Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Of Laddoos and Their Dynamics

I have obsessed for a while now, over how not to sound vexed with life in this post. Truth be told, I'm not. I was on the phone with a friend this afternoon, and we hit upon what we call the "Laddoo Theory". We state the theory as follows: Life throws you laddoos when you've made up your mind to eat no more. Alternatively, when you want laddoos, they're either unavailable; or if the divine powers wish to entertain themselves, a laddoo lands in your mouth and is yanked away before you can bite into it.

The origins of this theory vary over a large number of areas of life. This complete generality is what makes the theory so brilliant. Allow me to demystify it with some examples. Their coincidence with my life or the lives of any of my friends is purely coincidental.

A friend called this afternoon. I've seen him struggle with his career for a while. For the past six months, he has studied hard for various entrance exams and interviews and rather inexplicably, managed to bomb all of them. Very recently, he gave up on this project of taking entrance exams (with one more insignificant one to go) and embark on a different route. As a result, he didn't do much more than walk in, take test, walk out. The result came in today. Qualified.

A friend called in yesterday. Every woman he could have dated (in essence, every laddoo he failed to catch, or every laddoo that failed to catch him) in the last six months seems to want to make amends suddenly. Why is he full already? You know why.

It was the month of February, and I got an admission call from Stanford University. I relished my laddoo for a whole 24 hours. That's when they decided to send me an email saying they wouldn't give me any money to go. I should refer to this one colloquially as a kela, but for the sake of simplicity, let me refer to only one edible item per post.

I wonder, however, if my theory is a reason to be depressed with life (especially in the light of the third example). And I figure, no. Perhaps life has a better sense of timing than us, or than we can ever hope to achieve. Maybe everyone has their reserve of laddoos, each arriving at its own stipulated time. Better still, maybe what we see as laddoos are really something we would be better off not ingesting. And they arrive, apparently out of turn, because decisions are better made without distractions.

Just some food for thought.

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