The right choice...

This one came out of the blue - Please do tell me how it was after reading it. I just started writing something and this is what came out of my keyboard.

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Swati looked at her watch and heaved a huge sigh of relief. For the first time in 6 months, she was going to make it ahead of time. These last 6 months had been very strenuous, excruciating and nerve-wracking. Meetings, reports, minutes - gosh she hated all that crap that she had to deal with everyday. But she had no choice but work - because she was madly in love, with money. She wanted to earn big and spend every bit of her earnings for her own pleasures. When you want to enjoy life, you got to earn and spend openly, she said.

As a kid, Swati grew up watching her dad take up job after job to make ends meet. She was shuttled around from school to school, to make sure that she stayed where her father was. But little did he realise that all this moving had made Swati resent her life as it was. She hated the very concept of being poor, of taking orders, or working like a dog just to keep your family satisfied. She adored freedom; freedom to choose what she wanted to choose; freedom to spend money the way she wanted to; freedom to move to places she wanted to move.

Money was her escape, the elixir of her life. With all that money, no one can boss her around. No one can tell her how to live her life. No one, not even her own mother. 

She removed her talcum powder compact and started adjusting her face. Suddenly, out of the blue, she spotted a wrinkle. A small, tiny, inconspicuous wrinkle on her forehead. As she tried to brush it off with more powder and concealer, she realized that life was passing her by. She was on the wrong side of 30, and single. She remembered her past relationships that failed; those wonderful times she spent with Rohan, that exotic vacation in Hawaii with Sridhar. But all of them ended in a failure, failure to adjust to her hunger for money, failure to adjust with her "work hard; party harder" lifestyle. They wanted to settle, she didn't. 

Did her success come at a price? Was she really that successful? Suddenly, questions like this started popping into her tiny head. Did she make a right choice in her life? All her friends were married and some of them even had kids. Perhaps this western lifestyle is not for her, she wondered. But then, how would she support her lifestyle, something she craved for everyday. She was confused by then, not knowing what is right and what is wrong.

As she was getting down the company bus, she saw a few women just like her - in their mid-thirties and still single. She felt glad; after all, she was not alone. Her life is her life and she was happy with the way things were right now. When I want to settle, I will settle, she told herself. Life is short, so better make the most of it.

Swati strode happily into her office. She was feeling more confident, more enthusiastic than ever. All that thinking got her to realize what she wanted from her life. And she was happy with the way things were right now.

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