Anybody's guess is as good as mine...

It was supposed to be a holiday last Saturday but I had to go to work to wrap up training. Felt it was no point returning to an empty house and battling my demons. So went to a library and issued a couple of books, in the hope that these would be my anchor and my shield while I am in Chandigarh.

The oddest thing happened as I was returning home in the evening. I ran into an old, well lets avoid complications and just say, friend. I was mighty shocked to see him. We were actually what one could call ‘bus buddies’. We used to take the same bus to college oh so many many years ago it seems. On passing out we were not that much in touch with each other. I did get sporadic bit of information about him- he had gone and enrolled at the IMA and was set to join the army.

Anyways, I was just crossing the street to go pick up some dinner for myself when suddenly I hear a loud ‘OYE’. Normally I do not notice such stuff and even if I do, prefer to ignore it. But this time I looked to see and guess who it was…this friend of mine.

We got talking, exchanged phone numbers, email ids and the course of our lives since the last time that we had boarded that bus together.

On my way back home I was left with a strange, slightly discomfiting, feeling about human life and the way it goes through it miniscule span and scope in the infinitesimally larger scheme of things. Thinking about my meeting I thought- here were two people, friends once and practically strangers now, who happened to run into each other through total chance and spent an uneventful hour on a Saturday evening, just chatting and trying to ward of the gnawing sense of loneliness.

Also, during the course of our meeting I realized the truth behind the saying – Man proposes and God disposes. Neither of us had planned to be where we were at that point in our lives. And yet there we were reminiscing about old times when life was simpler and the biggest worry was not the job, the search for a new job, the boss or the next transfer, but whether we would get to the bus stop in time to catch the only bus that would get us to college in time for the first lecture. Now we have a metro running from South Delhi to North Campus. I wonder what are things on today’s college students’ ‘To Worry’ list?

Also, it got me thinking about the sheer role of chance in our lives. Inspite of all that we do to delude ourselves that we are in control, I do not think that we really are. I mean there were a lot of things that could have happened differently that evening. I could have decided not to go for the haircut that took me to the market where I ran into my friend. I could have decided to postpone paying my phone bill and returned home right after the haircut. I could have paid my bill first and then gone for the haircut, instead of the other way round, in which case I would not have run into my friend and would probably not have been writing this right now. But yet, here I am, the end result of the things that may not have happened that evening, but did.

How much of our life is fashioned through a similar chance coming together of choices, events and people? And is that the beauty or the misery of our existence that our plans do not always go as planned?

My guess is as good as anybody else’s.