Tag: Chance

Coincidence? Chance? Serendipity?

Please closely observe these recent events in my life.

Ginger chooses “Art” as the topic for our Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium.

All of us duly post our take on the subject on the 9th of April.

I write about the paintings on the walls of our homes and mention that except for one print gifted to us by a dear friend, all were by my late wife Urmeela. I do not mention the name of the artist whose print is in an honoured position in our home. Right over my head above my bed in my bed room.  Since posting that, I had been thinking of getting someone in Delhi to look for the artist to get his current where and what abouts as, I had lost touch and I had destroyed all Urmeela’s papers and diaries after her death.

On the 13th of April, I get an alert from Facebook that there is a message for me from one Pratibha.  I go into FB to find that it is from Pratibha, friend, artist and the wife of the artist Devraj Dakoji who gifted us with the print.  In that message, she informs me that they are now in New York and have been there the last ten years.  They had been remembering us the past few days and tried our telephone number with them but could not get through as the old six digit numbers have all been changed to eight digit ones.  Pratibha decided to chance looking me up by googling for me, found that I was on Facebook and sent me the message asking how both of us and Ranjan were.  She also gave their telephone number.

I read the post on the 14th of April early in the morning. I immediately rang up Devraj who was luckily awake watching a movie on DVD player.  Pratibha was sleeping.  We shared all the news that had happened between the last meeting that we had ten years ago when Pratibha had visited us in Pune and the present including the passing away of Urmeela. Both of us are now delighted to have reestablished contact through the good offices of google and Facebook!

This is Devraj in action.

I made a particular mention to Devraj about my blog post and gave a link to him by a subsequent email so that he could read how much I treasure his gift to us.  He remembered the print too as he had visited me in my office once when I was still in service and had seen it in a prominent place, well lit on the wall behind and just over my chair.

This is that print.  I have taken the photograph by placing the print on my bed and so it is not a very good photograph, but it will give you an idea of it.

Such coincidences keep happening in my life at frequent intervals. So many things had to come together, Ginger choosing the topic, my blogging about Devraj’s print, and my being available in a google search, being a member of the Facebook community and for some kind of instinct at my level as well the Dakojis’s level for all these events to take place in such a sequence.

Amazing is it not?

Chance/Grace.

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“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
Riches to men of understanding, or yet favor to men of skill; but
Time and chance happeneth to them all.”
-Ecclesiastes.

William James said that religious belief is “the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.”

Why am I suddenly writing about this subject? Let me give you some background.

Since my post on ‘Ambition’ was published, a dear atheist friend of mine, who has known me only the past few years, has been arguing with me about atheism and theism; Natural Selection and Spirituality, and as atheists are wont to, has been trying to convince me to convert to atheism. As I had posted in my later post, we Indians are very argumentative and this topic is as good as any to get two good friends to argue about.

Indian Shastras (Sanskrit Scriptures) say, that in order to be successful, six qualities are required – udyama, proper effort; saahasa, perseverance; dhairya, courage; buddhi, knowledge; shakti, skill and resources; and paraakramaa, the capacity to overcome obstacles.  The absence of any of these qualities can stymie our efforts and produce unexpected outcomes. And, it is a very big ‘And’, there is no guarantee that even if you have all the six qualities and take action, the outcome will be as per your expectation.

That brings us to the stage of taking action to succeed.  When we take any kind of action, we expect an outcome to that action.  That outcome can be exactly what we expected; less than what we expected; more than what we expected; or completely different to what we had expected, perhaps even opposite of what we expected. We can never know before taking that action as to how the outcome will turn out to be.

It has therefore been taught to those who are willing to learn, that when you consider the two paragraphs immediately above this one, there is something working behind the scenes that influences the outcome. You do not have to be a religious person, or a spiritualist to accept this reality.  This can be proved by simple observation of all that we do.

When I pointed out the contents of the two paragraphs to him, his reasoned reply was that ‘chance’ has nothing to do with the outcome, but the outcome being different from what was expected is due to one or more of the six qualities listed in the first paragraph, not being present in adequate measure.  My response to that is; why does it happen that what is lacking is lacking? His response is that it is because of inadequate preparation or overconfidence.  This answer too can be taken to the next level and the next level ad infinitum.

Since writing the post, I ‘chanced’ on Looney’s post which is poignant. Please do read before you comment on this post.

Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer, when a reader confronted him on why he defined the word ‘pastern’ as “the knee of an horse” (instead of the part between the fetlock and the hoof) his reply was, “Ignorance Madam, pure ignorance.”

Who is ignorant?  What is your answer to this conundrum?