters aren't just pretty; they are superbly gifted; our daughters don't “nag”...

Two days ago, Ashis Nandy, the political psychologist, social theorist, critic, and a trained clinical psychologist...

An op-ed can never afford a fiction. But then when real times across the globe are closer to fiction, one has the freedom to add colour and paint the canvas to share with the readers.

While Modi rigorously tweets about South Asian oneness and names prosperity for all in the region as his vision, the rest of South Asia wonders whether any of what he says will ever dispel the fear psychosis that many of us have on being overwhelmed by our big neighbour.