"I have the money, but I won't give it to you. Be grateful for that!" Angrily the friend replied, "That you have money and don't want to give it to me, I can rather understand. But that i should be grateful for it is not only incomprehensible, but a downright disgrace."
"My dear friend," Nasrudin answered, "you asked me for money. I could have said, 'Come tomorrow.' Tomorrow I would have said, 'I'm sorry I can't give it to you yet, come back day after tomorrow.' If you had come to me then, I would have said, 'Come at the end of the week.' In this way I could have held you off till the end of time or at least until someone else had given you the money.
But you wouldn't have found someone else, because you would have been so preoccupied with coming to me, and you would have always counted on getting the money from me. So, I tell you in all honesty that I'm not going to give you the money. So, you can look for it elsewhere and try to make your fortune there. Be grateful to me."
source: Stories from Here and There, Ekalavya Education Foundation - By: Sunil Handa - http://www.eklavya.org/storyhere.html
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