19. Meant to be

Ross and Rachel were two friends, friends from kindergarten, lived in the same neighbourhood, played with each other, went to the same school, and then to the same college, by chance or choice got placed in the same company, and finally one day felt that they were meant to be together and conveyed the same to their parents. Happily ever after…

Sounds familiar??? This is the theme of almost all our romantic movies. But the question is, ‘does there really exists a phenomenon called ‘meant to be???’

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This can’t be studied just by empirical formulae or mathematical simulation, cos the there’s no formula or model in the world that can predict exactly the way people might react to changes in the world, and the ripple effect it creates resulting in zillions of permutations and combinations, making it almost impossible for any real time processor  to compute.

This is when I came across the idea of ‘multi-temporal social experimentation’, an idea whose origin I partly can proclaim, the other half being my mentor Dr.T, the by now famous inventor of time flux continuum simulator, which many feel could be the precursor for the actual ‘Time Machine’. Not known to many, including me until recently is the fact that he had actually created a time machine, that can go back and forth in time like moving from my office desk to the coffee bar.

But Dr.T is a strange person. Not realising or not wanting to test the true potential of his invention, all he was interested was in using his invention for checking of historical incidents and fact findings. May be that’s why he had hired me, a non-technical, a relative computer illiterate with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in the first place.

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It all started with me crashing at the lab late night after my ‘supposed to be date’ called to say that she was held up with some important assignment, which I found while coming back to my apartment, was flirting with a ‘hunk’ looking classmate of hers.

‘May be you are not meant to be together’ it was unusual of Dr.T to console or at least involve with personal matters of his subordinates.

“What if there’s nothing like ‘meant to be’?” I asked him back

“What if we can find out by an experiment” he asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

So this is what the experimental setup was. We would identify a perfect couple, whom everyone feels are ‘soul mates’ and change a part of their lives and see if they still manage to come together.

“What if changing a part of their lives had an impact on our lives?” I asked

“Don’t you think I have thought about that?” he asked me rhetorically

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So the first part of our plan was to eliminate something either of the couple like in the other.

“What if we made one of them look fat?” I asked

“I doubt it’ll have an effect. But we’ll try” said Dr.T

So we went back in time to Ross’ childhood days and tipped him in different ways and means so that he’d buy something in the nearby burger store. The ploy did work. The guy got so addicted to binge eating that he started resembling the ‘before guy’ in the ad for weight loss programs.

But Rachel still ended up loving Ross. The only change that was visible was that the burger store that was supposed to be closed decades ago is still selling hot in the locality.

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“We should make the girl fat, women are ‘size blind’ when they are looking to settle down” I protested

“You are so shallow, but we’ll try” said Dr.T

And the ploy bombed too. She became so fat that Ross could never hug her in a single go, but that did not stop him from wanting to hug her. Only thing that changed was they got married little early than they did in our time.

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“They proposed when they went for onsite assignment in Paris. What if we cancel one of their trips?”

“Add a sweet talker to accompany the girl. She flies to Paris. Let the guy stay, and throw in a bomb shell to distract him from Rachel” Dr. T smiled wittily “We’re experimenting with their lives. Let them have some fun atleast” he defended at my glare

Ross was in goosebumps the whole season with ‘bomb shell’ and Rachel was more than enchanted by charming Mr Perfect in Paris. But the moment they met each other in the airport, both proposed each other in unison.

“How could this happen? we had given more than enough incentives for them to stay apart” I fumed

“Maybe they are meant to be” I so wanted to disprove his ‘meant to be’ theory

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We started trying many things to put them apart. Nothing worked, it all came back to some casual rom-com finish, not even the nail biting airport/railway climax was nigh.

If we made one of them dumb, they ended up tutoring with the other and ‘happily ever after’.

When we shifted their parents’ home apart, they still ended up studying in the same school, or college, or work in the same company.

And we even changed careers of a lot of models and actors to be friends or colleagues of Ross and Rachel to provide enough diversions. Nothing worked….

“Whatever happens, India doesn’t happen to wage war with another country..” I commented

“I had tried to prod an emperor into waging a war, but he ended up preaching Buddhism” Dr.T quipped. I can never tell when he’s serious and when he’s joking

I even studied many relationship books to see what ‘turns-on’ and ‘turns-off’ a person towards his/her partner and used it in our experiments. But all came to nought. There were even changes in governments, foreign policies, even state boundaries because of the changes we made. Ross and Rachel glued on like the fevicol ad.

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“So there’s no way a time machine can change one’s past??? Or influence future???” I asked Dr.T desperately

“What do you say about the changes that we had brought? The governments we’ve toppled and rulers we have changed?”

“But they were not the real intention…”

“Exactly… Life is more than merely tweaking one tiny part so that everything falls the way you want them to be.” He saint talked. “It’s more complicated. I want the person who operates such a powerful tool as what we have, to realise this”

We went for one final attempt to ruin Ross & Rachel's love life by spreading each other rumours about affairs they had with some colleague or friend. (Pretty low even for experiment purpose, I guess). As expected they cleared the doubts straight away among themselves, and as usual they lived 'happily ever after...'

“So there’s really something called ‘meant to be’?” I was still confused

“I don’t think so. Think there’s inherent attraction of people and entities to gravitate towards certain things or events. The person with more intent or will power hangs on to the destiny.”

“What about others, guys like me who don’t know what we want?”

“Others just move with the flow, and it doesn’t mean that they are worse off, some even have a much better life than the intent ones”

Tailpiece: I went back in time to meet younger me and advised to be nice to a classmate of mine. She had an ‘ugly duck - to - hot girl’ transformation and is my girlfriend now since I was sweet to her even when no one cared about her.

Thanks to 'F.R.I.E.N.D.S' for lending the names Ross & Rachel