Thank you Universe!

Have you ever felt like the universe is trying to convey something important to you?! If yes, then you would actually relate yourself to some incident  that happened while you read this experience of mine.

For those of you who are reading this with a smirk on your lips,  believe me you will very soon realize that the universe has always something to convey. Well,  I have been exactly like you sitting there and feeling sad sometimes, ridiculous many a time, for all those people who update their what's app status everyday,

 'Thank you Universe for everything'..... 

Whenever I come across this particular status update I often pondered,  why would anyone thank some entity which is so abstract ? or how can someone give all credits to this Universe belief, when its actually us who has done all the right stuff and achieved the desired results. The more I thought, the more silly I felt. 

After a month of meticulous planning, I was ready to enjoy and have fun at my cousin's wedding last week. The plan included a train journey for which we had booked tickets in IRCTC around two months back. Since my family and my uncle's family planned the trip together we had many discussions, bookings,  cancellations due to change of plans and also re-bookings.  After all the planning and re-planning, we finally met on the day of the travel at the station. Since we had to reach the station  much earlier from the train's arrival,  all of us had a lot of time to catch up on things that we had missed during the course of several months.  

I spent time mostly with my six year old nephew who was curious about almost everything around him. He questioned me about everything I did,  why I did that and the reason behind it too. His interest turned to my phone. He had a lot of questions about the make, model, settings and features of the phone, half of which I did not know and he ended up educating me on the same. The most important thing that he noticed first was the time display on the phone.  He was so thrilled to see the 24 hour format on the phone.  While he discussed how the 12 hour format was different from the 24 hour one,  he also went on to say how his grandfather had only the 12 hour format and about his failed attempts to convince his grandfather to change it into a 24 hour format. The next one hour went on discussions about time, how different public places had different formats and finally he wanting everyone of us to refer to time only in the 24 hour format.  As it was getting a bit too much about the time format, I tried to distract him with other things and details.  But he would always end up with time, sometimes by asking what time the train would arrive and the other times by just speaking about the display clock in the platform. 

This continued even through the journey, and after we reached our destination too. The talks would either start with  time or end  with  time! Even after we met all the other relatives this small one would come back to me with a question like how much more time do we need to be here? or at the least,  he would instruct me to check if the time in my phone and the time in my watch were one and the same. He and I became obsessed with time! 

The wedding celebration came to an end and it was time to get back to our lives. We had to travel back to Chennai by train again, when obviously the time factor popped up.  As we made arrangements to get to the station, I made a mandatory check about everything which included checking the time of travel in the ticket.  

When I did the same,  I was shocked to find the blunder that I had made.  I had booked my tickets for the train which had already left in the morning.  I had made a mistake with the format.  Instead of booking for 15.10 pm,  I booked a ticket for the train that leaves at 03.10 am. There came the 24 hour format and the 12 hour format! But we were determined to get back to Chennai and continue things where we had left. So,  after a lot of discussions we decided to travel by road this time. 

Finally,  when we got into the taxi and settled for the long travel ahead,  my nephew asked that question, ' Can I check your phone and see the time? '