I visited Bangladesh in 2017, which is the only visit there that I remember. As we drove from the airport to the house, I looked out into the dusty street; vendors selling clothes and food, cattle freely roaming the streets, and rickshaws swerving through the traffic. Nothing there felt familiar. When we finally arrived at the house, I felt some familiarity since my family doesn’t live in the village anymore. There were couches and a dining table, and even a small aquarium. Even then, the house was very different from an American house; and I was shocked to see my family has maids. I had thought that my family lives in poverty in Bangladesh, and by American standards, they do. However, witnessing the scale of poverty that exists in Bangladesh revealed a reality worse than I imagined. Most people are poor, but even then there exists rigid class structures with a hard line between business and land-owners and service-workers. In America, my dad is a service worker. Through a 13 hour flight, I had suddenly upgraded 10 social classes. The maids asked me what they could do for me, what I wanted to eat, where to put my things, and that made me feel more out of place than the cattle. I walked into the kitchen to help prepare food, something I always have done with my mom in America. They ushered me out, but the dhaa caught my eye. It was a large, curved, sharp, dangerous-looking tool on the floor. I watched one of the maids, a young teen girl, swiftly slicing cucumbers on the giant blade. I was eager to try it out, and after some begging, they agreed to train me. I stayed for over a month in Bangladesh, and left skilled with the dhaa, and as a friend to the maids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I visited Bangladesh in 2017, which is the only visit there that I remember. As we drove from the airport to the house, I looked out into the dusty street; vendors selling clothes and food, cattle freely roaming the streets, and rickshaws swerving through the traffic. Nothing there felt familiar. When we finally arrived at… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":61,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,38,19,24,26,4],"tags":[56,55,54],"ppma_author":[61],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baruch-college","category-identity","category-karen-shelby","category-seminar-2","category-spring-2026","category-your-story","tag-family-heirloom","tag-kitchen-tool","tag-object","clear"],"authors":[{"term_id":61,"user_id":158,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mehrinc","display_name":"Mehrin Chowdhury","avatar_url":"\/\/www.gravatar.com\/avatar\/30cd9e217b43b1b80bc3a3f987f504e4?s=96&r=g&d=https%3A%2F%2Fopenlab.macaulay.cuny.edu%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F05%2Fcropped-mhc_openlab_icon_1.png","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}