Kissa
My mother had already cooked lunch when a friend called and invited me for an impromptu lunch.
I wanted to go.
But I looked at the food at home and felt guilty about leaving it behind.
My mother doesn’t like that.
Plan it and do it.
Around the same time, the piped-gas connection stopped working across our society.
Our neighbours, an elderly couple, called my mother to check if our gas was working.
They are around 80 and have everything comfortably settled.
But that afternoon, they had planned to cook later and suddenly found themselves without a working gas connection.
My mother offered them the food she had already cooked.
They accepted.
And just like that, the food I had been feeling guilty about leaving behind had somewhere to go.
I could go for lunch with my friend.
Our neighbours had lunch while they waited for their gas connection to return.
Nothing had been planned.
Yet somehow, everything fell into place.
Perspective
It reminded me of the Hindi saying: दाने-दाने पर लिखा है खाने वाले का नाम।
Every grain carries the name of the person who is meant to eat it.
My mother didn’t cook that food for our neighbours.
Our neighbours didn’t expect their gas to stop working.
And I didn’t expect my friend to call me for lunch.
Yet the timing worked.
Maybe we don’t always know where something is headed.
Sometimes, we simply happen to be holding something when it finds the person who needs it.
And perhaps that’s enough.
We don’t always have to know the destination of everything we have.
Sometimes, it finds its way.
