As he walks slowly, almost trudging towards his house, Vikram realizes something. It was 3 years ago to this day that all of this had started. This was the day everything started going down hill. This was the day that fate decided to deal its cruel hand. The hand was revealed much later, with the calm and composure of a hired assassin; and the kill was almost complete now. This was the day, 3 years ago that his journey had started. A journey towards his ultimate end. Some called it his first day at work, but he preferred to call it 'the beginning of the end'.
Work had sucked out almost all of the life from within him. He could hardly recognise the man he saw in the mirror. The man in the mirror was a good for nothing software engineer; a man who had no hobbies, a man who had no interests, a man who had no time to even look for happiness in his life. This was not the man he wanted to be. Far from it. He had high hopes for himself. He wanted to walk a free spirit. Wander the worlds no one wandered, experience the experiences no one experienced and live the life no one ever lived ! God knew what any of it meant, but he was pretty sure this was exactly what he wanted to do.
But now there was no turning back. No resurrection. The damage was done. The boy who graduated out of college had died and with him died all his wonderful dreams. All that was left was hate and pain and a lot of caffeine.
The man in the mirror had one more story. Project retribution ! He still wonders what possessed him to come up with such a dastardly plan. Such pure evil. Pure and simple evil. Sometimes when someone is pushed to the brink and then tickled very slightly just so that he jumps over the edge, it really pisses the hell out of him. And then what happens next is, as they say, anybody's guess. Maybe that's what happened to Vikram. But this was beyond anybody's guess. He had made sure of that. He had asked all of the 'bodies' he knew, to guess. Nobody could guess what project retribution was. It was pure genius, that's what it was.
Every year, a new target was chosen. A lost soul, a misunderstood man, a man who had wronged, a man who had been wronged. And then he was released from his misery. He was released from the pathetic and sad life that he was living, and taken to a better place. A place where there was more joy, more calm and more freedom.
Ganesh was the third kid that Vikram had helped rehabilitate. Like the previous two, Ganesh too was wasting away the golden days of his life in a juvenile prison. Cornered by the circumstances into doing things he really didn't completely understand. Doing what he thought was required to survive. And breaking a few laws and some houses in the process. But now he was on the path to resurrection. Ganesh had a particular interest in playing the tabla. Vikram had learnt of this from his early conversations with Ganesh. Vikram had used this passion as a fulcrum on which to base the rehabilitation program. Vikram worked closely with Ganesh for over 6 months. He helped him develop an urge to learn, an urge to become a better person, an urge to live a better life ! And by god's grace, Ganesh too had responded well to all of Vikram's efforts. He was now ready to come out of that hell hole and start a new life, turn a new leaf. Vikram was going to be there every step of the way, helping him, guiding him, lifting him should he fall and smiling joyously when he would rise !
Yet another success for Project Retribution. This was his ultimate revenge ! A life for a life.
"Everytime you take away a part of my life, I will make sure one life is resurrected."
Mavdiary by Rhishikesh Joshi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
