Isn’t history continuous?

“Isn’t history continuous? Incidents don’t happen in a vacuum, but cause ripples spreading out, interacting with other ripples, changing their courses and, in turn, themselves being changed, and changing the course of anything coming in their contact. Nothing can escape their impact.”

This is a thought that I had written almost 15 years ago, when I was in my final year at college. Today, I reflect upon the same.

The context, when this was originally written, was to write to a girl whom I wished to befriend. The idea behind the thought was to tell her that when two souls come in close contact with each other, it is a foregone conclusion that they will interact (negatively or positively is immaterial), and be influenced by each other. And even if they choose to go separate ways, history tends to bring people together once again. The continuum of history is such that things don’t just happen by design or choice, but empirically, we know that many incidents happen unknowingly and unwittingly. You must be wondering, what am I trying to insinuate? Let me elaborate.

When I made a decision to move to Mumbai (from Delhi) in January last year, neither my best friend, Varun, nor I had an idea that he would make a similar move within the same calendar. But then this happened; though this could not be sheer chance, a lot of it was by design on Varun’s part – he actively began looking at offers from Mumbai (which he may have been rejecting till my move), and finally we both are again together. But that is not the point of my writing this.

A very surprising circumstance happened this month, which makes me write this essay. A school-time friend, Reena Puri (nee Singla), moved to Mumbai. In the last 18 years, we would not have met or talked on more than 3-4 occasions (not much by any stretch of imagination). And for the last 6 years, she was based in Dubai. It would be pretty safe to say that we had lost touch forever, with no hope or effort of meeting again.

Never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined that we would all (Reena, Varun & I) be living in the same city (which is different from our original abode) 18 years from last we were colleagues. What’s more, she looked at various homes at Lokhandwala, Kalina, Santa Cruz, and finalized deals at each of these places that didn’t go through at the very last moment, finally to take up residence barely 3 kms. from my place. And that’s not the end of it all – her kids have got admission to the same school (Podar CBSE) as my son, and take the same school bus everyday! Now, doesn’t that sound like a rerun of our own lives?

All this made me suddenly remember the almost-forgotten lines that I had written long ago. And the thought came blinding back to me – isn’t history continuous?