MD Rakibul Ahsan was finishing a logo he had designed for a foreign client as the deadline fast approached.
Just before he could hit send, Bangladesh's Internet was shut down, stranding him and the rest of the country offline.
Student-led protests against quotas for highly sought-after government jobs led to violent clashes that killed at least 147 people in Bangladesh this month.
The government responded with a countrywide curfew, sending troops to patrol empty roads, and a comprehensive Internet outage on July 18, a tactic it has employed previously at refugee camps and ahead of elections.
The Supreme Court last Sunday reversed a lower court decision that had reinstated the quotas, which had sparked the protests in a country facing a jobs crisis.
The top court ruled that most positions should instead be filled based on merit in a partial victory for the student protesters.
Broadband connectivity was partially restored on Wednesday. Banks and the corporate sector came online first, with others reconnecting more gradually.
For graphic designer Ahsan, the shutdown cost him his client.
Independent professionals who find work at freelancing platforms are now worried they could be downgraded, while those who provide regular services such as online marketing might lose longstanding relationships after the week-long outage, he said.
"It just does not feel great to fail at the last minute to respond to a client who trusts me," said Ahsan, a fine arts graduate who is one of Bangladesh's 650,000 freelancers, many of whom work in IT, a sector that contributes US$1 billion to the country's economy.
Amid the protests, government officials also took aim at social media sites such as Facebook, blaming them for enabling the turmoil. The sites are still offline in Bangladesh.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak, a technology minister, said repairs were underway to restore telecoms services after communications infrastructure was vandalised during the violence.
The curfew and shutdown created enormous stress on businesses, especially the small enterprises that are the mainstay of the economy, said Ferdaus Ara Begum, head of the Dhaka-based think tank Business Initiative Leading Development.
Faysal Ahmed, who runs a family-owned business in Munshiganj on the banks of Padma River, manufactures wooden houses and ships them to Bangladeshi and international customers.
Ahmed could not connect with customers on WhatsApp or Facebook, and his 50 or so employees could not work. "For businesses like ours, coping with the losses will take months."
Ripon Hossain, a garment worker from Narayanganj, said that his factory finally opened on Wednesday after a week, but ongoing restrictions still posed challenges.
Hundreds of thousands of garment workers draw their monthly salaries from automated teller machines; the week-long closure of banks and ATMs left many without cash.
Families that rely on online apps to obtain cooking gas or subsidised food from government supplies struggled to make food.
The shutdown also stoked widespread unease, said Syed Tanveer Rahman, a psychology professor from Dhaka University.
"There is a general sense of anxiety among youth, especially as they usually rely on the Internet to get information, and when digital platforms go, there is always a risk that rumours can spread, exacerbating the situation."
People flocked to social media sites, including Facebook, WhatsApp and the messaging platform imo, for updates from friends and family, as well as to speak out during the quota protests. Once these sites fell silent, people felt isolated.
Shaikh Md Mominul Islam, 38, a gender activist based in Dhaka, said being cut off from loved ones during the curfew and Internet blackout worsened his sense of isolation and prevented him from withdrawing cash to buy food and medicine.
"Having been sleepless in the last few days, my blood pressure went high, and I felt suicidal," he said.
The writer is from Reuters
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times