Tomorrow Is Pay Day

Every last day of the month, my husband says with a smile “well today is the last of this blessed month.  Tomorrow , my dear is the first”.

From there, I go on to dream  of the things I must buy, the things I must do.  Build houses of cards,and factotems of imagination.  But then I reckon without the fact, that between the cup and the lip, or rather between my dreams and the reality, there is many a bill!  For, hardly has the new day dawned, the milkman  is at the door handing in his bill, in spite of the fact , that the ratio of milk to water, is one to four, the bill has to be paid.

So, they come handing in bills, butcher, baker, thinker, tailor.  It comes to such a pass, I lose count  of them all, and seem to be doing nothing else, but paying bills, right and left.  There seem to be a procession of them , demanding their dues.  I wouldn’t  be surprised  if the line included soldier, sailor, nor the devil himself.  The whole world apparently has woken up to the fact, that it is the first of the month

What of the pressure cooker, I had intended buying?  By jove, the pressure is now on my mind, striving to balance the budget, for it is only halfway through the month, and my purse has slimmed down, and wears the emaciated look of the cows you find before the dust bins on our street.  One by one, they get scrapped, the things I intended buying, the things I intended doing, like dyeing my hair, like having a  sumptuous dinner at the Taj Hotel.  And somewhere along the way is scrapped too, tricycle for my kid, the flower pot  for my drawing room.  What of the new sari I had fancied?  The one hanging on display, and which in my imagination I had seen myself wearing – the latest fashion.  I contend myself with the thought that there is nothing as dead  tomorrow as today’s fashion!

Mathematics was never my forte.  But even the problems I had to do at school, were not half as difficult as the problems  I have to face now.  Whom to pay first, whom  to pay last, how to stave off the wolf  from the door, and keep our bodies and souls together, on a pay packet, that is going , going , almost gone!  It is not so  far fetched to visualize a day  when I may have to beg, borrow or steal  All in the interests of existence.

Maybe, when next my husband points out, that we are facing a new month, I should exclaim with asperity “Well , so what”? It’s going to be another month of playing ring around the rose bush”.

But then life is made up of hopes, and dreams, and from the ashes, like a rising phoenix, hope eternal springs in the heart.  Anyway, I am a sucker enough to believe ,  that  this month , as I have been believing every  other month it’s going to be a better one.  That I’ll yet buy the things I dream about.

So I keep my fingers crossed, every last day of the month, even though my mind tells me, that money will just slip through my fingers, and when the month is over, it will be the same old story.. I’ll be where I was in square one, checkmated.