It is also very engaging - and a delight - to go back to Bangladesh as often as I can, which is not only my old home, but also where some of my closest friends and collaborators live and work.
A young man in Bangladesh can't even hold hands with a young woman. Without marriage there is no kissing, no holding hands, no going anywhere. So young boys can only go to the brothels for sex before marriage.
I had no idea that I would ever get involved with something like lending money to poor people, given the circumstances in which I was working in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is not India, Pakistan, South Africa or Australia.
I find it very difficult to think of mistakes; not that I don't make any but because I was brought up to look only at the good things in life. . . As for what lost the most money, probably Virgin Cola. It is still No 1 in Bangladesh though.
I'm on the faculty. I teach. And it's not easy for a poor person to enter the campus to track down the professor in the campus in a Bangladesh situation. They all will be stopped at the gate. You have no business in the university!
Religious fundamentalists in Bangladesh have always argued for a ban on my books.
I had a tough childhood, yes. I was born in rural Bangladesh to parents who had had no education beyond high school. We moved to the UK where I grew up in poverty, in some of the worst conditions in a developed economy, before moving to the projects - heaven - and I went to unremarkable schools before going to university. My father was a bus conductor first and then a waiter, and my mother a seamstress.
Having been in the newspaper business for a long, long time, I often wonder, Why do we actually need to know about something like a bus crash in Bangladesh that has no effect on us at all? That can be nothing other than voyeurism.
I have had fatwas issued against me, some three in Bangladesh and another five in India. I will not be cowed by these threats and shall fight for my rights.
When Bangladesh refused to renew my passport, I used U. N. travel documents. You can't disown your country.
In Bangladesh a prostitute normally wouldn't even undress for a man. He pays, she pulls up her sari, and he's done in 20 seconds.
In America time was gold; in Bangladesh, corrugated tin.
Free speech in Bangladesh can get you killed
If Bangladesh succumbs to the rule of one family, it would be a major step backward for the region.
The standardization and specialization of industrialization was being undermined by globalization. When people in Bangladesh could produce things much more cheaply than anybody could produce them in Detroit, we no longer were the world capital of industrialization.
I am happy with my Bangladesh.
