You Who Pull

Someone who has no reason to respect you has no reason to listen to your advice either. Never impose your counsel on such a person. If you do, you'll only be humiliated. No matter how lowly your position, there's no sense in deliberately dishonoring yourself, is there? Unless, of course, you happen to be supremely shameless or utterly thick-skinned.

If someone you consider a street-corner nobody came and forced their advice on you, you'd be thoroughly annoyed. Ask yourself honestly—you'll understand everything. People poison cockroaches and rats when they become pests. When you pester someone in the name of giving advice or guidance, your status in their eyes drops to that of a cockroach or rat. What's the point of making yourself a clown, going before someone again and again, clapping your hands and performing some free, eunuch-like gyrating dance, seriously?

When you can't get admission anywhere and then corner someone who got into BUET, pestering them endlessly by saying that if they had studied under your teacher and followed your guidelines, their fundamentals would be as strong as yours—someone who got nowhere—not only that, but your not getting admission anywhere is a thousand times better than getting into BUET, and they'll realize this truth in due time... when they see a masterpiece like you, fit for a museum or zoo, surely they won't be amazed but will either pity you or be utterly irritated... or think to themselves... I... I can't believe it! I can't believe it!! I can't belieeeve it!!!... they might even be so entertained and exhausted by your reckless stupidity that they rest their cheek in their palm and start singing... tell me more, tell me more... this isn't half bad dot dot dot

In childhood, we used to go to the same teachers that good students went to. There was no point going to teachers whose students failed exams or barely passed. They might be good teachers, but the quality of their product was terrible. So why take the risk of going to them when there were better options available, even if their students begged and pleaded on hands and knees? Even with a little sense, people never waste time on bad options when good ones exist.

Experience taught me that where good students study—I mean good teachers or good institutions judging by results—sometimes you can't get in even if you want to. Meanwhile, representatives from third-rate institutions would stand like beggars outside our schools and colleges with leaflets, follow us around saying they'd give this discount, that free offer, all sorts of perks! We good students still wouldn't go to those places. We'd go where the good students went, even if it meant getting kicked, punched, and slapped by the teachers. (I say with modesty that in my student life, by all measures, I was known to teachers, classmates, and parents as an exceptionally good student. I spent those colorless days on life's stage in the role of a top-category, ultra-studious bookworm. So I never developed the habit or practice of swallowing garbage.)

I still always remember: goat production centers produce goats, never lions. More importantly, if a center's end product is goats, there's no point spinning tales about how that center produces or can produce lions, is there?

Even giving knowledge requires qualifications. When someone who doesn't even own a lungi goes around lecturing others about wearing pants, it looks utterly ridiculous. In this unfortunate country, there's a severe crisis not of certificates, but of common sense.

If Facebook didn't exist, countless people would have to board public trains and buses to dispense their wisdom. When a street canvasser forces his way into a gentleman's drawing room and starts... come see our car, look at our shit-palace... he's called not a do-gooder but a fool. Walking the streets becomes difficult under assault from such self-appointed wise men.

Try to acquire common sense, never lease your brain to anything under any circumstances. Even if you do, don't go bleating before people like those Destiny company fraudsters just to swell their ranks. Remember them? Those shameless gentlemen who once roamed fields and markets in two-taka suits and torn shoes with ties...? They sold people dreams of achieving the very respectability they themselves lacked.

They wanted to forcibly make people rich by hook or crook, and you want to make them wise by the same methods. Many of them didn't even have lunch money in their pockets, as we well knew. And knowing this, their tall tales made them seem utterly cheap to us. I mean, your situation isn't similar, is it?

I am that student you'd want your beloved child to become.
You are that student I'd want to become.

Wait! Wait!! I mean, what was I saying—shake your head from side to side occasionally; you'll see your brain works too.