Three weddings booked, then everything stopped, with the capital locked in a rented office

After graduating from a private university, this young man from Board Bazar in Gazipur set up an event management business and rented a furnished office near his home. He promoted it on Facebook and elsewhere, became reasonably well known and had three wedding jobs in hand when COVID-19 stopped every gathering. In his words: "I never imagined taking a blow like this at the very start of my career." His savings and the money he had borrowed are now tied up in a business with no work while the office rent runs on. The collapse spread through the whole chain: Gazipur's kazis, who registered 20 to 25 marriages a month before the pandemic, were down to seven or eight, across 103 kazis in the district. A decorator of about 30 years in Tongi was three months behind on his shop rent, and many smaller operators gave up and went back to their villages.