Destiny's Child

No, I am not referring to girl pop music groups.

Aren’t we all children of destiny ? That is not a negative statement. It is more an acknowledgement of our vulnerability to the Unknown or the Unknowable. I allude to my life-experiences over the past two months.

So far, my father has undergone a series of 3 successful, although extremely risky heart surgery-procedures. Thankfully, he has miraculously recovered every time.
Seven years ago, The Times of India reported my dad's surgery, as a rare accomplishment by Dr.Devi Shetty and his team of specialists. As fate would have it, my fifth-semester exams were going on in Calicut at the same time.
The operation was scheduled on a Monday and Dr.Shetty had insisted that all family members be present, (in my case:exam or not!). In short, the situation was very serious. Now, in a series of end-semester exams, if one exam concluded on a Friday, you would expect the next exam to be on a Monday right ? Wrong! It was on a Tuesday, for no explicable reason ! My classmates at NIT might remember – the paper was on Linear Integrated Circuits.
So basically, I managed to see through the success of the procedure on Monday AND take the night bus back to Calicut in time for the exam on Tuesday(using a hand-torch inside the bus to aid my cramming!). It was pure destiny that the exam was NOT on the day of the surgery.

Fast forward to Aug 4th, 2009. My father developed a major complication post the procedure and his blood pressure levels had shot up to 320+. At such high levels, there is a high possibility that at least one of the million hair-like blood capillaries that go to the brain gets damaged, leading to a brain stroke and paralysis. Thank heavens, nothing of that sort happened. When I spoke to a doctor, he simply said – there are certain things you can’t explain by medicine…..

In the midst of all this, I lost my job. And regained it back. The point is I had nothing to do with either of these two circumstances. Blame the financial crisis, if you like. There are some things that are just not in your control.

I also made some plans to start on an alternate career-path. And that didn’t work out very well, believe it or not, it was all a question of bad timing – I couldn’t have done much. (I can't divulge any more details than that at this point).

Anyway,I don’t mean to sound escapist in this blogpost.

But I truly believe Randy Pausch, of Last Lecture Fame, when he says :

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand”