Do you believe in miracles? Do co-incidences ever strike you as magical?
I think of myself as a very logical and practical man and yet, sometimes I can’t help but wonder at certain coincidences and think of them as truly magical. Mostly it had been times when I wanted something to happen real bad, the probability of its occurrence being really low, and still, amidst everything, it happened.
This was also something like that…
I had met this particular person at a training event. I had been in good spirits that first day, seemingly confident of myself, wearing an extroverted guise upon my introverted self, ready to strike a conversation and make some friends. And so it happened, that she was the first one to come and sit beside me.
I think maybe I said something funny and soon we were laughing and discussing our surroundings, then our educational details and the training that we were supposed to get there. In a couple of days, we started leaving the training together as we shared half the way of our metro travel. Soon we even started arriving together, usually late as either one or the other of us would not be on time, or the metro would get stuck, or we’d get stuck in a traffic jam. These metro rides felt special in their own way, as in the mornings we’d usually talk about how late we were running, the books we were reading, and the other people at the training. The evenings were more calm, as we’d walk to the metro station on the left side of the road (She has a peculiar habit of walking on the left side of the road! Unusual, I know, I like most other people walk on any side of the road without a fuss.) And in the metro we’d listen to our favorite songs with one earbud of the earphone in each of ours’ ear, enjoying the view outside, or simply talking about our lives and figuring out how much we had in common.
After two weeks of the said training (in the duration of which I’d say we became pretty good friends), it was time to part. And so while traveling back that last day, on one of the usual stations at which she had to get down, she said, “Well, goodbye. Maybe this is the last time that we are meeting.” Perhaps I wanted to say something remarkable, but all I could manage was “Alright, bye.” As I traveled the remainder of my ride alone, I wondered if it really was the last time that I saw her. More importantly, did I want it to be the last time we met? ‘No. Not really.’
A couple days later, while texting back and forth, I got a text from her saying, “Well, hope to see you again. Though not a planned meeting. Would just love to bump into you at a random place while singing a song.” I sighed, ‘not a planned meeting’, how does that even work! She was supposed to leave the city in a month anyway. I was sure that the ship had sailed, and perhaps that last meeting was really the last meeting.
A week or so later, as I approached my destination station while going back home in the metro from somewhere, I felt an urge to call her. So, as I deboarded the metro, I paused a few seconds, wondering if I should sit down a while on one of the station benches to call and talk to her. Then I decided against it and just dialled her number while approaching the flight of stairs to exit the station. And just there, right in front of me, I saw a familiar person- her. I went over and gently nudged her shoulder. She seemed equally surprised as she looked at me and the two of us burst into laughter. For some moments I became hyper-aware of everything, of the brief micro-seconds that her hand brushed mine as we ascended the stairs, the color of my headphones as I put them in my bag, her red polka-dotted shirt, a couple of people walking in front of us as we talked. And then the cherry on top of it all, unconsciously, she started singing the Prateek Kuhad song that had become her favorite during the duration of our training. The prophecy, her prophecy had come true. And to me, it seemed miraculous, almost magical.
Have you ever experienced such a coincidence in life, which seemed to you like a miracle? Tell me about it.
Under Transformation 