My friend was right.
It was a Thursday. I should have been at work…but I wasn’t. I had taken an off. There were a couple of domestic errands to be undertaken. I had planned my day in advance. Although I completed the tasks, the sequence of events deviated from my plan.
Late that evening I went to the mall with my cousin brother. We were having a look around at the new layout of the retail store there when, to my utmost surprise I bumped into an old schoolmate. She was my junior and we knew each other well, but we hadn’t met since I passed out of school. Inspite of residing within a radius of 1 km, we had never come across each other for nearly a decade. Mutual recognition was instant even though we weren’t in our school uniforms. We updated each other on our current status and exchanged numbers before we left. We could not talk much as both of us were running short of time.
Fast-forward 2 hours. I dropped my cousin at his place and was walking back home. At the gate I bump into another old schoolmate. This time… a senior. We belonged to the same house back in school and had fought the wars (the monumental debates of Vivek) beside each other. She had been to the other side of the globe while I trotted up and down the city for the last couple of years. And finally we had to meet right there at my gate. It was a pleasant surprise for both of us.
Did these two meetings happen merely by coincidence?
It was an unexpected turn of events that compelled me to take an off that day. A mall is the last place of choice to spend time on an evening, for someone who likes to confine himself to books or restrict himself to a stroll around a peaceful place. It was the young lad who had taken me there. We were behind our time schedule. Things weren’t going as per my plan. But there was a grander plan already made. If my plan had worked I wouldn’t have met these two ladies… one from Himachal and the other from the ‘glorious’ Yamuna (this one is for the Vivians!).
I choose to believe that there was no coincidence. My 'disconnected' status over the years and absence from social-networking could not stop me from meeting people from the good-old days.
My friend was right… ‘Life has its own way of making roads meet’.
