Just A Thought : A Compilation

Not much can be effectively crammed into the meagre allowance of a thousand or less words, but don't tell that to newspaper columnists. They revel in the art of cramming information, emotion, and every so often a smattering of wit, in so few words. In the world of literature the best tales are short and the best writers, from Chekov to Borges, masters of the short story. A columnist might not exactly be a Chekov or a Borges but he is perpetually afflicted with the aspiration of becoming one, while simultaneously playing dilettante journalist. True to the cover, this volume is a compilation of some fastidiously chosen pieces from my column in the national English daily The independent. I started writing Just A Thought in Summer 2010. Between 2010 and 2014 it came out as a weekly column. The idea for the column came from the then editor, one of our nation's most respected veteran newsmen and former adviser to the Caretaker Government, the late Mr. Mahbubul Alam. He had initially envisioned the column to help provide a more insightful look at the burgeoning commerce in the country and related socio-cultural developments, and hence approached me because I had only recently permanently returned to Bangladesh, having done intermittent stints in business development and consulting overseas, with a postgraduate degree and research in said field. As the second law of thermodynamics so aptly denotes, all systems must tend to higher entropy, so did Just A Thought. Within the first few weeks of writing, both the editor and I realized that in an emerging nation beleaguered with a plethora of social, political, and institutional issues, I couldn't well write honestly about any topic without including those multifarious perspectives. In all honesty, I was always more enthralled by the social and socio-political aspects of economic developments. It wasn't a surprise that quite often the column focused.