That day she decided to walk home instead of taking the regular office cab. It was drizzling outside. She loved Bangalore weather, and would have otherwise enjoyed the cool breeze. It was a rather hard day at office. She couldn’t point at what was disturbing her more – her colleagues’ indifferent behavior or her boss’ s unfair politics, or was it the effort of the past 3 months that would now be acknowledged as that of her boss’ and not her own.
Work meant a lot to Sushma. She had nothing else to fall back on. Her father had died when she was just 5 years old, and just last year, her mother too left her after battling with heart problem for 10 long years. Marriage was out of question, as she didn’t want to get into a situation where one gets attached to someone and then suffers the lifelong fear of losing him. She had put her entire energy and emotions in her professional life. For past three months, she was busy researching for a new project that was coming in her team’s way, hoping perhaps to get the break she had longed for.Several sleepless nights and tiresome days later she finally got the presentation ready and showed it to her boss, hoping for some words of appreciation. But he just shook his head, saying that she needed to work a bit harder on the presentation. She felt dejected, but didn’t lose heart and got busy in getting the report in a better shape. But today her world just fell apart. Unlike the usual practice, today’s team meeting was attended by the CEO himself, and he congratulated her boss for his extra efforts in researching the forthcoming project. He then showed the presentation to the team. Everyone was awestruck. The numbers, the graphs, the projections – they were all collated together to form an impressive picture.
Everyone, but her ..
She couldn’t concentrate on anything. Her own work was there right in front of her, only the owner was different. After the meeting got over, her boss came over to her desk, and said ‘ Sush, please email the supporting documents for the presentation to me asap. And by the way, it was good work. Our team would benefit a lot from this new project’.
She started walking back to office. Her head swarming with visions of the unfair treatment that life meted out to her. She could take it no more. After years of suffering her mother’s and then her own loneliness, she had found refuge in work, and now that support too had left her. She wanted to end everything at that very moment. But the conflict between right and wrong disturbed her. How could self destruction free her from all the sufferings? Wouldn’t it be unethical to do so? But then her mother’s face stared at her. If only she could free herself from the misery, Sushma too could have been spared the pain of growing up as her mother’s mother.
As she got closer to her cubicle, her decision became more firm. She slumped in her chair, took a deep breath, and logged into her computer. One last email to be sent to her boss might help to teach that jerk a lesson. After sending the email, she selected the folder containing all her research documents.She had tears in her eyes. With a heavy heart, she took the final step towards her own doom and deleted it permanently.
Five Senses ... 