When I would visit Dhaka in the summers growing up, my family stayed in their middle class enclave in Mirpur, near the big stadium and visited our mostly middle class relatives. There was no running hot water and at least one squat toilet. The cognitive dissonance was this: I viewed myself as kind of fancy, namely because I spoke with an American accent and was a brassy, bossy firangi — foreigner. My own private colonial mentality. But, in…
