Destiny!

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

We are based out of South India, dad used to travel, but usually this was restricted to the southern states. And then the oldest sibling moved to Mumbai. This was when I was in high school. Sibling settled there and was there for the longest time ever.

I did my 10th grade from a state board. The syllabus is way lower than the ICSE and the CBSE curriculum that’s all the rage today. I moved to the pre-university course in ARTS, and my subjects were History, Economics, Psychology and Sociology. Around the time of the 12th standard boards, I was told to start preparing for the postgraduate courses. I had no idea what they were referring to. But I finished my graduation, and during my final year, I was told to give the CAT exams – this is the entrance exams for the IIMs for a post graduation course. I did badly, because I did not understand anything in the preparatory course material and I refused to acknowledge this or ask for help. This was just one of the many post graduate entrances I did. My biggest learning here was, never go for an entrance without preparing for them. It’s not worth it and is a waste of one’s time, money and effort.

At some point after my final exams, I reached Mumbai to do the entrance exams for TISS. An absolute horror story that was. It was raining, TISS is on the central line of the local trains in Mumbai. It got flooded, things got messy, I waded through filth to get back home. The exams were a big flop, I hadn’t done any volunteering work, so it wasn’t even something I should’ve considered. But, I did and it did not work out at all. Dejected and irritated at my lack of having a plan B, I was moping around the house, when the sibling, told me to give the entrance for SCM, or the Social Communications Media course at Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai. Bugged out and irritated, I went and gave the exams, with absolutely no preparation and no idea on what the course was about (one would think I had learnt that lesson!!). It was a media course, was 9 months long, and had an interesting faculty that came in to teach. The results for this course came out in less than 10 days, and tbh I wasn’t expecting to clear it, but I did. In the first round! Then followed the group discussions and the interviews. And in less than 10 days after the results, I had paid the fees to start my post graduation in SCM, Sophia Polytechnic. The hostel fees were paid, and I walked in on June 10th, bedraggled and wet like something the cat had dragged in. My bag, was soaking. I was soaking. The only piece of clothing that was not wet, was a chadhar that my sibling had given me to use as a table cloth or a shawl, depending on my preferences. I changed out of my wet clothes, hung out the rest of my clothes to dry on the stands in the common area and wore the chadhar as a wrap-around skirt securing it with a pin. Topped this with a sweatshirt and once I started feeling human again, went to see if my classroom had opened. The hostel, was on the third floor and my classes were in the second floor. There was a Jali wall between the media lab on the third floor and my hostel, so we had to go down the stairs and walk through to corridors to get to class or climb the stairs to get to the lab.

A few of my classmates had ventured in the rains to reach class and they were all just as disheveled as I was when I had come in to the hostel that morning. Thank god for warm clothes and the hostel room! We were an eclectic bunch of girls (as a convent run college, at that point SCM was an ‘all girls’ course). I met a few of them, some of them were locals, of who some had also been working for a bit before they joined this class. C was one of them. She was probably a year older than me and we never did hit it off, at least initially. At that point in my life, I did not make friends, but I was friendly. I spoke and smiled and hung out with everyone. I was not particular. I never confessed to any thing crazy. I was amiable, jovial and hilarious. Everything that made me easy to hang around.

The course was hectic and high pressure and short. The only thing that was a constant was the lack of time. Everything was rushed and everything was important, so nothing could be left off. At some point, in the blur that was the course, the scholarship announcement was made. Half the course was done, I had no idea if I would qualify, but I applied. I would’ve been happy if I got even a token amount for the effort I had put to applying for it. We were told that as two of us had applied the amount had been divided amongst us and I got 50%. When I reached the bank to collect the amount is when I met C for the second time. She was the other person who had applied and qualified for the scholarship. We collected our amounts and then while walking back started chatting. She claimed she had a close friend in my hometown, when she realised where I was from. Not knowing where I was going to get placed and where I’d be once the course was done, I invited her over for a meal to my house, if I was around when she came to visit. She accepted and then we parted ways since we had reached college and were heading in different directions.

Jump to a year later, I had finished my internship with a leading advertising agency and then had moved back home. And had started working in an agency based in the city centre. A downtown pin code, that leased out space to the most happening companies in the city at that time. C came for a visit, to meet her friend and eventually pinged me. Bored with the humdrum life of a small town, I was excited to catch up with someone from my past life in the big city. Meeting C then seemed like serendipity. She introduced me to her friend, who incidentally was just that- a friend! We hung out, for the duration of her visit, all of 5 days. I got to meet her friend and his friend and eventually their friends and slowly started making friends of my own, who were not from my school circle. 5 days were done, C returned, and I expected things to go back to ho hum existence. But the friends, kept in touch, and we often met for coffee.

They say a lot can happen over a coffee, and in my case it ended up being love and marriage and a couple of kids. And this is when (after almost a decade plus into our relationship) iI got to thinking about the odds of meeting the spouse.

Odds of moving to Mumbai for a course,

Odds of C joining that course at the same time as me, (she was working while she also did the course, so if she had not cleared it that year, she could’ve reapplied, I guess)

Odds of us getting along, (we met as a group of almost thirty young women, looking at various media specialisations on a rapidly approaching deadline. Finesse, grace and decency were long gone. We did not have time for niceties. We. Did. Not. Have. Time. To. Make. Friends.)

Odds of us keeping in touch, (coordinating schedules to say a breathless hi while rushing through the course had been exhausting. All of us had graduated and joined various media houses and as interns none of us had the time to talk, let alone try to keep in touch).

Odds of catching up for a bit after the course was done, (again, interns, bottom of the food chain in any company. Grunt work. Low pay. Long hours. Catch up was something we all dreamt of).

Odds of C taking a holiday in my hometown AND remembering to call me while doing so (SCM was a fast paced course, I was just friendly. I had no idea if anyone would keep in touch. I had no idea if I would want to keep in touch if anyone called me either).

Odds of spouse continuing to meet as a friend for coffee even after C left (spouse was Cs friend, and I had just met. There were no requirements for either of us to keep in touch. For coffee or anything else. He was in software and I was in advertising. We existed in different worlds. We spoke different dialects).

Odds of getting married as against the two of us getting married to each other (although the parents had started looking for matches for me, they were hesitant to commit because I had not been too keen on starting the process. I wasn’t against it, just not too keen either.

Odds of us staying together post marriage (we met in Oct, he proposed in Nov, got engaged in March and married by the end of the year. It was a really quick series of events. We still call it our momentary lapse of reason. But it’s kept on for close to 21 years).

Odds of us having kids together (PCOS is a pain, if you want to conceive and stressful if you are doing it while juggling work and then try this on round 2).

Maybe it’s just destiny! At some point over one of those many cups of coffee, it dawned on me that we just clicked. He was the person I was supposed to find, and I had no clue I had been looking. But we found each other and held on and continue to hold on, and I have no clue how this ends or if and when it will. But for now, destiny got us together and I am confident to let her lead the way. This does not mean that destiny kept us together, that part we’ve worked on together.

Do I believe in fate or destiny? I don’t know, you tell me.