A man stood with his back to a shelf lined with boxes that looked like they contained chemicals in the dimly lit store

I found myself wandering through Rangpur, a town tucked away in the northwestern reaches of Bangladesh. Stepping off the sun-bleached street, my eyes adjusted to the dim interior of a small shop, where a moustachioed man stood entirely alone. Behind him, ancient wooden shelves groaned under the weight of identical, square boxes stacked meticulously to the ceiling—holding chemical formulas or perhaps some local remedies. Bangladesh is a fascinating anomaly in this regard; it is one of the few developing nations that manufactures the vast majority of its own pharmaceuticals, having mastered the art of producing affordable generics under international patent exemptions. If this man was indeed a pharmacist, he seemed to have nothing but time. The shop was devoid of customers. He simply stood there, suspended in a state of idle waiting—though perhaps, in a place like this, the act of waiting itself was his primary duty.

Hoping to break the monotony, I approached his storefront with no real intention of buying. The man turned his face toward me, but his eyes remained hollow, washed over with a profound emptiness. There was no welcoming smile, no practiced merchant's grin; he merely stared through me. It occurred to me that he might have felt a sudden, sharp pang of disappointment. After hours of solitude, the figure darkening his doorway was not a local with coins to spend, but a suspicious foreigner with a black camera slung around his neck.

Looking at his fallen expression, a faint prickle of guilt washed over me. With a single, practiced glance, he had undoubtedly realized that my presence would not contribute a single taka to his daily register. The intuition of a shopkeeper is a formidable thing. And unfortunately for him, his instincts were entirely correct.