Story #1 - @Aetherek

I remember it clearly — most of this happened more than a decade ago.
Something in me snapped. I’ve never been the same since.

I can think of many events from my life to begin this story with, but I’d like to go back to when I was 13. That was when I stole a digital camera.

My friend — let’s call him Parbat — and I were strolling around our school compound when we spotted a digital camera on a bench. Without thinking much, we sat beside it and pocketed the shiny red object. It didn’t belong to us, but we sold it for 4,000 rupees.

The next day during the school assembly, we found out who it belonged to. Nothing to do now — half the money was already spent. We decided to keep silent and spend the rest.

From then on, two 13-year-olds were on the path to a business journey. We dealt in electronics: MP3s, cameras, PSPs, iPods — the whole lot. An odd deal here, a pen drive there — we were set. We made around 1,000 rupees on most deals.

Unknowingly, we were disrupting the market for another group of students. They were on the prowl — a rival gang had emerged. And we were just two. We were ambitious enough and could afford some cover for ourselves. Handing out a webcam, an MP3 player, or lunch money every now and then to some big and scary-looking friends bought us enough protection. Our heads were above water — at least for now. But a plan was being carefully hatched — something that would set us “straight.” It ran us out of business.

Parbat had found a seller looking to sell a brand-new iPod. It would be sold at 20,000 — that’s 5,000 for us. 25% was our baseline. He finalized the deal and brought the iPod to me, in its box. I was happy, getting to use it for a few days before selling it to someone else. We even had a buyer lined up.

I started searching the internet for things I could do with it. But the damned thing didn’t even start. I tried charging it — and for hours, throughout the night, I looked for a solution. There was none.

Parbat and I discussed the matter. We had to talk to the seller. He was adamant that he had given us a working iPod. Parbat said it worked the first time he saw it, but the second time he just took the box and came over to mine. Therein lay our flaw. We went out looking for ways to fix the iPod. No one could. There was no Apple store in Nepal.

We either had to pay the money back or provide a new one. The pressure was mounting. The end of the year meant we’d have a few months to think it through, but we had to come up with a solution before the new year began. Then we found out that the iPod seller was a mule — deployed by our "rivals". The whole dynamic changed.

We pushed him to the edge, and he cracked. He had to compensate a whole bunch of other people for shady deals he had made, and we simply told them he was about to change schools — to deal cautiously. He did leave the school. Sorry about that.

We quit and focused on other things. We were growing up but It wasn’t the last time we’d learn things the hard way.