Plans Poem by Mihir Chitre

You go on playing life
like a game of chess. Its
squares, you’ve counted, placing
your chess-pieces on them. Finance
is a lucrative field, you tell yourself, an MBA
would be my visa to the world. Marry I will
only at twenty-eight and only the girl
who liberates me in a glance, and for her,
I’ll buy a holiday home in Lonavala, and, soon
after, a diamond ring,40 carat. By thirty-two, I
should have a house to myself, and earn enough
money to dine at any five star, as many times
a month as I like, or maybe permanently
hire a chef and order him to make Sorpotel
and Bacon Bombs, and innovate with meat
as Jimi Hendrix did with the guitar. And then
on the chess board, at this amorous hour,
after, say, fifteen-odd moves
enters a pawn that was never in the game,
eyeing you from the sixty-fifth square,
You don't have a plan for this, do you?
Check-mate, it says.