Do you believe in karma? What goes around comes around? Or the saying that history repeats itself? Or that you'll experience the same thing over and over until you finally learn something from it?
I've always wondered how much truth there is to these sayings. Does life really have a way of teaching us lessons, or do we simply notice certain things because we've experienced something similar before?
Anyway, something happened recently that got me thinking about all this.
It was 9.30 a.m., and I was running late for work. There was a lot of work waiting for me, and it was a crucial day, so I hurried to the office only to discover that there was no electricity. Power shut down!
Apparently, there was maintenance work going on in the area, and the UPS had exhausted itself after running throughout the night.
Wonderful!
I was disappointed because I had planned to finish quite a lot of work that day. But somewhere deep inside, I was actually happy that I could finally get some time for myself.
I hadn't had much time to myself in almost three months. That's how busy I'd been. I won't get into the details because that's a story for another day.
It was past 11 a.m. when I reached home. My mother thought I'd be skipping lunch as usual because I'm currently experimenting with yet another diet.
Yes, another diet.
I've tried different diets to lose that extra flab, but unfortunately, the flab seems rather attached to me. If anything, it's getting bigger.
Nothing seems to be working.
And the worst part is that I'm a foodie.
A foodie on a diet. Such an irony.
My eyes can barely tolerate reading that sentence. Imagine how my soul feels having to live it.
So, instead of giving up the food I love, I decided to skip a meal. Lunch, specifically. I'd somehow convinced myself that our ancestors managed without eating three meals a day, so perhaps skipping one wouldn't make much difference.
Not that I'd done any research on the subject. It was simply something I wanted to believe.
It's a nice theory when your belly is full. By 5 p.m., however, I'd be so hungry that I wouldn't hesitate to swallow an entire pig.
Anyway, back to my story.
I was excited about having an entire day to myself because there were so many things I'd wanted to do over the past three months.
Should I read a book? Write a journal? Draw something? Paint my nails? Go shopping? Catch up on all the anime I'd missed? Watch a movie? Play a game? Lie on the couch and scroll through reels on my phone? Or simply catch up on all the sleep I'd lost?
That last option was quite tempting.
But I couldn't possibly waste my unexpected holiday sleeping, could I?
So I sat there thinking about what to do.
And before I knew it, almost an hour had passed.
I'd finally found some free time, and I'd wasted an entire hour deciding how to spend it.
How brilliant is that?
It was past noon when I remembered a notepad I'd kept in one of the drawers. I went looking for it, couldn't find it, and decided to check the cabinet underneath.
That's when I found a huge bag filled with pens and pencils.
I'd dumped the whole collection into that cabinet when we moved into the apartment two years ago. Every time I cleaned the cabinet, I'd remove the bag, wipe the shelves and put everything back exactly where it had been.
But this time, I decided to sort everything out and arrange the pens and pencils neatly into holders.
I don't know what came over me.
I started checking which pens worked, separating the pencils and arranging everything according to type. There were quite a lot of them, and I was rather pleased with myself for finally getting around to it.
By the time I finished, it was 5.30 p.m.
5.30 p.m.!
I'd spent my entire unexpected holiday practically organising stationery.
Of all the things I could've done, I chose to sort pens and pencils.
Well, at least the holders looked nice.
And despite my mother's repeated attempts to get me to eat something, I was still determined to stick to my diet.
Now, it was time for plant shopping.
Let me tell you something about myself. I have this habit of becoming obsessed with things. A couple of years ago, it was plants. Last year, it was fish. And this year, apparently, plants again.
So one thing I've learnt about myself is that I can become obsessed with the same thing more than once.
Anyway, I went to a nursery that happened to be located right in the middle of a food street, next to a shawarma shop.
Now imagine this.
A hungry stomach, a hungry soul and food.
A very dangerous combination.
I'd skipped lunch, and by then, I was so hungry that the sight of shawarma was enough to make me forget everything I'd been telling myself about dieting.
I devoured it like there was no tomorrow.
So much for my diet.
After satisfying my stomach, I finally entered the nursery and selected a few plants and pots.
It was already around 8 p.m., and I wasn't particularly interested in visiting another nursery. Besides, I'd spent enough time choosing everything, so I wanted to finish shopping and go home.
There was a young boy there, probably fourteen or fifteen, who began calculating the prices.
He pressed the buttons on his calculator repeatedly, looked at the total and announced:
The boy: ₹3,500.
Me: ₹2,500.
The boy: No. ₹3,500.
Me: ₹2,700.
The boy: No. ₹3,500.
Me: I'm buying quite a few things. Reduce the price a little. ₹2,800.
He went back to his calculator, pressed a few buttons and looked up.
The boy: Okay. ₹3,450.
₹3,450?
A discount of fifty rupees after all that bargaining?
I was getting annoyed.
Me: That's not how you negotiate.
The boy: I have to put the plants into the pots. I'm not even charging you for the mud and cocopeat. You're only paying for the plants.
Me: Fine. I'll pay for the mud and cocopeat too. ₹3,000. That's my final offer. You accept, or I leave.
I turned around and started walking towards the exit.
The boy: Okay. ₹3,000.
Finally!
He gathered the plants and pots and took them away to begin potting them.
A few minutes later, he returned, clicking his calculator again.
The boy: I forgot to add two items. The total comes to ₹3,700.
Oh, for heaven's sake.
Me: Okay. ₹3,200.
The boy: No way. I can't lose that much.
Me: You originally said ₹3,500, and I offered ₹3,000. Now you're saying ₹3,700, so I'm offering ₹3,200. It's still the same difference of ₹500.
The boy: Not happening.
Me: Fine. I'll buy them somewhere else.
I started walking towards the exit again.
The boy: Okay.
And that was it.
I came home empty-handed anyway.
I was irritated. I'd spent all that time selecting plants, choosing pots and negotiating prices, only to return home without buying anything.
I thought he was a rude, arrogant prick and had a few other unpleasant things to say about his approach to business.
To myself, of course.
Later that night, I was still thinking about the incident.
Why wouldn't he negotiate? Wouldn't it have been better to make the sale rather than lose a customer over a few hundred rupees?
And then I remembered something.
I used to do that.
When I was relatively new to business, there were times when I'd refuse to negotiate because I didn't want to lose a few thousand rupees.
I thought I was protecting my business. And sometimes, I probably was. After all, there's no point accepting every order if you're going to end up losing money.
But there were also times when I was so focused on saving a few thousand rupees that I failed to consider the bigger picture.
I ended up losing opportunities worth lakhs because I didn't know when to negotiate and when to stand firm.
It took me a while to understand the difference.
And here I was, getting annoyed with a young boy whose behaviour reminded me of my own.
Of course, I don't know whether he was allowed to reduce the price. Perhaps he had instructions to follow, or perhaps he genuinely couldn't offer anything lower. I was looking at the situation from a customer's perspective, and he had his own reasons.
But something about the incident reminded me of my early days in business.
I had gone to buy plants and ended up remembering the mistakes I'd made while learning to run a business.
I smiled when I thought about the boy again.
He's young, and I imagine he has a lot of experiences ahead of him, just as I did.
But coming back to where I started, was that karma? History repeating itself? Or was it simply an ordinary incident that reminded me of something I'd experienced before?
I don't know.
Perhaps not everything needs an explanation.
Anyway, I went plant shopping and came home with something to write about instead.
Still no plants, though.