It is said that “Karma has no menu. You get served what you deserve.” I have read very little on the law of karma, which according to me, is whatever actions you did in the previous birth, the fruits/effect (good or bad) of which you will undergo in the present birth. I used to ask people at various public gatherings whether one could change one’s karma through sincere prayer or meditation or yoga. Some have replied in the affirmative, saying that if you prayed sincerely, you could cancel your previous birth’s bad karma and change your fate in this birth.
Once when I asked a renowned Vedic scholar the same question after his discourse, he replied, “Though you cannot change the effects or consequences of your bad karma/actions done in previous birth, if you pray sincerely, may be you will not feel the pain when you have to bear the effects of your bad karma.”
Carrying thousand one rupee coins in your wallet would be very heavy and instead of that if you pray sincerely, God will bless you with a single thousand rupee note which is lighter, though the value in both cases are the same. It is like a doctor administering anaesthesia. Though the operation is painful, if anaesthesia is given, the patient doesn’t feel the pain till the procedure gets over. Same is the case with sincere prayer. Though you will have to work out the effects of your past bad karma in this life, prayer will make the load lighter. The scholar also told me that although the effects of bad karma cannot be changed, its effect can be minimised. In the rarest of rare cases, if the almighty feels that the person really deserves and prays sincerely, god will make an exemption. It is like commuting a death sentence to life imprisonment if the conduct of a prisoner is really good.
Leave the law of karma, a few days back, what I experienced was instant karma. My father asked me to withdraw some money from an ATM for this month’s household expenses. Since it was not from my account, I cheerfully took a long walk to the ATM kiosk, unmindful of the hot sun. When I reached there, I enquired with the security guard if the machine was working and if it had sufficient cash. As he replied in the affirmative, I said a small prayer and inserted the debit card and punched in the password and the amount required. The machine whirred and, lo, my face lit up when I saw crisp notes of various denominations being disbursed. However, I was in for a pleasant surprise when I reached home. When I counted the cash, I found the divine ATM had disbursed an extra hundred rupee note. My joy knew no bounds. I could infer from the SMS alert in my father’s mobile phone that the extra hundred released incorrectly by the machine was not debited to his account. However, then it dawned on me that if each customer received this kind of divine blessing, the bank would only go bankrupt. Since it was a Sunday, I decided to go to the bank the following day to return the extra money.
After a sumptuous lunch, I set out for the humour club. As usual, halfway through, I found my scooter’s fuel indicator pointing to the red zone. So after filling the tank with the bare minimum petrol sufficient for the trip, I took all the shortcuts on earth to reach the destination as I was already late. I was almost at the venue and at a certain intersection there was a signage showing that U-turns were not allowed. But since I was already late, I decided to take the U-turn. But suddenly, out of nowhere, a man dressed in white shirt and khaki pants (read traffic policeman) appeared in the middle of the road (from hiding) and waved at me to stop. The dutiful policeman asked me to remove my helmet and checked my license and fined me for the offence. And as you guessed correctly, it was the same `100. Now that’s what I call ‘instant karma’. A simple U-turn taught me that life is a circle.
tskarthik13@yahoo.com