I(n)diosynchronicities

It’s hard to believe that just 10 days ago I was dipping serenely on the tranquil shores of Hikkaduwa, which bears little testimony to the tsunami which ravaged her shores nearly five years ago. I felt it eight years ago when I first accidentally laid eyes on Marco Polo’s ‘most beautiful isle in all the world’; that sense of coming home when you’ve never been there before. And I felt it iridescently on this, my third sojourn, to Shangri-Lanka.
Black July for them, Blue July for me, it was all the same and I remembered clearly the forgotten words of a Kandy fortune teller who, eight years ago, told my incredulous soul that it would be back.
That was just after I happened upon a Commonwealth war grave of a lone South African soldier, who was born in my hometown. Before I knew Sri Lanka was named Serendib by Muslim sailors whose adventures gave rise to Horace Walpole’s addition of the word to the English language. Before I won a vast sum of money for a commercial rhyme and before my adventure into genealogy, both spurred by my serendipitous sojourn.
Before the housewarming 10 days ago which landed me in conversation with a Buddhist woman, whose elucidations on the bindi and kumkum opened my third eye to the fact that the dot in the centre of the forehead is symbolic of just that. Obvious when you think about it, but I never had. Which may just mean that I was ready to hear it.
I’ll always be a loose sum of parts with a menagerie of metaphysical homes, but sometimes you’ve got to trust your instinct and lay your soul where it feels whole. And treat serendipity as the universal signpost it is.

Just why he thought the new Royal Enfield would bring us freedom is not hard to understand, but then we didn’t account for sneering traffic cops who lie in wait at well-concealed signs whispering “no U turns”.
We also didn’t know that choosing a helmet from one of a plethora of helmet shops lining Lalbagh Street is a high-status affair. But then I rather suspect this adds to a boy’s sense of liberty. All alien to me, especially as girl passenger is not required to wear one too. And I didn’t (though I bought one to be safe).
Not that a whole new world didn’t present itself to me on the anything-but-open city roads, but I rather suspect the new “Bangalore is your DNA” campaign could be stretching it. “Even New York has traffic jams” the billboard screamed as two Sureesh Kerouacs eyed us from beneath their flashy hoods and prepared to dice the whities who looked far more gung ho than they felt.
The spiritual pep in Commercial Street courtesy of Hindu procession and later a more private Sri Ram Krishna-esque ceremony flowed through my veins a little less easily had I not been worried about hanging onto his helmet. Modern Bangalore is so much more in your face when you’re not an onlooker any more.
Somehow I miss the random tuk tuk and the freedom to choose my driver, or let myself be chosen.