“Man is a social animal.” As a school going kid I always used to start my essay writing with this sentence developing on the subject, the second paragraph onwards .during those days, little did I know what the sentence meant and how it was going to affect my life in the future.
It was the summers of 1999, the kargil war was on and I was living in Agra, a city famous for the Taj Mahal and leather tanneries alike. The temperature was soaring to 50 degree centigrade and the only comfort I had in my room was a fan that was on the mercy of the electricity board. Nights used to be filled with mosquitos that would swarm in to my room, if a window was left open and closing a window would not be an option due to heat that would come out of the floor that had baked in the hot summer sun throughout the day.
I used to live alone in a rental room that belonged to an old lady who had divided her house in to rooms, which she would let out to hoteliers. She would charge insane amounts and at eighty years of age, her obsession with money was something that made me wonder, how some people never stop even after losing all the relations in their lives. Since I was the only tenant living in her house those days and me without a job, I would spend the days finding ways how to keep the room cool. Often I would pour water on the floors, only to find it evaporated within a few minutes. Life just as was beginning had come to a standstill and I was alone.
The old lady was definitely short of eyesight as she would often bring me crap food, perhaps to have a chat with me or to share her loneliness with me. I definitely did not enjoy these interactions and would try to avoid her on some pretext or the other. Now I didn’t mind talking to her but the food she would bring used to be inedible, she forcing me to eat it while she was around. More than once I had found ants in the food and knew that she was short of eyesight. Off course at these times I would keep it aside, trying to be polite and telling her that I would have it later on.
I often wondered about her family. She had a son who was working for some MNC in a multinational company in Delhi. I often wondered why she didn’t go and stay with him. What if something happened to her in the middle of the night? The way I was, I wouldn’t come to know of it till her body started to rot in the room she used to live.
The thought would scare me and while I was catching on much of the action happening in Kargil through “India today”, I would read stories of valour and death of men who were my age. The first televised war had caught my attention and while names like Vikram Batra were becoming house hold names, I was in the process of losing my identity.
Once too often , I would see myself standing in front of the mirror talking to myself or God. Those were the days when talking aloud was becoming a way to keep myself entertained and the old lady would often peep out of window wondering whom I was talking too.
My conversations would often go around starting with “Why I have to go through this God?” The answers would only come in the form of “Wait” and I would wait . I had been living like this for almost three months and while these conversations with me had been becoming more intense, I often wondered if I was going to find an answer.
The old lady however would only be concerned about if I was going to stay on for another month or not, that I was without a job. I would often plead to god in regards to showing me a way and what was I supposed to do. Over time I have believed in my guiding angel more than hard work and it has always listened. Perhaps I was allocated one during those times of hardship and when I came close to God. It has never left me and whenever I am distressed or in need of a job, a miracle has occurred in my life. Something, someone has appeared out of nowhere and helped me out. That angel has taken many forms, many shapes and has guided me through tough times, through bad times but has never left me only to give me something better.
In the parallel universe where angels work in accordance to your destiny, perhaps destiny is nothing but your guiding angel. It shows you a way and makes you walk on that path for a certain period of time, while preparing you for something better. That evening while I looked up in the sky and had said “God give me a job!”, I had heard a voice call out “Is that you Fuckwit!” An old friend, now a manager at Pizza hut had called me from behind. The next day I had a job.
Over the years I have observed, that whenever I have let go of some thing or tried to make a decision, my guiding angel has become mad at me. It has a different way of telling me how I made a wrong decision as the time wasn’t right. Over the years, I have worked on some of the most beautiful locations in the world as an hotelier, my guiding Angel smiling. Over the years, my guiding angel has taken shape in the form of people who have helped me out, to get over hardships, guiding me, mentoring me.
And yet, after eleven years my destiny once again brought me to one of the most beautiful harbours in the world, because I solely remember the promise I made to God that day, as I had walked in to the setting sun, turning my face away from my angel. I am at peace with my destiny and my Angel
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