In extreme scarcity, when every distraction is stripped away, most people finally see money’s power and run after it like starved dogs. I did the opposite. That emptiness became my forge. A dinosaur among snakes-hunger, greed, lust, cheapness, helplessness-I refused to beg. I refused to worship money. Instead of learning tucchapana (how petty and insignificant material things truly are), I learned a fiercer truth: I am worth infinitely more than any coin or chapati ever placed on any plate. For 758 days in rehab, I begged from no one. No one gave me anything. I survived on nothing but 400 grams of atta per day. With iron discipline I kept the philosopher in me alive and turned my body into a weapon-gradually building to about 3,000 squats three times during that period and 1,500 knuckle pushups, once doing 620 in thirty minutes. The world keeps trying to teach me how great it is. I still don’t see it, and I no longer care. I will live the rest of my life exactly as I decided in that rehab cell. I call a call girl a girl. No one becomes a whore in my mouth-though I know exactly what a whore is. A call girl is not a whore; she is simply horny and also chooses to accept money for the act. Yet I never grant myself the luxury of pretending I am not a randa by evaluation, because the customer is the male whore. Still, shallow as that defense may sound today, I never completed the transaction as a customer. Many times I sent them away unpaid after they confessed their pain-one even saying, “I’m on my period but I need the money.” Most of the time, nothing happened at all. Even my first visit to a brothel wasn’t for flesh; I went craving female company. They were happy holding currency notes, and I just wanted to hold someone’s hand. Read more from here...