Live a little for yourself

“Hello, how are you?”

“Hello!” The spontaneous cheer in his response revealing the joy he felt on hearing that voice . The unexpected call from an unfamiliar number, was a close friend from his youth. They had kept in touch off and on, over the last two decades , though now, it had been a few years since they met. “I am fine”. “How about you?”

“ I am doing well too. I am going to be in your city next week, on business. I should be free most evenings. Lets meet.”

“Oh! Yes.... that would be fun.” He smiled involuntarily. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped himself. He hesitated for a few seconds. And then continued talking “I would love to meet you. It would be just like the good old days. We were carefree then. But things have changed now. I really will not be able to make the time.”

The surprised silence at the other end of the call was the message in itself. It didn't need the words that followed. “No time? Not for a single evening, for the entire week?” The subsequent silence asked the next question before they it was spoken by his friend. “Why? What do you do?”

He spoke the truth. “ I work two jobs” he said. “The day job requires me to travel to another part of the city. It is late evening when I get back home. Dinner is the only time I meet my family. I leave immediately after, for the second job.”

“Two jobs?” His friend was shocked. “Why? Is it so difficult to make ends meet in a big city?”

“I work all night. I drive vehicles for an MNC that requires female employees picked up from home and dropped at work and vice versa, for their shifts at night. I get about 4 hours, sleep in the car, between mid-night and 4 AM. I come back home by 6 AM, sleep for a couple of hours and get back to my day job.” He said.

It was a brief description of his life for six days of the week. The seventh day, quite often was tiring too. Emergencies at work required him to continue without break.

“ I want my family to have a better life than the one I grew up in, in the small town. I want my children to get a modern education and do well in life. I wouldn't want them to lead the hard life I am living. They are teenagers now and college education is expensive.” He said.

The burden he carried was voluntary. Yesterday's future was spent in chasing today's future. The today, always transitory. A continuous tunnel. The light at the end, inexplicably unreachable.

His friend resigned himself to returning to his home town without a reunion with his schoolmate.

His cell phone tinkled. It was message alert. His friend had sent him a short story.

A man who had to work as a youngster, to support his mother and siblings. He worked hard as a young man to provide a good life for his new wife. He worked harder when his children were growing up. He toiled on to create a fall back fund for their old age. Till he fell ill in his old age. The God of Death came to him on his last day on earth, and told him 'you had one life and you have lived it. It is time to leave.'

“But I never lived” the man said. “ I never lived for myself.”

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Originally published in 2015