Started on 120 taka; 42 years later, land, a house and two master's degrees

This man from Charsholakia in Kishoreganj was a farm labourer at twenty, earning 15 taka a day and not finding work every day. Setting aside two or three taka daily until he had 120, he spent 30 taka on a tin, 70 on a saucepan and the last 20 on chanachur, chickpeas, peanuts, onion and chilli, and started selling ghoti gorom outside schools with the tin slung from his neck. Five years later his savings paid for a van cart, and only then did the line widen to chanachur, boiled chickpeas and hot eggs - the cart turned a neck-slung tin into a business that could carry stock. Over 42 years the round bought three shotok of land in town and built a house on it, and both his children finished a master's degree, though he is illiterate and cannot write his own name. His complaint now is that prices make the household hard to run, and that his graduate son still has no job.