Twists of Fate / Unpublished

Intro: One coincidence can change your life, for better or for worse. Ask someone who survived a terror attack, or close ones of those who didn’t. Gayatri explores if your fate can speak to you

Can a coincidence change the course of your life? Survivors of terror attacks are finding it is so. This is what a source at the Mumbai police comissioner’s office had to say about the three top cops Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar a few hours after their death “It was sheer coincidence, almost as if it was pre-ordained. Nothing could have stopped it. They were not meant to be in that car, and certainly not together. They were armed but couldn’t reach their weapons.” The driver of a Honda City parked nearby had been shot and was pretending to be dead just as the terrorists were moving in, when the jeep laden with the cops drew up. Perfect timing? Or an ill-fated one, depending on where you were standing.

While some lost their lives to fate’s roll of dice, the tales of those who were saved by chance are equally puzzling. And these are not instances to be shrugged off lightly, notes spiritual guru Deepak Chopra, who insists there is no such thing as a meaningless coincidence. “We’ve all experienced coincidences that seem to be endowed with special significance. A synchronicity is a coming together of seemingly unconnected events. If you pay attention, you may recognise that your life is shaped by those moments of meaningful coincidence. You may even be able to nurture and participate in those moments in a positive way.”

Artist Nawaz Singhania, whose exhibition wrapped up at the NCPA located beside the Oberoi-Trident, believes coincidences saved her that fateful night. “My exhibition ended 45 minutes before the attack, and some friends from abroad wanted to go to the Oberoi to pick up some stuff. I usually bend over backwards to fulfill all their requests, but that night, for some reason I didn’t, so they too ended up not going! We had been going to the Taj every single day after my showing, but that night our friends wanted to take us to Shiro, a lounge bar at Parel. Of course, these coincidences saved our lives,” she says.

Singhania further adds, “Not just for this, throughout life, coincidences are a glimpse into the ‘master plan’ of a Higher Power. It proves that someone is watching over you. I’m devastated by the loss of those who went, but I feel gratitude for these instances that left us behind.”

Joey Jeetun, British TV actor most famous for playing the role of a terrorist bomber on Channel 5, was at Leopold Café when the attack began. “I was covered in other people’s blood. So they thought I was dead and moved on,” he said, shaken by his experience. Slain ToI editor Sabina Sehgal Saikia was at a dinner at the Colaba Agiary when she reportedly took ill and returned to her room at the Taj — a room she wasn't meant to be in, says a close friend of Sabina’s. “As she checked into the hotel, the staff who knew her so well upgraded her, putting her in the suite next to the GMs family.” It proved to be a fatal move.

The machinations of destiny have fascinated man for centuries. While it was met initially with awe, reverence, even prayer, it is now being studied and probed. The term synchronicity was first coined by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who said, “It is the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that cannot be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer.” It was this cause and a twist of effect that saved the life of Apoorv Parikh who was dining with lawyer Anand Bhatt and builder Pankaj Shah, both of whom died.

His son, Rohan Parikh, describes how his father was saved by the bodies that fell on top of him. “On reaching the 18th floor landing of the Oberoi, the jehadis made the people line up against a wall. One terrorist positioned himself on the staircase going up from the landing and the other on the staircase going down from the landing. Then, in a scene right out of the Holocaust, they simultaneously opened fire on the people. My father was towards the center of the line with his two friends on either side. One bullet grazed his neck, and he fell to the floor as his two friends and several other bodies piled on top of him. He lay like that for several hours.”

Some call it God’s grace, skeptics shrug it off as coincidence. Either way, the tales pour in. The England cricket team was meant to check into the Taj the previous day; danseuse Mallika Sarabhai and her 25-member-troupe that had a last-minute reschedule of their performance and headed off to Indigo for dinner instead, is still too shaken to talk about it. Can you ignore a ‘coincidence’ that has just saved your life? “It’s not coincidence. It is destiny,” says actor Shilpa Shetty, “Some things are destined to happen. We are just living the course of our destiny etched out for us,” adding, “It’s sad, but true.”

Sad because, as astrologer Vipul Saxena explains, “Most coincidences that we observe are the negative ones. That is because when a positive coincidence happens, we rarely give it due credit. Coincidences are the fruit of our karma, the results of our actions that occur to pave the way for our success and failure. Astrologically, when the ‘time is right’ for you to receive, coincidences occur to put what is owed to you in your path. They also occur to remove what is to be taken away from you.”

Chopra believes coincidences are the way the universe speaks to you. “Once you put your mind into a state of relaxation and notice a coincidence, you begin to notice other coincidences that have brought you to where you are and who you are today. Science tells you the world is not organised by any external force. Coincidences are ways of revealing that there is a master plan.”

According to Vedic traditions, explains Guru Jaggi Vasudev, there are two signs of a person on the correct path to enlightenment; the first is a dissolving of obstacles, and the second is an increased occurrence of or awareness of coincidences around him.

Concludes Chopra, “People who are sensitive to events and stimuli around them will also be sensitive to coincidences sent from the universe. Clues may be as subtle as the smell of pipe smoke wafting through an open window, which makes you think of your father, which reminds you of a book he loved, which then somehow comes to play an important role in your life at the moment.”

The next time you come face to face with your fate, remember to take a minute to speak to it. Its language, is a coincidence.

Box: How to channel a coincidence
* Ask 'what is the significance of this?' Answers will emerge.
* Place yourself in silence in a peaceful environment and think back to an area in your life – health, money, love. List the coincidences that turned the course of each area.
* Keep a diary of coincidences in your life. Classify them as small, medium, whoppers and double whoppers.
* Cultivate an attitude of relaxed attention and intention.
* Simply by intending to create synchronicity in your life, you can nurture that result.
- tips by Deepak Chopra