Scene 1.
He settled into Gloria Jean’s and ordered coffee. The coffee arrived. He took a few leisurely sips. Ah, exquisite! Suddenly, from nowhere, a repulsive bug came flying and dropped into the coffee mug. What to do now? Should he drink the coffee anyway? Or throw it away? If he threw it away, the money would be wasted too. But there was a dead bug floating there, with who knows what seeping from its body into the coffee—how could anyone drink such coffee? What could be done? Such expensive coffee! The pain of wasting money was immense! He kept thinking and thinking! Time passed, yet the attachment to the coffee’s price wouldn’t fade. With a spoon, he removed the bug and, with a heap of disgust and irritation, somehow managed to finish the coffee with great difficulty. This consumed quite a bit of time. The waiter brought the bill. He paid it and walked out onto the street in a foul mood. He was supposed to teach Srija today—Aunty would pay his salary, and tomorrow was her second-part math exam. He was running late, and his mood wasn’t good either. He didn’t go today either. He hadn’t gone for the past three days. Aunty had said on the phone, “Son, if you can’t manage, find a good teacher for Srija. Her intermediate exams are coming up soon.” He began thinking, “This tutoring job probably won’t last much longer. Damn coffee! Completely fruitless! Money gone, time gone. And my mood ruined on top of it all. How difficult it is to manage a tutoring job in this market—you have to chase this person, chase that person. Does anyone lose a tutoring job like this with their own hands?! If I’d just left a bit earlier, I wouldn’t have missed the tutoring session. I feel like pulling my own hair out by the roots. But no, I won’t tear it out. With effort, I might manage another tutoring job, but I can’t manage hair back. Hair transplantation costs so much! Double a tutoring salary. Srija’s father won’t pay that kind of money. The miser—he never raises the salary!” Lost in these thoughts, he suddenly vanished into thin air! There was a manhole; he hadn’t noticed.
His body was covered with sewage filth. Somehow he made it home. With great difficulty, he bathed and freshened up, then slept for a while. As soon as he woke up, he began cursing his fate continuously. Suddenly he discovered that he had established a direct connection with the toilet. Before going to bed that night, he had to rush to the bathroom seventeen times. Even during the night, he woke up several times to that irresistible call. The next day he went to the doctor. He bought medicine and came home. It took three days to cure that severe dysentery. During those three days, he couldn’t go anywhere except the bathroom. The tutoring job was gone too. Srija’s mother’s frank words: she couldn’t pay a full month’s salary for teaching only seven days in a month. He had caused them great harm. Because of him, Srija’s career was ruined! Who would compensate for this damage? In the middle of it all, he didn’t even get the previous month’s salary. Meanwhile, about a thousand rupees had already left his pocket. Precious time was spent at wholesale rates! Ah, what havoc that coffee wreaked!
Scene 2.
Sold out! Tickets weren’t available, so after much effort, he somehow managed two tickets at double the price. He would watch the movie with his wife. A massive hit movie! You couldn’t even get tickets! It had to be good! Without reading any reviews about the movie, he bought two tickets to surprise his wife! As soon as he got home, with theatrical drama and fanfare, he told his wife, “Close your eyes! Look, look what I’ve brought! You’re free tomorrow evening, aren’t you?” Seeing the tickets, his wife erupted like a volcano! “When did your taste sink to this level? Can’t you survive without watching these cheap movies? Disgusting! I’m not going with you. Go take some girl with cheap taste and watch the movie.” He understood that this was not a request—this was a threat. Without even changing clothes, he immediately sat down to check reviews on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. The movie really didn’t match his taste. But what a battle he’d fought to manage those two tickets from the black marketer! Well, why was everyone watching this movie so much? Actually, just because something is popular doesn’t make it good.
He thought, let me post a Facebook status. Let’s see if anyone will buy them. At least let me recover the ticket price. He posted the status. His friends roasted him until he reeked. Someone commented, “You bastard son of a fool! The movie’s a flop too. You bought these tickets with money! Ha ha ha… And you say you won’t sell at double price but at original price! You bloody joker!” He saw his status had two likes, while that comment had eighteen! His wife saw it and said, “Weren’t you even ashamed to post a status selling tickets? Disgusting! Who am I living with!” He started looking for coconut trees—if he could climb to the top of a coconut tree and cry his heart out, at least he’d find some peace. No! There wasn’t a single coconut tree nearby, they were all palm trees. The next evening, gathering courage in his chest, he offered his wife, “Come on, let’s just watch it! There’s not much to do at home anyway. We don’t need to cook at home today, we’ll have dinner outside.” His wife took the two tickets in her hands and tore them to pieces, saying, “Wow! Great! Come on, let’s have a buffet outside today!” With an owl-like expression, he thought, “Oh Earth! Split open, let me climb a tree! Damn this movie’s entire lineage!!”
Now, think about this for a moment!
If he had just left the coffee in the restaurant and paid the bill and walked away, he wouldn’t have had all that trouble. The 675 rupees for the coffee was gone—forget about that. That was going to go anyway! Along with that, the bug’s germs and disgust kept him home for three straight days, the taxi fare and doctor’s fees were wasted for nothing, he couldn’t do any other work during those three days, he had to curse his life unnecessarily, and as a bonus, he lost a good tutoring job without taking two months’ salary.
Now let’s talk about the movie. If he had just thrown those two tickets out the window right away, he wouldn’t have had to endure the pain of this world anymore—both his dignity and the buffet expenses would have been saved. How much more grief he had to bear for the foolishness of mourning over the ticket money!
The money that went down the drain was already gone! I mean, it sank into the water. The cost sank. So, it’s a ‘sunk cost’. You don’t have to stay depressed about money that has drowned. If your mind stays stuck on that money, more money will surely be lost. Let me tell you my own story. A coaching center is such a beloved thing that even when you keep saying you’ll close it, you never can. How much time I’ve given to bring it to today’s position! What amount of effort, going without food and sleep, building such a large institution single-handedly! Can you imagine! How can I leave this? Experience has shown me that there’s only one easiest way to start any work: actually start doing the work. The only way to close a coaching center is to close the coaching center without all that thinking and deliberation. The only way to leave tutoring and join a low-paying job is to leave tutoring. When money keeps coming from one source, the mind doesn’t turn toward other sources. Leaving any business is a very, very, very difficult task.
A shop or business establishment is like one’s own child. How much care, how much sacrifice, how much time and money invested, how many people’s bitter words endured, how many sleepless nights spent trying to establish the business! If circumstances ever force you to abandon it, then abandoning it right at that moment is the best thing to do. Delaying might cause you to miss better opportunities (and it does). Why should opportunity sit waiting for you? Who are you anyway? Even if you were that important, it wouldn’t wait! At that time, I lost lakhs of rupees in the share market, and all my other dreams also floated away in my tears. I used to do some other small businesses too. How many people owe me money! At least seven lakhs! I know none of them will return the money. Yet I just stay depressed and keep thinking about the money. What I wanted to become in life, what I traveled such a difficult path with such effort to become—even when I got another better opportunity today, I didn’t change tracks thinking I wouldn’t let myself sink into such suffering, and later spent my whole life in regret. I lost cash hoping for credit. What’s the point?
The person I had decided to spend my entire life with, whose image had shaped every moment of my own life, if I ever see someone else’s hand in theirs, that they had let go of my hand long ago without my having the slightest clue all this time—should I still destroy myself waiting for them just because the most beautiful moments of my life have disappeared from my life only because of them? Does it make any sense to walk with sorrow wrapped around your feet? If I ever see that my foot is stuck somewhere behind me, that I can’t free it no matter what, that I can’t move forward, yet staying stuck there means certain death, and to survive I must move myself forward—then cutting off the lower part of the foot and moving away from there is the wise thing to do. I might lose the foot, but at least life will be saved! This life is greater than everything—greater than sorrow, than pain, than suffering, than the past, than loss, than cruelty!
What has gone will never return, what brings only one reward when clung to—suffering, for which even my own existence is becoming gradually unrecognizable, which if not thrown away might cause the most beautiful times to disappear completely before they even arrive—that is sunk cost. Let the sunken cost remain sunken; whether it be material or immaterial. Except for girlfriends, I am a tremendously unsuccessful person in all the above areas. In this life, a girlfriend never came, so how could she leave? Among everything I learned in the MBA course in Finance at IBA, Dhaka University, the concept that seemed best to me was—sunk cost. An unbelievable amount of money and time has been lost from my life, the pain of which used to chase me day and night constantly. I have found no other such beautiful logical philosophy anywhere to banish that pain forever. The influence of this sunk cost concept is extraordinary for forgetting and abandoning and throwing away all old pain-injury-suffering-disappointment-sorrow and moving forward. Just because life made you cry once doesn’t mean you should spend your entire life crying.
Haven’t you heard the song “Let It Go” from the movie ‘Frozen’? The main philosophy of this song is that the damage that has already occurred in life cannot be carried forward. In life, you have to walk looking ahead; it’s impossible to walk forward properly while looking back. Carrying yesterday’s pain today means yesterday still remains in my life, so yesterday’s old sufferings will surely bring some more suffering into life. Suffering brings suffering. What’s the point? Let the past’s pain remain in the past, may it not shackle the present’s feet!
লাস্ট এর প্যারাটুকো সবচেয়ে ভালো লেগেছে স্যার🙏❤
এবং কথটা জীবনের সাথে মিলে গেছে😴
আমি অতীত ভুলতে ৫টা বছর চেষ্টা চালিয়ে যাচ্ছি,কিন্তু মাঝে মাঝে অজান্তেই আমাদের কথা হয়ে যাই,এখনো আমি কষ্ট বহন করে যাচ্ছি,আপনার লিখাটা পড়ে অনেক ভাল লাগল,দাদা জন্য দোয়া আর ভালবাসা রইল,
আমার চার বছরের রিলেশন টা গত সপ্তাহে ওর বিয়ের মাধ্যমে সমাপ্ত হয়ে গেছে। আমি গত ৮ তারিখে ৪০তম বিসিএস রিটিন দিয়েছি। বিসিএস র এই পথচলায় ও ই ছিল আমারসবচেয়ে বড় অনুপ্রেরণা। এখন এতো বেশি কষ্ট পাচ্চি যে ভাষায় প্রকাশযোগ্য নয়। কোনভাবেই তাকে ভুলতে পারতেছি না। পড়াশোনা করার আর কোনো মোটিভেশানই পাচ্ছি না। সারাক্ষণ শুধু ওর কথায়ই মাথায় ঘুরতেছে। মনে হচ্ছে আমার জীবনটা একদমই থেমে গেছে; আমি কিছুতেই এই অবস্থা কাটিয়ে উঠতে পারতেছি না।