I got a call from my broker. "Sir aapka margin negative ja raha hai." And I froze, because that was the moment I learned something I genuinely didn't know until then: your margin can go negative. I had no idea that was even possible. I thought the worst case was losing what you put in. Turns out you can end up owing more than that.
That night I didn't sleep. Not for a second. Just lay there running the numbers in my head, staring at the ceiling, doing the math on how much trouble I was actually in.
First thing in the morning I transferred the funds to cover it. Cleared it as fast as I possibly could, hands still a bit shaky from the whole thing.
And that same day, I shut F&O down completely. Just switched it off. That negative margin call scared something into me that no amount of small losses ever had. It's been a while now, and I still haven't opened F&O again. Some lessons only need to be taught once.