All Is For A Purpose

Not once. Many times, I have observed that everybody we meet, every word that we utter and every deed that we perform has some purpose. Most of us would have experienced such incidents in our life, when some unconnected person, whom we meet accidentally will turn out to be a very important person in our life.  

“Why do you talk so much? Why do you share all the information with everybody and sometimes with total strangers?” These are the warnings of my kith and kin. But by nature, I am talkative and when the context comes, I cannot contain myself, if I know something about that issue. For example, imagine I am travelling by bus and the woman sitting next to me, a total stranger, is giving some wrong direction to a woman standing beside her, I cannot shut up and ignore. I have to interrupt and correct her! Many times, some casual conversation with a stranger helps me get some important information, which I was looking for. The converse is also true.  

The other day I met an acquaintance of mine, who was really not close. I casually mentioned to her that I had to hurry up as my brother-in-law and his wife were coming home with their son, who was a down syndrome child. I could have just said I was in a hurry but I could not be so abrupt. But after a month, this lady brings along another woman and introduces her to me. She says she has an autistic son and she is in a dire state. She was looking for some institutions. Could I help her? I could give her a lot of information because my cousin’s son is autistic too and I knew quite a few institutions. Today, that boy is happily working in one such institution.

There are many such instances. The best ones are those that give us goosebumps. Recently, one such thing happened with me. I was cooking and I made a particular kind of special dish. It tasted yummy and since it was made of a particular kind of citron, that is good for health, I thought, ‘how nice it would be if I could share this with my cousin, who is sick. She would love this and it would do her good too.’ Just then, Kumar entered my house to service my UPS battery. My husband, who is normally not a conversationalist, just made some courtesy enquiries. “Where do you reside?” The moment he answered, bells rang in my mind! That was the same locality as my cousin resides. I immediately asked him for a favour. Could he carry a small package for my cousin on his way home? He readily agreed. My cousin was extremely happy. This is as very small deed. But why I am touched by it is the timing of Kumar’s visit, the coincidence of him residing in the same locality as that of my cousin and my husband’s question about his address, out of the blue. I felt this is what people say ‘God sent’!

Recently my dear friend had a fall on the road and suffered a hip joint fracture. When I went to meet her, she said, “There is a positive side to everything that happens. Good that I fell on the road, because so many around knew me personally and immediately rushed to my help. I came home and was also walking, without realising that I had a fracture. But on the third day, my friend, who is a physio-therapist visited me casually and he said, “No. This seems like a fracture by the kind of pain you are complaining of. You must take an X-Ray and meet an ortho. Thus I landed in the hospital the same day and had a surgery. Imagine this situation. Had I fallen at home, I could not even have got up to open the door or make a call. God knows when I would have received help, as I live all alone.”

Life is full of such stories, where some insignificant event leads to some important happenings. There are marriages which get fixed in such unexpected situations. A nurse who came to assist me for taking care of my mother-in-law became a member of our family, as we got her married to my husband’s cousin. That was a totally unexpected event because it was not a love marriage. In fact the two of them had not even seen each other. Today, they are leading a happy life.  

Another woman who came to assist me for the same job too got married in the most cinematic way. She was 49 years old. We had dropped her off with my mother-in-law at my brother-in-law’s house, as we had to go on a tour. We knew her hardly for 3 months. She did express her wish to get married, in case she finds a proper partner, to me as well as my brother-in-law’s wife. Within a week, my brother-in-law’s wife calls me up and says that she had got that woman engaged to a widower who had come to see her 45-year-old cousin and rejected her. I was surprised. The two of them got married and are leading a very peaceful life.  

Just recently, I posted an appeal calling for donations on my friends’ group for our project of renovating a couple of wards in the Kidwai Cancer Hospital. One of my friends immediately shared it with her friend, who is running a trust and donates for such causes. Within 3 days, I received a donation of three lakhs from a total stranger!  

All this strengthens my belief that every word that I speak or every person I talk to is important. Nothing goes waste. What can be more beneficial than networking in today’s world? Each of us is like a google server!  Don’t think it is wasteful to make small talk because you don’t know how many great things happen as a result of some information that emanates during such talk. The present generation may google for information but our generation did the same thing by chatting with people, which had twin benefits - entertainment as well as information!