A CONFESSION OR AN INSIGHT

-SAMANVITHA CHALLA

My life in all its weirdness and liveliness, I believe was fated to be the way it is. Everything that has
happened so far, everything that is happening right now and everything that is about to come is all
intricately weaved together in a beautiful design that is the framework of my life and any one stich
different or one thread torn apart, I wouldn’t be who I am today, I wouldn’t see the world the way I
see it and I probably wouldn’t be writing this right now.

Do you ever just wonder? the universe is so vast, there’s so much you don’t know and will probably
never know, there’s so many different scenarios worldly events could have played out in, everything
could have been so disparate from our own world, I mean if alternate universes existed like shown in
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once, we would
have seen live proof of all the changing paths our life took a turn in, but well unfortunately or
fortunately I guess we live in a very real world where these fictious doodles are just for the mind, in
reality you so happened to be born in the family and place you were born in, you met the people you
have known or long estranged with, you had your likes and dislikes and everything in between, you
did stuff or you didn’t do certain stuff, it all took place and culminated into who you are, the person
reading this right now, and doesn’t that feel magical in its own way.

I can quite literally envision my whole life so far and I know and understand how different
‘Samanvitha’ could have been. I may have liked her more or I may have hated her but she is not me
and she can never be me, I do not regret anything I have done or any decision I have made, because
I really do like the person I am now. Call it narcissism or self-love it’s up to you, but one thing for
sure is if I didn’t have all my faults, my guilts and my existential crises, I wouldn’t have existed right
here, right now and this very instant.

As a little kid I always started a journal entry at the start of the year and that used to be my first and
last entry of the year, in 2020 I happened to stumble upon one I wrote in 2016 and wrote a counter
entry to that updating on my life, and when I came across it again this year, I could see how
drastically my life changed through all the uncertainties, pain, suffering and realizations and even
now I don’t know how I will be or where will I be in two years, there is so much I as a human haven’t
touched in my life yet and I’m actually grateful that I’m just 18 and have rest of human existence to
experience, coz there’s definitely a lot, a lot I haven’t experienced yet. When I’m 70 and happen to
stumble upon this piece of writing collecting dust in my hard drive, I don’t know if I would still
believe in things like fate and destiny but I hope I would be chuckling upon all my happy faults, my
felix culpa.