Coincidences

I recently experienced an extremely surprising coincidence. It sent me reminiscing about earlier coincidences I had experienced.

It was 1986 and I had started my M. Tech. studies in Reliability Engineering, at IIT Kharagpur.  A cricket test match between India and Australia was going on and there was a large crowd of students watching it on TV in the common room. I am not very keen on cricket and so had not watched the first few days of play. Since it looked like India had a chance of winning - after having conceded a considerable lead in the first innings and Australia having declared at a sporting score in their second - the interest was high. All the chairs in front of the TV were already taken. I had to stand at the very back of the crowd, with some newly minted friends, crane my neck and watch. 

Then, just to bug my friends who were so eager for India to win, I said, “This guy will be out next ball. Caught”. And to my utter disbelief, it happened. I correctly “predicted” the next wicket too just before the wicket taking ball was bowled - the first ball the new player faced - he was out for a duck. At this point I “predicted” that the match was going to end in a tie. I further “predicted”, correctly, the next two wickets as well, just before the wicket taking balls were bowled. The match did end in a tie. People around me who had heard my “predictions” really thought that I was clairvoyant. I had a hard time convincing them that I was just shooting my mouth off and it was sheer coincidence that what I said happened to come true.

Here is the complete score card of that match.

Statistically speaking, until that match, 1,051 test matches had been played and there had been only one tie - in Brisbane, between Australia and England. So, roughly a one in a thousand event. Not bad odds for a random “prediction” to come true rare but not impossible. As of today 2,586 test matches have been played with only two tied fixtures. For a larger sample size we see that over 60,000 “first class” cricket matches have been played with 69 tied games. So, it is still around one in a thousand.

I was flying from Mumbai to Bengaluru with my manager. The flight took off quite late because of faulty air-conditioning on the aircraft. Eventually, we approached Bengaluru and the aircraft started circling over the city, instead of landing. After seven or eight rounds, the captain came on the public address system and announced that the ground staff were unable to keep the runway lights on and hence we couldn’t land. During one of the passes over the runway I could see the lights come on momentarily and then go off.

After a few more rounds over Bengaluru, I told my manager, “The captain is going to say that we are running out of fuel and we will head to Chennai.” Within minutes, the captain made that very announcement.  Some passengers whose destination was Chennai celebrated loudly with whoops, whistles, and claps.

I could feel the aircraft straighten and ascend to cruising altitude. In a little while I told my manager, “Sir, the captain will say that the runway lights are on now and we will go back to Bengaluru”. Soon, the captain did just that. And we could feel the aircraft bank and turn back. The Bengaluru bound passengers cheered louder.

After a while, I wondered aloud, “What if the lights go off again by the time we reach Bengaluru? The captain already said that we are running out of fuel. What do we do if we do not have enough fuel to get back to Chennai?” Obviously, that didn’t happen and I lived to tell the tale. 

The third instance is not that dramatic. I had been to the Chamundi Hills. While walking from the vehicle parking to the temple, I saw two elderly gentlemen sitting on a stone bench and quietly enjoying the sight. One of them, perhaps about 70 years of age, was very handsome. I also noticed that one of his hands was amputated just below the elbow. The image of the two gentlemen stayed in my mind. They looked so calm and at peace.

A few days later the doorbell rang. I went out to open the door and was astonished to see the same two gentlemen at the door. They turned out to be Sri Thyagarajan (Thyaga Mama) and his brother Dr Venkatesh. They were close friends of my father. I had heard about them but had not met them before. My father considered their mother as his second mother. Why it was so is a long story, narrated in detail by my father in his autobiographical work “Nenapina Alegalu”. 

The fourth incident happened a few months later. I had a friend who ran an arts and crafts emporium at the famous Devaraja Market in Mysuru. A few friends of mine and I often spent our free time in the evenings at his shop. It was our hangout. One evening, I saw a couple walk past the shop. I thought to myself, “What a lovely looking couple!”

Within a week or two, Thyaga Mama visited us again and he was accompanied by the very same couple! They turned out to be the son and daughter-in-law of Thyaga Mama.

The last one I’m going to talk about is a very recent occurrence. That is what triggered this post. It almost dumbfounded me - at least for a little while.

I had talked to a friend about a web comic series which had stick figures in it and which both of us used to enjoy a lot. We had not come across that in recent times. I had completely forgotten its name. I only remembered that it had a four letter name like an initialism. A few days after that conversation, I remembered it again and I decided to ask the AI engine – Copilot – for help. I was away from my laptop and was listening to the audio version of the New Scientist magazine on my earphones. I walked to my laptop, opened Copilot and started typing my question while the audio was still playing in my ear. I typed “What is the name of the web comic series with stick figures ... " the name of the very web comic series being mentioned in a story in New Scientist. This was the sentence I heard: “if that prospect doesn’t appeal, robin Stevens offers a possible salve. He highlights the 391^st edition of web comic XKCD*, which is called Anti-Mindvirus”. I was so astonished and disbelieving that I had to wind the audio back and make sure that I had actually heard it and that it was not a figment of my imagination or I had heard something else that had reminded me of XKCD.

This might look like a fantastic divine intervention to some. It was just a coincidence, albeit an extraordinary one, and nothing more.  

* The name XKCD is not an acronym and does not stand for anything. According to its creator, Randall Munroe, he chose the name because it was a "treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings". He described it as a meaningless, unpronounceable word.