THE ENDLESS JOURNEY

NEVER THAT PAYMENT

While still in school, we tend to have big dreams and ambitions. So it was my dream to have a high paying job during vaccation and not me only but every student. I can clearly recall a friend called Kasai Majid whom we used to diacuss our plans together. I realised later that things most of the times don’t work as we plan them and you can’t know what the world has in store for the next minute.

After observing how busy the shop was, anticipating heavy payments was all over my body. I started to shake due to happiness resulting from the uncountable number of customers. It was a groceries shop, not big and not small. The display of goods was fantastic to an extent of making it look like a supermarket.

It had two refrigerators one in the front to work as a display platform for the drinks and the another was inside. The shop had variety of products From snacks to juice in five litre jerrycans. It also had ladies’ s cosmetics and this attracted more women.
Over three workers had served from the shop but there were no clear reasons as why they left.

Hajjat couldn’t explain everything in details. Whenever i asked her, she could dodge the quetion pretending to be more smart than me. So i decided to keep it dark. Hajjat was my father’s wife and as you know it is permissable in islam to posses more than one woman if  ability is available. So father could come in the early morning and at around noon Hajjat also comes in. She takes it upto midnight as it was the routine.  So i looked calmly and eager to know how much i will be given for staying from morning till midnight.

“I will give you 1000/=($0.001) daily” he said. I slowly put my hands on the ears  to check the situation of normality as if I heard something not clear. “do you understand?” he asked and i also replied in the affirmative. He went on to describe the various benefits i will be getting and they included free shelter, food and most of the domestic needs of life. In brief i was to be coming from father’s house to work, a thing that i had hated much. There was nothing i could do though all my plans of  had come to a stop. All along i hoped to provide the best things to Hadijah through earning big but that was never possible.

Telling her the truth seemed more hard and I decided to lie. At that time i felt my head racing and the heart triggered vibrating impulse, everything seemed unconditional. I thought about giving up on the job but letting down father was the worst thing in this world.
Within a few minutes he left and advised to call him incase there was misinterpretation of price for some products. It was my first time to deal with various people who behaved differently.

And worse enough i was a bit slow so they could pile and some even went ahead to mock me. I started to recall all the plans I had drafted to take me through the vaccation, going to parties and it was now history. The new chapter of life had already begun. Most of the times things don't go the way we plan them and this takes me to the quote that was written on one of the classes in some school “a man's mind plans his way but God directs his way”. That’s the time i got to know what that quote meant. But however much weak i was, i kept my heart alive, hopes moving and the dream to come up with a multi-billion business empire didn’t die. The endless journey had just started.