Growing up poor in Bangladesh taught me things no university could

My father was a rickshaw puller. We lived in a two-room tin house in Demra. There were six of us. I wore the same school uniform for three years until it turned grey. People sometimes feel sorry when I tell them this. I do not want their pity. Because that life taught me more than any MBA ever could. I learned to negotiate before I was ten — haggling at the bazaar for my mother when we were short on money. I learned resource management by stretching 500 taka across a whole week. I learned resilience by watching my father come home exhausted every single night and still wake up before dawn the next morning without complaint. Now I run a small software company with 12 employees. When people ask how I handle pressure, I think: you have no idea what pressure looks like. I am not romanticising poverty. It is brutal and it is unfair and no child should have to worry about school fees. But I want young people from similar backgrounds to know — your background is not a handicap. In many ways, it is your greatest qualification.