Yo Homie!

I bump into a fellow Bangladeshi on board my flight to the US. "Naveed, it's so hot in Dhaka! How do you manage?" Asks the man who's returning to Phoenix, Arizona to a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius. 

"I manage. With the humidity, I treat it as a free sauna."

He adds: "I was in Dhaka for two weeks, couldn't take it anymore. How can you live there now?"

"Well, the same way you lived there before you moved to the US."

It is the pride of the Dhaka-ite, the Chittagong-ite, the Sylhet-ite, . . ., the Bangladeshi. I live here, and I will criticise it. You don't live here, you DON'T criticise it in front of me. That's the lopsided, but the 'homie' logic. 

A different flight at a different time – my Northwest Airlines plane is taxiing at Frankfurt Airport after its long flight from Detroit. Tired, but excited, I nudge my still dozing American colleague next to me, "Look! That's from Bangladesh!" I point to a parked Bangladesh Biman DC-10-30 at the tarmac.

"You must be serious – waking me up to show me this? When we fly back to Detroit, I'll wake you up at the sight of every Continental, Northwest, Southwest, American, US Airways, Delta and TWA aircraft on the tarmac with a scream: 'Look! Those are all from the US!'" Tim Hughes (not related to the aviation pioneer) didn't tell me that, but his expression did. 

Well, you can tell it was quite a while back – the mention of the now non-existent Northwest, TWA and the DC-10-30 and hence, a much younger Naveed Mahbub. But the excitement would be no less if I see a Biman Boeing 777 parked at Heathrow today – "That's my homie, man!"

It is with the same excitement that I blab to the attractive young lady (deliberately chosen) to take my photo at the lobby of the Sears Tower in Chicago, the tallest structure (then) in the world. Again, this is a long time ago, as this building is still the tallest, it's my first visit there and there's no concept of selfies, thus giving me the excuse to strike up a conversation with this young lady to take my photo. And the photo is in front of the bust of Dr. F. R. Khan as my own bust is exploding with pride with the writings behind me, "…the greatest structural engineers of our times."

"You see, he [Dr. Khan] and I went to the same university in Bangladesh…" I tell her.

"Whatever! Here's your camera…" is the expression on her face as she takes the single photo – not the modern day ten as each photo 'costs' to print. 

But again, it is the pride of a young man to see his fellow compatriot being displayed in this iconic building. It is this same pride with which we say "(s)he is 'one of us'" when we refer to Salman Khan of Khan Academy, Jawed Karim of YouTube, Nadiya Hussain of the Great British Bakeoff, Rushanara Ali MP of Britain…though they are bred in and pledge allegiance to (logically so) to a foreign land. It is the same pride with which we tussle with our neighbours as to who Tagore and Nazrul belongs. It is this same pride with which Austria boasts its homie being the (former) Governor of 'Kaaaalifurnia'. It is the same pride with which India boasts its children as being the CEOs of Microsoft, Google, PepsiCo and the governor of Louisiana. 

And now it is that same pride about another homie, this time one who is born and raised in Bangladesh, educated at St. Joseph's High School in Mohammadpur and then overseas through Brown, Harvard and finally Stanford and then rising through the ranks of the World Bank to being the Chief of Staff of the President and then on to becoming the Country Chief of the World Bank in India, the bank's largest client with a net commitment of USD 27 billion.  

It is not a question of 'finally, one of ours there', but a matter of being the right homie of the soil to be recognised to head the most important station of the bank.

Go homie! Behind this successful man, there is obviously a woman, his wife, who is the sister of an engineer turned comedian by the name of Naveed Mahbub. Aha! Now it all makes sense…

The writer is an engineer at Ford & Qualcomm USA and CEO of IBM & Nokia Siemens Networks Bangladesh turned comedian (by choice), the host of ABC Radio's Good Morning Bangladesh and the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club. 

E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com