I was very fond of music and used to break dance in my school days. We had a picnic some day and I wanted to arrange for music to entertain my friends.
But in my home, I did not have a portable music player except the turntable, which was not exactly portable.
So I borrowed my neighbor and cousin’s cassette player. I was very happy and proud at the same time to have arranged it. But I could not tell my father as he never approved of borrowing others’ material.
We started off for the picnic destination on bicycles and in midway, one of my friends wanted to play the music. So he started it (it was operating on battery) and the whole group was enjoying the music along the way to the picnic spot.
Now there is a saying in Bengali which means something like “When you fear the tiger, the sunset is imminent”.
As someone among my friends was fiddling with the cassette player, it slipped and came crashing down on the concrete road. The outer cabinet made of plastic were in pieces and I did not know what to do. There was no way it could have been put together and glued or taped to make it look like earlier. The only silver lining was that it was still functional.
Long story short –
We went from electronics shop to shop and everyone told us that this model is out of production. I still remember it was from Hitachi, the Japanese company and they were not making those any more.
Thus I was stuck with a broken cassette player that I cannot return to my cousin, nor get it fixed.
It caused me much embarrassment and punishment to go and hand it over (after a botched up attempt to fix it) to my cousin.
I learned another very useful lesson in my life: What is not yours is not Yours.
- Leverage and O.P.M (Other People’s Material or Money) are buzzwords and better avoided.
- Debt can reduce your self-esteem and put yourself into embarrassing and stressful situations.
