Wednesday afternoon. I was at a place I always loathed - Starbucks! They have redefined coffee! Redefined in such a way that their coffee tastes as great as toxic waste. But why the hell was I there? Starbucks is everywhere ... its like you don't go to Starbucks, but Starbucks comes to you. Anyway ... I was sipping a vanilla latte (which translated in my language means coffee that tastes like agarose gel) and having a conversation with 'J'. He was muttering about the 147 death toll in an Indian temple. People go to the temple to pray for a long life ... if the same temple actually takes away your life much earlier in this way ... how ironical can it be?

'H' ... the Korean girl said with a smile - "Those people had to die ... that was their Karma". 'J' was perturbed by this statement. 'Karma'? Destiny? Yeah ... the same old concept of your life being predetermined ... things happen according to the pattern ... the date of my death has been decided ... everything is happening according to God's plan!

Somehow the whole concept of our lives being controlled by someone else did not seem very appealing to both me and 'J'. What if destiny has decided that i will be single all my life? My whole idea of doing a PhD so that I can earn enough to pay for my wife's cosmetics goes in flame. But 'karma' is a concept that can never be refuted. If you prove that you can change fate ... you can still say that it was destined that a different outcome would result. Its an argument that can never be won against. Yet ... its wholly unacceptable.

'J' mentioned about how low-class people could be (and were) ill-treated by brainwashing them that they were paying for their sins in the last life ... and suffering was just in their fate. Heck! There are genes which can determine our predisposition to certain diseases ... but even these genes fully cannot determine whether an individual gets that disease or not. Ever watched GATTACCA?

Sometimes it does make you wonder ... why did certain things happen? How come 'S' became my room-mate and not someone else? How would it have been if I was living with someone else? Things happened ... but fate certainly did not determine anything. I can suddenly decide to leave this apartment and live alone elsewhere (of course i wouldn't do that!). So i really have not been destined to live with 'S'. So i changed my fate. But what if it was predetermined that I would change my fate? It gets very confusing!

I don't know for sure about 'karma' ... but I do not like its concept ... i'm happier controlling my life ... i'm happier making delicious rasam when I feel like to ... i'm happier shopping at Giant Eagle when I decide to ... life is not a laboratory experiment ... you don't strictly have to follow the protocol!