Miracle of being

Recently, at the engagement ceremony of her younger son, the musician Smita Wagh was introduced to a distinguished looking gent as the bride's maternal uncle. He was courteous but formal. The penny dropped when it was casually mentioned that he'd grown up in Delhi, at Karol Bagh. Was it Marathiyon ka building? Yes, of course, and yes, he had played with a bright-eyed girl called Smita! End of formalities. Animated resumption of a long-lost friendship! Smita marvels at the vilakshan yoga-yog(extraordinary co-incidence).

But was it serendipity or something more portentous? Could it, for instance, be interpreted to mean that marriages are made in heaven? They are certainly sanctified on earth, your columnist concedes. But before making pronouncements on "divine matchmaking", it would be instructive to recall Littlewood's Law of Miracles, which says expect a 'miracle' to happen at the rate of one per month!

The Cambridge math don defined a miracle as a one-in-amillion event to which we attach great significance when it occurs. He assumed that during the hours in which we are awake and alert, we experience one event per second, exceptional or otherwise. So, over eight hours a day and in 35 days, we should have had about a million events. Accepting our definition of a miracle then, you could be expected to observe one miraculous occurrence in the passing of every 35 consecutive days.

By that logic, "life is full of miracles, minor or major and Middling C". But what this does not focus on is the real miracle: of our being alive and aware!