A Lifetime Of Serendipty....

“Note: for all those who haven’t seen the movie “the lake house”. It’s a movie about a beautiful house where time stops, where the owner of the house has the liberty to live with people from future and past. To some whom he hasn’t met. It’s a house where one person waits for years, just to find his love from future come to him at the lake house”




Have you seen The Lake house, it’s a movie about time lap, two people who love each other, but who live apart because of time. One lives in the year of 98 and the other in the year of 2000. But they finally meet when one waits for the other. I don’t know if anything like that exists, but every time I watch that movie I feel a connection, to what I’m still amused. May be that I believe in serendipity. May be that someday, I believe, that I’ll see the magic of abstract destiny.

It happened so many times with me, I’ve been places for the first time and I feel that I’ve been here before. And every time I try and explain it to somebody. I know their strange giggles behind their “it happens, sometimes”. Yes it does and how else can I explain that one has to believe in it to make it happen. On 30th of April this year, I was standing at the backside of my college building, vast lands of yellowed grasses and mountains all over. A small muddy road stretched between those grasses. Where, I don’t know, But as I was watching just the sky and the nothingness around. I had the feeling that may be someday I’ll come back, stand right at this place and watch the sky. I was frantically looking for one clue around that gave me this feeling. But guess I couldn’t find any, I wanted to walk that disheveled road that went behind somewhere and as I started to walk, I was called up

“Hey come back, we gotta go…baad me dekhlena(see it later)”

I turned back looking at my friend for a long time and I smiled. As I looked at that road, probably for the last time in my near future. I knew that I’ll come back. And I have no answer why.

Not this time, my old home, my school canteen, my best friend’s farmhouse, and the last metro station at Calcutta are all those places which gave me the same feeling. The feeling of serendipity as it gave me sheer happiness with no reason, that one feeling that maybe I’ll return here one day long after I’ve left this place. As was it with the lake house, few walls of glasses that separated time… I feel these places are separated from me with those invisible walls of glasses. I’ve read that sometimes the most insignificant person in your life is the most important one, and that you never really come to know unless you believe that each have some motive to be with you.



That summer I was traveling from my hometown to Bombay, the first time I was traveling alone. My friends dropped me to the station as my parents were at someplace else as they bid me goodbye I see an old man coming towards my coupe, he took his seat in front of me. Surprisingly there weren’t anybody else to share the rest three births. As the journey is long and me being a first timer, it took me sometime to be okay with traveling alone. Slowly I and uncle started talking; he told me how he traveled to far places when he was young, to his expeditions at various army bases where he was stationed as a medical officer. He told me how sun shines orange at rohtangpass and the same sun shines dull golden at the Calcutta docks. I smiled, for just like people of our age he was excited to tell me where he went what he did. He was excited to show me the world from his eyes. He told me how does Lake Geneva looks before the morning sun and more interestingly how does an aurora feel. I jumped up

“Aurora??? You have seen an aurora??”

And with dim eyes he said

“It’s not a thing to see kid; it’s a thing to feel”

I was super excited. As everything that he told was new and interesting to me. As time passed he took a small pic from his wallet in which he and his younger son were standing on a bark in between a lake. And proudly he said

“That’s Dal Lake where my son was posted few years back”

We kept on talking of things that I’ve never heard. Of things like why the Cambridge national park is so beautiful and how does in northern California, all park benches are a memorial to some or the other martyr. He told me that when u take a boat ride at lake placid and sail to its middle and sit there till middle of the night u see electric fishes gathering near your boat, just to make you believe that you are not alone.
I smiled again, all he said I had never heard before. We spoke till it was almost 11 in the night and then went to sleep for he was old and couldn’t sit anymore.
I lay awake and I dreamt of everything he has just told, suddenly I wished to see everything what he said…at that time it would have been just another fantasy dream of a teenaged girl…but till today, I dream of all those places, I dream of watching the constellation Orion right in the middle of an ice skating rink.
It was morning 7 and I’d just woken up with all the hustle around. Uncle was packing all his stuff, his station arrived … as I managed to open up my groggy eyes he said with a glint

“So kid, morning (typical army style)

I smiled and said “you leaving uncle?”

He stood with his baggage turned around and said

“Don’t forget to watch lake placid” and he de-boarded the train

I kept watching him through the window, his family came to receive him and he went. And I had the same feeling, feeling that iv known this person way before than yesterday.
Train moved and I kept thinking of all that he said.



I realized in those few hours, a complete stranger, way much older than me and whose name I hardly remember… made me realize that how much I would like to find park benches, how much I would love to travel.

How at eleven in the night, when the world was busy sleeping I met a person who gifted my dream of a life time.

And till today, whenever the day goes bad. Or something happens which I’d never wanted to. I dream the same dream, me sitting on a boat right in the middle of a lake with electric fishes around me…suddenly the water glows the colour of light blue, I look up and I see… the aurora. I see god turn on his lamp shed J

“That happens when god turns on his lamp shed” that was his definition to aurora with a grand smile.


There might be nobody waiting for me to meet him someday, there might be no more places where I’ll feel that I’ve been here before, there might be no more serendipities and there might be no another dream like that. But of all that I’ve experienced I’ve learnt that I’ll never stop believing in a magic.

May be someday someone will prove me right and make me believe that the very Lake Geneva is waiting for me. May be someday, long after I’ve left my hometown, I’ll come back to my college stand at the same place and watch the sky. May be someday I’ll get to see behind that invisible glass wall.

And how I wish, my life to be my lake house… where time stops, where magic comes true.


How I wish to meet a life time of serendipity.