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The Difference Between Loneliness and Solitude
Sometimes I’m alone in a room, and the first thing I do is pick up my phone. I don’t need it for anything. There is no message to answer and nothing I want to look up. I just open it and start scrolling. A few minutes later, I’m still alone, but my attention is somewhere…
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What Living Alone in Dhaka Has Taught Me
I live alone in Dhaka, away from my wife and children. I work during the day and return to my room in the evening. Then I have to take care of my own needs. I cook, buy groceries, wash my clothes, and clean my room. Some days, I do these things without much trouble. On…
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My Children Are Still Too Young to Understand
My son is five. My daughter is about one. Whatever I am trying to build in my life right now, they are too young to understand most of it. I won’t pretend they already know what I am doing or why. They don’t, not really. What they know is much simpler. They know their father…
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The Other Side of the Dream
I have spent a long time thinking about the kind of life I want to build. Land, a pond, a garden, some income that does not depend on one job, more time with my children. I have written about all of that already. But then I started wondering about something I had never really asked…
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What Would Change If My Family and I Could Live Under One Roof?
Most evenings in Dhaka, I come back to my room, take out my key, open the door, and walk in alone. I eat. I call my family. We talk for a while. Then I sleep. The next morning, I wake up, get ready, and go to work. Then I come back and do it again.…
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A Life That Costs Less to Run
I have spent a lot of time thinking about how much money I need to earn to build the life I want. Lately, I have been thinking about a different question. What if I build a life that needs less money to run? I am not talking about living without money, or making everything free.…
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My Plan for a Different Kind of Life
I know what kind of life I want. I wrote about it in the previous article. The harder question is how I am going to get there. I cannot change my life overnight. I still have a job in Dhaka. I still have responsibilities. I still have debt to pay. My family is already in…
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What Kind of Life Am I Actually Trying to Build?
It is four in the morning in Dhaka. Soon I have to get up for work, the same work that keeps my family away from me. But sometimes I imagine a different morning. I wake up early, before the day gets busy. The air is cool. I look through the window and see trees outside.…
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What Are We Actually Producing?
On August 10, 2026, millions of families across Bangladesh waited for a number. Not a name. Not a story. Not a measure of what a child had become. A…
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Before I Needed It
Last week I sat on my rooftop with my phone in my hand, reading a script out loud for the third time that evening. Freedom is not escape. I said the line slowly, then again, trying to get the weight right. English is not my first language, and I could hear it in my own…
