Nature's Coincidence?

Can I ask you a question?

Do you believe it’s your choices that led you to me or if it was all a string of f̶o̶r̶t̶u̶n̶a̶t̶e̶  coincidences? 

Did you ever find another tree that bent a certain way to make a grove that only had room for two, so I’d climb up to have a bird’s eye view of the colony that your studio overlooked and collect my thoughts, and you’d inconvenience me by climbing up too, but not say anything because you didn’t want to break my chain of thought?

Do you believe it’s my choices that led me to you or if the universe did its thing that I cannot understand with my psychology degree—and you grew on my stone like ivy because I had no choice?

Do you still go to the intersection where we’d see each other on the opposite side of the street at exactly the same time as the sun started to go down so the world would look orange and your silhouette golden, and as the signal turned green, we’d again diverge on different paths home?

Do you think it was nature’s coincidence that you chose to be a filmmaker and I chose to be a writer so you could tell me, “I always wanted direct one of your scripts,” when we saw each other at a party after three years, and I would scoff misanthropically, so you’d say, “You were the best writer in our college and you didn’t use it even though you knew damn well you’d sell hits”?

Do you still roll down the window of the passenger’s seat like you used to, so the wind in your hair would make it messy and you would have the opportunity to ask me if it looked fine before getting out of the car—which would force me to ruffle it back in place? 

Did you find someone who liked tomatoes in their sandwiches so you wouldn’t have to eat the ones in yours and it would be the perfect arrangement for lunchtimes like when we were forced to have the dry studio food?

Did it ever rain again before your film screening forcing you to walk four kilometres because no rickshaws, let alone taxis, could bypass the traffic—so you accepted your fate and let the rain drench you and me while we sang all the songs on the Rockstar album through the walk?

And do you think that it was a coincidence that your favourite producer liked our film and he offered to produce your next project, so you packed your whole life away in a suitcase and moved to another country…

…and I decided to get serious and take the job that my mom thought would be better for me, so you called me a hypocrite for betraying what I write about. 

Do you believe that it’s a coincidence how I sometimes see you on TV in a programme I didn’t mean to put on or an ad I desperately wanted to skip—and all I can do is write in my diary about everything I want to ask you?

Author - Dhriti Choudhary

Photograph - Pankaj Dedha

(Submitted as part of the July photography and Scriptwriting assignment)