The Dream That Cost Everything

 


The Dream That Cost Everything

Arjun was thirty-one, a software engineer in Bengaluru who wrote code for a payments app in Bellandur. He wasn't wealthy, but he earned enough to send money home to his village near Mandya and still save a bit each month. His only dream was simple: a small house of his own, two rooms, a little garden, a place where his ageing parents could sit in the sun and his younger sister could study without noise.

For six years he worked twelve-hour days, skipped going to the cinema, ate instant noodles in the office to save on lunch, and put every bonus into a fixed deposit. He even took night shifts for extra pay. The plot of land he found was in a housing development on the edge of the city, cheap because the road wasn't built yet. He paid in instalments, smiling each time his bank balance dropped, because the balance sheet of his life was finally moving forward.

 When Everything Fell Apart


Then came 2024. The company made half the team redundant. Arjun survived the first round, but the fear stayed with him. Overtime disappeared. Bonuses stopped. The builder kept demanding the next instalment, adding "delay charges" every month. Banks turned down his house loan applications—his payslip wasn't impressive anymore. Friends who once borrowed money from him now looked the other way.

He started selling things quietly: his second-hand phone, his old Royal Enfield motorbike, even his mother's little gold earrings she'd given him for "hard times." The plot remained just a patch of red mud with weeds growing through it. Every night he opened the banking app and watched the numbers fall. His parents rang, worried because he sounded exhausted. He told them everything was fine, the house would be ready soon.

The Empty Room


One Thursday in November he didn't turn up for the morning team call. His flatmate found him in their tiny PG room in Marathahalli. He'd left the laptop open. On the screen was a half-finished Excel spreadsheet titled "Dream House Fund"—every rupee earned, every rupee spent, every rupee still needed. At the bottom, in the last cell, he'd written a single line:


"I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it didn't even matter."


What Was Left Behind

The plot is still empty. The builder sold it to someone else last month. In the village, his mother keeps one brick he'd brought home once, saying it was the first brick of their new house. She dusts it every morning, waiting for a son who will never lay it.

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