Saying

மாமியார் உடைத்தால் மண் குடம் மருமகள் உடைத்தால் பொன் குடம்

Superstition

"Why do I have to be late to work every day?" - he thought as he hurried out of the railway reservation office. He was a software engineer with one of the leading firms in the country. One of the smart, young, ambitious, intelligent guys who was destined to go places. But he was constantly struggling to balance his professional and personal lives and he was hating it. Well, he had no choice as he needed to be around, both at work and at home.

Today was one such instance, tickets had to be booked for an upcoming journey, internet was down, there was nobody else that could go so he had to rush to the ticketing office, finish the task and hurry to office. There were myriad thoughts crisscrossing his head as he was heading to the parking lot - things to do at work, the new project that he was going to embark on...

"Sir, can I see your hand?" - a voice interrupted him as he was about to mount his motorcycle. He stopped and turned to stare at a young man, probably in his 20s. With a green turban on his head, ash and vermillion covering his forehead, dressed in a saffron colored dhoti and a white shirt, a bag slung on his shoulder, the man looked like a typical soothsayer that one meets on the streets. "No, I am not interested", our protagonist replied without bothering to give him a second glance and straddled onto his bike. "Sir please sir, only five minutes sir", our man pleaded with him. "I sense a big danger coming your way sir. Just talk to me for five minutes, I will be able to help you to get out of it".

He was getting irritated. "I am already late to work and I have thousand things to attend to. And I do not believe that you are capable of predicting anything - you are a crook and you only want to cheat me off my money. Now bugger off and try someone else, let me go." - he barked and sped away. He felt a sense of despair on the man's face but didnot want to make much of it. He considered himself to be well educated and so did not believe in such superstitions. He had already figured out that life and fate are what one makes out of them and so there was no place for someone else to intervene and influence it. In any case he did not have the five minutes that our man demanded - he thought if he had those five minutes, he could very well solve a couple more bugs in his application, which would help him in his path of progress.

One cannot say if it was because of the detour that he had to take to get to work quickly, or it was the thoughts that he was immersed in, or it was the typical forces of nature that were in play - as he was moving ahead, he didnt notice that a car ahead was trying to take a turn. By the time he realized what was going on and slammed on his brakes, it was too late. As his bike skid and hit the car, he was thrown away forcefully on to the road and his body rammed onto the median. As he was losing his consciousness, the words kept ringing in his ears "I sense a big danger coming your way sir. Just talk to me for five minutes, I will be able to help you to get out of it.". If only he had spent those five minutes with our man...