Many paths to the same goal

There is a lot of talk of New Year’s resolutions lately and on how to make them effective. Reading them reminded me of the following incident.

I was waiting in line for a movie screening at the Max Mueller bhawan in the Kala Goda area in downtown Mumbai. The man standing in front of me was telling his friend the story of how he gave up smoking, and since I was standing right next to them I heard it too.

Apparently the man was a heavy smoker. He used to smoke around 20 cigarettes a day, buying them one at a time from the small kiosk right in front of his office. This was many years ago, when each cigarette cost one rupee.

One day, he went to the kiosk and the boy said the cost was Rs. 1.25 per cigarette.
“Abhey, I have been buying for years from this shop. Even yesterday I paid just one rupee. So give it to me for one rupee,” the man said.
But the boy at the kiosk wouldn’t budge and wanted Rs. 1.25. The man refused to pay that, and right there he stopped and had never smoked a single cigarette after that.