Faisal Ahmed

Bangladesh and I shared our first decade together. Unsurprisingly and somewhat self-servingly, I tend to relate to Bangladesh’s journey at an instinctive level, the way one remains absorbed with one’s own life,

We left my mother's place early to finish packing. Driving through Gulshan Road 75, punctuated by irregular lights and leafy tall trees, we reached home after 8:00pm. I lay down with a headache. Minutes later, came the sound of firecrackers. An hour later came the SMS: "Holey Artisan Bakery is under siege; situation is NOT UNDER CONTROL."

What does Bangladesh aspire to become? A question with million answers. But viewed through a macroeconomist's narrow lens, Bangladesh needs to emerge as the largest-ever manufacturing- and export-led take off in a democracy. Some green shoots are peeking.

I reached Phnom Penh on a late summer night in 2011 after twenty-some hours of flights from Washington. The airport had a mofussil feel.