The Audacity of Dope

"An Arab Billionaire bought his most favorite escort a 4.3 Million Dollars mansion by the Palm Zumeirah coastline." - the headline caught the eyes of Little Nikkie on one fine morning while going through the newspaper. He immediately dived into the detail and found the Sheikh possesses around 150 mansions across the map of the Middle East. He also owns 4 Bugattis, 8 Rolls Royces, 6 Lamborghinis, and a mixed fleet of total 60 McLaren, Pagani, Maybach, Koenigsegg, Ferrari, and Maserati. His chauffeur comes to work driving his own Bentley. His passion is owning fancy things, and spending times with high class escorts from Europe and The US. He has so much money that he uses them to make more money. Therefore he bought a few casinos, penthouses, and strip clubs in Las Vegas, French Riviera, Bali, and Amsterdam. To Little Nikkie, it looked like making money is the Sheikh's profession, and spending them in style is his Passion. It's been a while, Little Nikkie has been searching a for a shortcut to success, one line in the article got Nikkie's eyes glued to.it where the Arab Sheikh said that his passions made him take the wisest decisions and this is why he thinks became successful.

Little Nikkie took the words too seriously that he thought have found the key to success, he has grow passion for something which will drive him to his destiny. Then the challenge he began to face. Passion comes in different forms, shapes, sizes and even through different mediums. For most of the people, their passion rarely meets their ability to fulfill due to their lack of relevant strength; i.e. financial, physical, often struggle to make time for their passion.

Nicholas (a.k.a. Little Nikkie), a 21 years old lad, struggling to find a passion that would fit him. Being born in a typical Middle-class family residing in world's one of the mostly densely populated city called Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, whatever the options he look at, he finds them pretty expensive. Then he studied so many cases of rich people around the world and their passions. He classified his findings in several categories; first ones are born rich who can fulfil their wishes instantly like the Dubai Sheikhs, second group dived deep into their passion which helped them make a fortune, and undoubtedly their passion was based on their creativity. Musicians, Movie Stars, Painter, Athletes, and many more fall in this group. The final group of people were not rich either but they came up with innovation that helped them to be filthy rich that they developed new passion after becoming rich, mostly the silicon valley tycoons fall in this category. Now, little Nikkie finds himself difficult to fit in any of these categories as he is not born rich, there's no such technical knowledge he possess that could bring some groundbreaking innovation, and to make things worse he has no creative quality. When he sings dogs in the neighborhood run away, when he draws they give an impression that a bunch of cocroaches ran on the paper with paint smudged legs, let alone his ability to write.

Little Nikkie won't give up so easily, he realized that he need to make money somehow for the sake of his ancestral root. Nikkie's ancestors came to Bengal all the way from Armenia back in the 17th century searching destiniy. They started trading local grown Jute and Cotton, gradually established weaving mills and played monopoly over the Jute and Cotton industries. Their forunes kept growing until the local Government took over the Jute trade from private proprietorships without any compensation causing their net worth shrunk down to half. Before the downfall they grew so rich and influential that Little Nikkie's great great grandfather Archibald Nicholas was made the city administrator. Now Nikkie's family's situation is like crossed the rubicon, they can't even afford to return to Armenia as they will be treated as aliens in that territory as they lost all the connections over the time.

Nikkie decided to seek his destiny in agriculture like his ancestors. So, one night he left home and headed to some village in North of Bangladesh. He took his aim so seriously, he immediately started roaming around in search of ideas. Visited a few fields, approached the farmers who seemed to be happy seeing his caucasian built they thought he came with cash grant as part of aid activities expatriates run in that territory. Their excitements disappeared in thin air sooner they get to know Little Nikkie's intention. They showed Nikkie that every crop cultivated in that territory has their strong network of producers and traders, and traders trick the producers so often that they rarely manage to reach the breakeven. They said, somewhere out there lies some undiscovered gem which will guide them to redemption breaking free from all the trickeries. While saying this, they were staring at the forest nearby, so Nikkie thought that the forest his key to the answer.

He rushed to the forest, started to roam around, dug burrows wherever it looked a bit mysterious, yet no luck. Nikkie didn't notice that the sun was gone, all on a sudden, he found himself stuck in the pitch black darkness deep in the forest. He started to crawl to get him out of this situation, find a place for shelter, and suddenly notice a hint of light quite a bit distance away. He hesitated a bit as he heard a lot about illusions and paranormal events in the forests, but his instincts told him to go for the hint of light. He followed his instinct and approached to the light, when he reached closer he saw a saint meditating. As his footsteps broke the silence, the saint opened his eyes and asked him in a calm tone "What brings you here my child?", Nikkie felt like hopping on the opportunity, if the Saint is a Servant of God, if He could grant him a few boons, he might not have to keep chasing his dream any longer. So, he told him his full story, how he want to become rich, restore the pride of his great ancestors, also asked the saint if he has anything to help him reach his destiny. The saint stared at him with a creepy smile on his face and replied, "Dear Son, your hunger for earthly possessions has overwhelmed your mind. Now you believe that success lies in being filthy rich and spending on fancy things. At the end, how much can you take along to your grave or pyre? Can't you see that you need nothing more than the nature to live? The air you breathe is free, go to the springs, you'll find drinking water for free, the trees are there to feed you with their fruits for free. All you need is to break free from the illusions of society and family. Society looks down upon you, family keeps you down all the time comparing with financially superior ones."

The reply sounded pretty convincing to little Nikkie, he decided to be one the patrons of this heavenly enlightened one. He asked, "How can I break free from the chains of greed and lust?" The saint smiled, extended his hand towards Nikkie holding a burning cannabis roll, and said, "Come my child. This little thing will open the window to your soul with one little puff, eventually you will be able to forget about this materialistic world." Like an obedient pupil, Nikkie had his first puff on the cannabis and started to see stars circling around him, he felt like rushing through the wormhole to another universe, and fell asleep like a log.

Next morning he woke up amidst deep forest, trying to figure out what brought him there the previous night. While he was busy with connecting the dots, all on a sudden the saint appeared in front of him and said, "You are destined to be my best companion. Come my child, follow my steps." Little Nikkie started to follow him and discovered that the saint who inspired him to lead a wealth-free life is begging for money from door-to-door which created a massive confusion in his mind. He asked, "Noble one, you taught me last night to get rid of the greed for money and all earthly possessions, and now I see you are begging for money which makes me feel that all I learnt last night were wrong." The saint exhaled heavily and said, "My child, what I told last night were the words of my subconscious mind. I feel that way when I get really high. The sad reality is, without money you can't afford a single ounce of cannabis to get that high feeling. Technically speaking, you need money to some extent." Nikkie got upset, kicked the saint's butt, and ran away from that hypocrite.

Now he is more stubborn to reach his goal, started exploring other options. In another village, Nikkie met a beekeeper whom he found tallying his stock of honey of different flavors. He got curious about how honey can have different flavors, made friendship with the beekeeper, and asked if there were different breed of bees to produce honey of different flavors. Then it was a new world opened in front of him. He came to know that same bees can produce honey of different flavors by placing them in different orchards or fields during the season of pollination; like - during Mustard pollination season, bee-boxes are placed beside the mustard fields, so the honey has the hint and strength of mustard, which later gets the label of mustard flavored honey. He decided to give it a try, thought of bringing innovation by introducing a new flavor to the market. So, he studied the market and found it is flooded with Mustard, Lychee, Black seed, Moringa, Acassia, Orange Bloom, and wild flavors. New challenge showed up in finding a new flavor that could have consumer acceptance. To dig further with his research, he started searching for references from the internet and came across an article about the Himalayan Honey Bees. These bees build hive along the edge of high cliffs at an average altitude of 3,000 meters, gather pollens from Rhododendrons and other wild flowers which produces a hallucinogenic honey known as the 'mad-honey'. It was the EUREKA moment for little Nikkie. He recalled his first ever experience with cannabis how it fueled his imagination. He started to put his thoughts together, since the cannabis comes from a plant, it must have a flower, if there is a flower then there must be pollens, if bees collect those pollens then the honey might have a hint of cannabis. Cannabis is illegal but there is nothing wrong with honey. Technically, honey is legal regardless of its origin as there is no restricted source of honey. If cannabis flavored honey can trigger the same effect as smoking cannabis then he can call it a legit face of the weed. All the creative professionals such as painters, sculptors, musicians were considered as his potential customers.

Wasting no time, Little Nikkie ran to the district once popular for growing export grade cannabis with a bunch of bee-boxes. He found some secret field still continuing cannabis plantation, set the bee-boxes beside them. Gathered queen bees, started to build the colony. Sooner than he expected, his boxes got full of healthy bees, and so he kept on feeding them sugar until cannabis plants start to have flowers. It looked like a perfect execution of a well developed plan. So, Nikkie started to develop his startup, came up with a brand name "Bee High", started promoting his brand mentioning of its organic origin, soon it drew some attention.

Flower started to bloom, Nikkie released his bees to feed on the pollens, bees looked so happy that Nikkie got assured that his plan has started to work so he started dreaming of his wealthy future. Fate had a different ending of the script, Nikkie started to notice that number of bees were decreasing. So, he went to investigate the matter and found that the cannabis pollen made the bees so high that they start to act strange. Some crawled like tigers, some flew like butterflies, some forgot their way back to their boxes. Soon enough, Nikkie was left with empty bee-boxes. Following his brand promotion, law enforcers also tracked him down and got him busted.

Now little Nikkie, counting his days till redemption in an isolated prison cell as listening to his statement the authorities were not sure about his mental sanity, so could not take any risk of having inmates in his cell. As long as he has free food in the prison, he has unlimited time to brew new ideas, what could be his next venture after his detention is over.