# যুবক, শোনো! Listen, young man! There is a call in those words—urgent, intimate, the voice of someone who has lived long enough to know what matters. It carries the weight of experience, the gravity of something that cannot wait. In Bengali, the imperative *শোনো* (*shono*) is not mere instruction; it is an invocation, a demand for presence, for the full engagement of your ear and your mind. To whom does this address speak? To you, standing at the threshold of life, still believing in the clean lines between right and wrong, still imagining that the world will bend to your will if only you are clever enough, strong enough, pure enough. The speaker knows better. The speaker has watched. What follows such an opening? A truth, certainly. A warning, perhaps. Or a question that will reshape how you see yourself. The *yubok*—the young man—is not asked to obey blindly. He is asked to *listen*, which is the harder thing. Listening requires surrender. It requires the admission that your own thoughts, however urgent they feel, might not be the only voices worth hearing. In that simple command lies the entire architecture of wisdom literature, of mentor and disciple, of the old world speaking to the new. The young man must listen because he does not yet know what he does not know. And the speaker, having crossed that distance, has something irreplaceable to say. So lean in. Quiet your restless heart. The word *শোনো* waits.

1. Whether you need me or not, I need you. And remember this: the very opposite of that will happen soon enough. Yes, I say it with more confidence than I should. Can you ask where I found this excess of certainty?

2. I will never cast you aside the way you cast me aside, but I promise you this—you will suffer a hundred times more than the agony I bear today. Be assured of it. This is not a curse; this is law, this is fate. Wait. You will see it with your own eyes.

3. I know exactly when you message me, why you call, what state you're in when you do. I know all of it. But I say nothing. My silence does not mean I failed to understand. I understand perfectly. I stay silent anyway.

4. Why do all those people in your house go deaf the moment your muffled sobs begin, your cries, your wails?

5. Getting first class in accounting—did that ever teach you how to balance the ledger of a life? Well, my old prediction has come true, hasn't it?

6. The very reason you threw me away—is someone holding you close for that same reason now? They're not, are they? I know they won't.

7. Does that proud, arrogant man beside you know that when he falls asleep, you call me almost every night, and I never—not once—answer?

8. You've made up your mind that I'm devastated without you. How long will you keep guessing like this? Does it pay?

9. Whom I share my words with, whom I share my bed with—there's no profit in torturing yourself over it, in raising your blood pressure with worry. The rule that applies to you applies to me as well. Remember that.

10. When I see you by chance on the street, my heart aches terribly. And sometimes I want to laugh. Do you think you'll ever understand that?

11. You were thinking of me this whole time, weren't you? ...Does it take a blow to make you listen?

12. Listen to me. The world is not made for those with tender hearts and excessive feelings—that much is true. But it is equally true that this world was not made for cowards either.

13. Your heart has been lying at my feet for two years and seven months now. Come and take it back sometime. Believe me, it's worthless—at least it's no use to me.