The Goddamn Plan

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or otherwise, is entirely coincidental.



It was a warm sunny afternoon . Sitting there in his cubicle and looking out through the window , he noticed groups of people returning back to their desks after lunch . Groups of women giggling , men enjoying their cigarettes and a few others  engrossed in conversations .  He rocked back on his chair and noticed how everything inside his office was grey . Was it symbolic ? was his first thought . He glanced back at his monitor.He had an excel open . It was staring at him right in his face . Big numbers , charts and whatnot . It seemed irrelevant to him . Suddenly his new phone buzzed . It was from one of those numbers which refer to you as Dear customer . He didn't bother . He just sat there and stared into space .

Not so long ago , he shared a room with someone when it could barely hold one person , he barely had money to cover his expenses ,all his stuff could be packed in a small travel bag and he would consider himself lucky if he got six hours of sleep in a day . Now it had all changed . He lived the life a lot of people only hoped to live someday . Wholesome paycheque , motorbike , branded clothes and shoes , a flat in an apartment and people always addressing him with respect . Something was missing though . His heart was never in the place  he was . When he got up in the morning , he wanted to get dressed and be in the office . When he was at his desk , he wanted to be in the food court . When he was in the food court , he wanted to go home and when he was home , well you know where he wanted to be .Often in the middle of conference calls his mind would wander onto a football pitch , him playing with a bunch of his friends with just boxers in the rain . Would anyone be bothered if i didn't show up ? Does my updating the quality centre with my results affect how much my company makes ?

Pass kar behen****  , people would scream in a room filled with smoke when he took a wee bit longer . With just over three hundred  rupees in the back account , eloborate plans would be chalked up for the weekend and implemented too . A twenty rupee pack of cards had kept  them entertained for about two years . Poori and aloo in the morning  seemed to them like a rescue boat to Robinson crusoe . Even remotely funny things would cause a laugh riot . All this was exactly one year ago . Now , he could watch the simpsons on high definition and not once would he come remotely close to smiling . Man ! Where did it go wrong ?

He got back to his Excel sheet , he looked at it for a minute and decided it didn't matter . Nothing he did that day would matter . Nothing he did sitting in his cubicle would matter . He thought for sometime and looked outside his window at the people in disgust . How could they be laughing and smiling at this life .  This superficial , pretending to be happy and successful life that everyone led where they could be easily be replaced by machines and clients wouldn't know the difference . Was this where evolution was supposed to take us ? Something somewhere has gone terribly wrong .

He couldn't bear  to be in the office anymore . He got up , rushed to his bike and pulled it into second gear .The ride back home was the only high point of his day . He could feel the cold wind hitting him straight in his face at 80kmph. It made him feel alive . He then reached home . He parked his bike and just when he was about to ring the doorbell, He could hear his mother proudly explaining his job description to her friend . It was at that moment he realized that it hadn't gone wrong anywhere . Things had gone exactly to plan. Just that no one told him that THIS was the plan all along .


When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimps
out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
the child has grown
the dream is gone