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Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
March 19, 2013
Do you have plans? Like one day that Merc and the villa on the beach and trips to Cannes (pronounced Kan, you plebe) except that years pass and all you have to show for it is maxed out credit cards. Join the club. Some of us are just not meant to be.
I make lots of plans. Each one of them is a gem. It looks so good on the first take, zooming through the stratosphere, guaranteed to be a big hit. I can see the money rolling in and then I won't have to go to my bank manager and ask for a topping of the loan which is already well overdue. I can see people pointing to me as I walk past and say, see that guy, that's Vohra, made a million with his brilliant ideas, like that Hotmail guy or the Facebook fellow.
But my plans always get into stormy weather. Either they break a wing or go into a nose down dive and end up looking like one of those crumpled light planes in those news pictures you see after they have crashed on the ground, one little hopeful tail sticking up out of the debris. I know the feeling.
Like this plan I had last month. It was one of those hundred percent surefire things and the people who were interested in it had three meetings with me and it was now just a question of signing the deal. So, I am already planning how to spend the money and then what happens, the big chief has to leave for London, the chap who knows the financier gets flu and the contact I have says let's put it on hold and now it has been six weeks and I am the one out in the cold.
Think of it. There are people out there who have plans that just take off. A couple of meetings and everything jells into place, their principals do not get flu or sudden desires to swan off to London and spoiling all these wonderful plans. They break even in the first three months, make profit from then on and shift from their apartment to a villa and buy a car with a computer and go from Saharanpur to St Moritz for their vacations.
Me, well it is like Mr Lennon said, life is what happens to me when I am making other plans. I don't know what category you belong to but I have this sneaky feeling that there are others like me whose plans either just sit in the ground, or go up ten odd feet then bump back on earth and fold up. For us types, let's face it, there is really nothing wrong with the basic idea we are just not lucky, we just don't belong to the plan brigade.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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