Serendipity

That moment was serendipitous when I opened the job portal and came across a post in my mobile. I have been thinking of this particular job in a wishful way and there it was for my reckoning. I felt a sudden boost of energy. In a trice I opened my computer and looked at my curriculum vitae. It was ready to be sent. I quickly made a few calls to my old contacts of the system of farm producers, traders and consumers that believed in trade being fair. More about this aspect of fairness later. It was nice to be recognized by either my voice or my phone number. I didn’t have to remind them of whom I am. I always believed I commanded some respect among farm producers for whom I had worked for diligently in that decade. It was unusual circumstances that saw my being ejected out of this system. I needed two references to be mentioned in my curriculum vitae. I did identify two such references after I had made these calls. I had to write a page on how I would contribute to this system. It was a cake walk for me I had only to recall my high points in the role spreading over a decade. There were several as I had believed in doing one thing different each year that raised the bar so to speak. With everything ready I paused and did some reflection.

It was some fifteen years ago I had outlived my dream or a nightmare it turned out to be. I had started what is now being called a social enterprise, ahead of the times one could say. A public limited company with shares being held by gatherers of medicinal plants mostly women and eking out a living. I had struggled with that that concept for over seven years and had lost my ability to smile even. I was looking out for a job. Then I had come across the same job for which I was ready to apply. Of course, the name of the role was different. When I came across the job description then I knew it was made for me. I had applied and got the job and spent over a decade working closely with farmer producers and tea estates. Then like I had mentioned some events took place wherein I got caught in the cross fire among some producer board members, the system had turned dirty and corrupted and I wasn’t willing to compromise my integrity just to save my job and quit with whatever dignity I could salvage.

Life has always been a cyclic with many ups and downs. 2022 started well enough but at the end of January Omicron caught up with me and my family members. Omicron per se wasn’t bad but a friendly doctor insisted in me having a blood thinner to prevent any cardiac problem months later. She being a doctor has seen many such cases post-COIVD. A casual search in Google too confirmed that phenomenon. The blood thinner was also known to trigger gastric problems and my colon ulcer flared up. It took a couple of months for recovery after that. In the last month or so I was beginning to feel good in the body and spirit and thinking I should be doing some job beyond the writing I was pre-occupied with.

As I opened the job portal the serendipity happened. One would say life isn’t fair at all. More so in our country what with our caste system and communal problems, life doesn’t provide a level playing field for all her citizens. The case of our farmers is equally pitiful. While suicides have been doubling their income has not as has been promised by the leader, powerful even beyond law at recent times. What is called a fair-trade system attempts to rectify that in its own way. As the name implies it offers a fair deal for all stakeholders like farmers, consumers and including the labourers who toil on farmers’ field or in the tea estates. Not that fair-trade is a perfect system. It’s theory of change professes a fair system of trading.

Due to my education and a childhood interest, I have been passionate about working for the farming community and managed to do so all through-out my career. Now I am in the evening of my life, still fit and raring to go. Sometimes life, I find, teases one. In the present situation whether I will get the call for an interview remains to be seen. Just to stress way back in 2007 and fifteen years later I have felt the same gut feeling that this job was meant for me. But then one could say that an individual always believes he/she to be at the centre of the universe.

The recent incident if it was a case of serendipity or a dart thrown in the dark would become clear in the coming days. It was a game of waiting I had to play. Days went by and I eagerly waited for that phone call or e-mail. Normally I wouldn’t bother about unknown numbers. But here I was waiting to hear that “Am I speaking to Ganapathy Raju?” I had prepared for an interview in my mind anticipating questions and preparing answers and revising the same each time. It was as if my first job interview, like an eager child I waited.

Finally, it dawned upon me it was more wishful thinking and not serendipity. Life did choose to bypass me leaving me to write a story instead.