Coincidence ……..A short story….

Kumar had just finished his presentation to the Chairman of Trident Group where he was one of the group company President. The occasion was the annual CEO meet - a kind of a ritual where the spouses also join --- in some idyllic spot, where besides discussions about the previous year’s performance by individual companies, a day or two are devoted to some sightseeing/ enjoying an evening of music etc. This year the venue was a place close to Delhi, the HQ of the group.

After a particularly bad-to-lackluster performance of the past three years of his predecessor, this was the first under his stewardship. The results were very good if not extraordinary but viewed in the context of past performance, this could easily qualify for a “spectacular” kind of a rating.

Kumar was happy that he had been able to convey a turn-around for the company with his own contribution woven into the narrative very subtly and avoiding the temptation of using either oversimplified clichés or verbal sophistry. He however knew well that his boss – the Chairman – may not be overtly pleased, simply because he was not amongst those who were in the former’s favorite-list and wasn’t therefore particularly expecting any kudos. 

The powers-that-be, whenever felt the need for a none-too-warm but perfunctorily spontaneous responses, mostly chose -as a gesture of noblesse oblige- something that could pass off as profoundly professional wisdom.  The moment his boss Vivek Seth (VS) chose to speak, Kumar felt instinctively, that this was going to be one of those moments, but even to him what followed from VS, was a bit unexpected.     

VS responded thus; “Tell me, Kumar, as a purely academic exercise, if to the previous year’s results you had added the lost revenue from Gulabchand’s -- which was mainly due to their internal problems -- and compared the resultant figures with what you have achieved this year, what would be the growth rate?”   Even as he said this, he looked triumphantly confident with his broad grin – though pretending to sound innocuous -- that the others would be impressed.

Kumar knew fully well where this was leading to. This was a manifestly ridiculous interjection. He had however no option but to go along and let others imagine that he was quick enough to be equally impressed with his boss’s sharp intellect!! He mumbled something about how this was such a brilliant suggestion, but impatient to get this over-with as quickly as possible, made a rough guess, and said that the growth figures would come down from 22% to about 17%.  He could not help musing aloud however that this should not in any way dilute his own contribution to what was obviously a spectacular turn-around.  

Having successfully introduced an element of “not so sterling after all” kind of skepticism about Kumar’s performance, and having no demur about his patently unfair bias towards Kumar -his own CEO-  VS was surprisingly still able to revel in his colleagues’ admiration for his uncanny acumen in spotting such nuances. Kumar was amazed to notice that not a single person in the room had balls to point the obvious; namely that VS had been graceless, if not cussed. To add further insult VS was quick to score further brownie points with his “of course this does not in any way take away your merit” kind of platitudes, much to Kumar’s disgust and to everyone else’s admiration.  

It was now the turn of Ravi, the chairman’s favorite who headed his pet company in the group. The turnover as well as margins during the year had dropped, but Ravi yet talked about a scenario, where but for his efforts things could have gone worse. He added in good measure that it was indeed the Chairman’s foresight in warning him prior to this, and his personal intervention which made even this result possible. Chairman was so pleased that he chose to hold forth himself for a few minutes about this, and concluded that Ravi had only been too modest; this indeed was a very good performance.

The usual “thaaliaan” followed, much to Kumar’s discomfiture. He now seriously began to worry as to whether he can hide his growing unease with the proceedings for long, and prayed for a break. Luckily lunch time was approaching and they decided that an early lunch would be taken. The post-lunch session being not too important, Kumar decided that he would go home and enjoy the afternoon with his grand-kids. His daughter Poornima had come from Canada on a holiday with her kids – a son and a daughter- and it was a very convenient excuse for him to talk to Chairman and do just that.  

His wife, and others were happy to see him home so soon, but equally concerned to know from him that all was well. Kumar briefly narrated the incidents at office, and after that the day passed off most blissfully with the kids providing all-round entertainment. His daughter towards the later part of the evening once again broached the subject of his two sons who had settled in the US. Both of them were keen that Kumar shifted his base to the US after his retirement – which was about three years away- if not immediately. Both the sons were married, and were doing well, and Kumar was more than rich – he had no further commitments- and was not too gaga with his job.

Since the day’s events in office were not totally isolated ones, he was tempted for a moment to take the suggestion seriously and say “yes”. He however quickly composed himself and found himself telling his family and especially his daughter that while he had really not made up his mind about settling down in the US, as of that moment, he was only sure that he wanted to complete his term and not retire prematurely. His wife was quite happy – she was not over enthused by the prospect of immigrating to the US- and that a decision would be taken only after three years, in itself was very comforting.

Times passed; he retired, and was on a holiday in the US for a good six months. The times were to be divided equally with his two sons and their kids, with a trip to his daughter in Canada thrown in between. The elder one Aditya had a son named Aswin and the younger one Chander had a daughter, named Ananya.

The sojourn in the US was turning out to be full of peace, love, and happiness with none of those terrible times when he had to pretend and put up with idiosyncrasies of his Chairman, having to meet no deadlines and not subject himself to new tricks almost periodically by the HR head who went about giving all a feeling that like the Buddha he had received enlightenment. He chuckled to himself when he remembered the quote “when you want to judge a man’s character give him power” -to his recollection- by Abraham Lincoln.         

But surprisingly within a couple of months of these blissful times, Kumar and his wife Jayashree, were beginning to miss something; the noise in their Delhi flat, the sudden power failure in the early morning, the milk man failing to deliver that extra packet of milk, the spontaneity with which one could fondle a lovable kid in a pram being taken for a walk by the parents in the residence block, or knock on the neighbor’s door without undue hesitation to reconfirm that indeed the milk man had missed his duty etc.

In fact   every little nuisance to peace in Delhi, appeared to them in a funny way, as designed to add color to a wonderfully informal life-style when compared to this peaceful, well organized, perfect way of life in the US, where everything seemed to be too formal, with  clearly defined SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)  embedded in their psyches.  

They therefore decided to travel around to shake off this sudden love for their own home in Delhi, by visiting a whole lot of cousins, friends, in the US, dovetailing a short visit to Canada to see their daughter and spending a few days with her. The travelling renewed their initial feeling of awe at everything so completely at peace in the US, though being old and marinated over all those decades of living with Hindu spiritual ethos, there was this undercurrent of superstitious belief that “deliverance” can be had only from Indian Soil. They finally arrived in Dallas at Aditya’s place.    

Kumar slowly began to get hooked to the idea of peaceful meditation, given this perfect ambience. Since he also had more leisure time, he started reading some of the religious texts and his favored choice was “Bhagawad Gita”. As to Jayashree, it was difficult for her to shake off the tag of “bharat ki nari” stereotype, and afford the luxury of a “retirement”. She therefore tried to find her own inner peace with routines such as cooking for her family and treat the happiness of others as her own kind of wisdom.        

It so happened that on a weekend, while surfing various channels, Aditya chanced upon an Indian network where there was this discourse on Gita by a well- known guru, and   called out to his papa Kumar. By a coincidence the topic of discourse was “Gita”. The entire family sat down to enjoy this episode where the Guru was just about starting off with 1^st and second chapters.  

He was describing the battle field where Pandavs and kauravs were pitted in battle in Kurukshetra. Arjun is asking the Lord to place the chariot in the midst of the warring families, in the neutral zone, his tenor clearly displaying an arrogance born out of the confidence that with the Lord on his side, victory was a foregone conclusion, and therefore he wanted to size up those who could dare his might.

The Lord is happy as the apt time for the “gita upadesa” was nearing, and intending to let Arjun rid of not only his arrogance but his familial “moham”, (infatuation) obliges and places the chariot at a spot, from where Arjun could first see Bhishma, Drona, and then his other kith and kin. Arjun’s initial arrogance is then immediately replaced by extreme remorse; he tells the Lord, that he would rather prefer to beg to eke out a living than kill his own most respected grand-uncle, his teacher and many other kith/kin and friends- who had out of compulsion taken the opposing side fully in the knowledge that they are sure to die- and all this for a mere kingdom. With tears rolling out from his cheeks, he puts down his bow and says he wants to quit the battlefield.

The Lord’s response was reserved for the next episode, but the guru concluded with some brief remarks made by the Lord. The Lord says that every action of a doer is attributable solely to his mind and not the Indriyas. The Lord therefore asks Arjun to just think of the Him 24X7, even while observing his swa-dharma, namely to do his duty of battling the unjust Duryodahan and his forces.

The discourse over, everyone was back to more appealing worldly affairs. Their mind now was completely occupied with Lunch, and the unanimous view was to do their swa-dharma which was doing full justice to Archana’s (Aditya’s wife) sumptuous lunch spread!! There were for instance, Bindi masala – a favorite of Archana’s mother, ( it incidentally was her mother’s birthday), Panch rangi Dal, South Indian Bisi bela and Dahi Bath, Kheer of Badaam and  Ice-cream loaded with Indian alphonso mangoes for dessert, plus the usual items like papad etc., keeping in mind every individual’s choices.   

After the meal Kumar was so content, that he found an instant rapport with that fictitious Kerala Namboodary who was said to have donated all his assets to charity the moment he had one such!! By the evening however Kumar with nothing much to do, started reflecting on what the Guru had said in that TV program. He wondered whether it was just a coincidence that he had taken to “Gita” as his preferred text for his reading and the program in TV where the guru had talked about the same subject.

He then recalled that interesting take on this word “coincidence” offered by Eswar – a   colleague from his official days. Kumar was a VP -in those times- when during an official US visit, on an impulse, met with some Directors of a major corporate group. As a pure coincidence within a few months the same group, had placed an Export order to his firm. 

Eswar at that time had mentioned that in Tamil and Hindi languages, the equivalent word for “coincidence” were “yathechhai” and “sanjog”. The exact translations of these words were “a desire impelled by God’s will” and “well interconnected as per His design” respectively, but the words in both the languages, were never used in those exact sense. Almost invariably these were used to denote “coincidence” corresponding to the dictionary meaning; namely “concurrence of events without apparent causal connection”.

For instance, there was this TV serial where there is this detective who is on a murder spot. The murder victim’s name is Deshmukh, which happens to be the same name of victims of previous two murders in the past few weeks. He remarks to the cop, “yeh sanjog ki baath nahin ho sakthi” meaning it cannot be a coincidence!!!

Similarly in Tamil, people said that Kumar “yathechaya US poyirundhaar” and the order came etc…. meaning Kumar went to the US and as coincidence would have it, the big order came.   

According to Eswar, both of the above failed to convey the correct picture. A deeper meaning of the word “coincidence” would have to combine both Tamil and Hindi equivalents to convey a “concurrence of one’s desire, providential will and design”. In other words while going by dictionary version, there are no probable causal connections between such events, on a deeper level there are only coincidences of “divine connections” variety, and it’s important to spot, savor, and be in gratitude for those rare glimpses of His will and design”.    .

Starting from his elevation to President where there was this apparent coincidence of his meeting and the order emerging from the US company, His current choice of Gita as his reading text, and the TV coverage, and even the fact that the Lord takes the chariot to that spot from where Arjun could view Bhishma, Drona etc and not Duryodhan, etc., everything fitted Eswar’s interpretation namely “an underlying desire and God’s Will fulfilling it” kind of concurrence, was what Kumar felt.  

No wonder the current generation was hooked on to the catchy and oversimplified cliché “Think positive” which to Kumar appeared to be an oversimplification of a Eswar’s profound understanding. The saying of elders “Think only about good things” made more sense and had a very comforting impact on him.

The coincidence part of Gurus comment on mind being the sole criteria for determining the nature of all actions etc. however eluded his understanding as at that moment. As he mused, Jayashree came into the room with some contraption called MP3. She and Kumar then listened to Pandit Jasraj’s soulful music deciding to forego dinner and having some fruits and milk instead, before going off to a comfortable sleep with the music permeating every nerve of their bodies besides soothing their very soul  

Holidays came to an end. Kumar lightened the mood with the remarks that he would like to give all his offspring their individual spaces back, and enjoy his own in Delhi. As per the traditional custom of his family, he returned home on a Saturday. On the following Monday he received a letter from the same US company he had incidentally met up with in his earlier days, and from whom today his earlier employer company had huge export orders.

They were appointing him as Head of their Procurement office to be established in India, prior to a full- fledged manufacturing venture which would come up in the next three-four years. Before he could savor this excellent piece of news fully, there came a phone call from VS asking him whether Kumar could join him and some of his colleagues, for a luncheon appointment.   

The coincidence part of Guru’s discourse came to Kumar almost instantly. He had been undecided about whether he should shift his base to US or be in India, preferring the latter going with his belief about deliverance only possible in Indian soil etc. The divine connection was clear, he was to continue working in India, but should try and accept this as God’s Will and think of Him 24X7. The deliverance part will come one day when He desired, and this would have no relevance as to whether he was in US/ India/ Saudi / Singapore or what have you, but with one caveat namely he should not give in to his urge to get even with VS no matter how tantalizingly tempting it could be. Both arrogance and moham part of Arjun as it were.   

He then suddenly remembered his own father’s words “Ayodhyaa is where Ram resides”. In other words if you have Him in His heart with full faith, Ayodhya will be in his heart and Ram will reside there. Feeling nice he started humming a song which he loved, even as he decided that he will share all this with his colleague Eswar who would love this great expanded treatise on the word “coincidence”. That could however wait, as now he had to get ready for the luncheon with VS.

Jayashree had no such luck for enlightening insights. She had more worldly affairs to take care of. She decided that she will offer special “kheer” for the family deity today and inform her parents first before calling her sons/daughter. Kumar heard her cursing the milkman for forgetting to deliver that extra pack of milk which she had incidentally asked for the previous evening itself……                                                                         

Ekalavya alias Vichu