"Son, a coconut will never fall on a person, don't worry."

 "Son, a coconut will never fall on a person, don't worry. You see it has 3 eyes, one more than what we humans have. It watches where it falls. Go and play now, nothing will happen..."

...said the wise old lady, about 30 years back one day. Incidentally, this lady had good vision only in one eye. I forget her name, but we all called her "Aajji" [Granny in marathi].

A bunch of us, all under 10, were playing in the society compound. Our society had a few coconut trees then. 3 or 4 I believe. While the society had a ritual of getting the coconuts plucked and distributed once a year, coconuts would still fall randomly. Infact at the place I stay these days, we just have 1 tree & a coconut falls nearly twice every week.

So while we were running around, a large coconut fell with a huge thud, few feet away from where we were playing. We all ran for cover, as if someone was firing bullets at us, totally scared. One of the friends had his home on the ground floor & we all just went there, still panting. Aajji was the grandmother of the friend who stayed there.

"Kai zhaala re?" ["what happened guys?"] she asked... in her sharp & loud voice. She was a strict lady and we were always scared of her. We told her about the coconut that just fell and that how we were lucky that it did not fall on any of us. That is when she let out a hysterical laugher, further spooking us. She saw our confused & scared faces and then told us (what I quoted above) in a calm voice. At that age, we knew this wise old lady knew everything, so we thought she was probably right & we went back to play. Over the years, we saw many coconuts fall, but Aajji was right. It never fell on a person or a vehicle or absolutely anything. It always hit the ground first, before rolling off to a destination of its choice.

A few minutes back today, as I am out on my evening stroll, I saw something come down crashing. Before I could fathom what happened, there was a large thud and this bloke (seen in the image) rolled over near my feet. My heart skipped a beat, again wondering what if I was at the spot where this coconut fell! The concept about the uncertainties of life flashed through my mind. Then I remembered what Aajji had said. She had said it will never fall on people.

To think of it, knowingly or unknowingly, we all probably dodge such bullets throughout our lives. Sometimes we see the bullets, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we are aware about what we dodged sometimes we aren't. Sometimes we dodge them, sometimes a higher force dodges it for us, unknown to us.

We all are probably no lesser than Keanu Reeves, dodging those bullets in Matrix. It's probably fair to acknowledge that we do dodge a lot of bullets that could do us physical & mental harm.

A watchman of the society nearby heard the thud & came running & saw me holding the nut. Generally, I wouldn't mind letting him have it, but this was a bullet I had just dodged. I had to keep it. I smiled at him and kept walking.

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