Because the best things in my life? I never planned them.

I'm not a "plan every detail" kind of person. I mean, I plan, don't get me wrong. I'm not out here living life like a leaf in the wind with zero direction. But somewhere along the way, I picked up this belief that's stuck with me like a song you can't get out of your head:

"Always leave some room for serendipity in your life."

I don't even remember where I first heard it. Maybe it was a book. Maybe a podcast. Maybe some random quote on Instagram that I scrolled past at 2 AM and it just... lodged itself into my brain. But here's the thing, the more years I live, the more I look back at the moments that truly mattered, the more I realize that this line isn't just some feel-good philosophy.

It's the actual cheat code.

Some of the absolute best, most unforgettable, most "I-can't-believe-this-is-my-life" moments? They were never on any to-do list. No Google Calendar event. No "Start planning 3 months in advance" reminder. No extensive research or itinerary. They just showed up. Unannounced. Like life was watching me from a distance, sipping chai, going — "Hmm, this guy's been putting in the work. Let me slide something beautiful into his timeline."

Now listen, I'm not going to sit here and pretend my life has been all rainbows and butterflies. I've had my share of lows. The kind of lows that sit on your chest at 3 AM and make you wonder what the hell you're even doing. But today? Today we're not talking about those. You want negativity? Open Internet. Scroll for 30 seconds. You'll find plenty. Today, we celebrate the good stuff. The surprises. The plot twists that actually worked out. The chapters you didn't write, but turned out to be the best ones in your book.

So grab your coffee (or chai, I don't judge), and let me tell you about the times life decided to be ridiculously generous with me.

The Phone Call That Took Me to Paradise

Picture this: a regular weekday. Nothing special. I'm sitting at my desk, probably staring at my screen with that glazed-over look we all get around 4 PM, working on something that felt very important in the moment but that I genuinely cannot recall today. My phone buzzes. It's my friend.

"Hey bro, it's my birthday in November. I want to go to Kashmir. You in?"

Now, let me paint you the full picture of what happened in my brain in the next three seconds:

Second one: "Wait, Kashmir? Like... Kashmir Kashmir? The mountains, the Dal Lake, the shikaras, the snow, THAT Kashmir?"

Second two: "I have absolutely nothing planned. No budget set aside. No leave approved. This is completely random."

Second three: "...When do we leave?"

That's it. That's all it took. One phone call. One spontaneous "yes." No Pinterest boards of "Top 20 Things to Do in Srinagar." No comparing hotel prices for three weeks straight. No overthinking whether I could afford it, whether the timing was right, whether I "deserved" a vacation right now.

Just... yes.

And what followed was nothing short of magic. I'm talking about waking up to mountains so impossibly beautiful that your brain genuinely struggles to process that this is real and not a screensaver. Sipping noon chai by the lake while the world around you moves in slow motion. Sitting in a shikara at sunset, surrounded by silence so deep it almost feels loud.

That trip? It didn't just become a "good memory." It became a core memory. The kind that your brain files under "This. This is what being alive feels like." And the wildest part? I almost didn't go. If that phone hadn't rung, if I'd been "too busy," if I'd said "let me think about it" (which, let's be honest, is just a polite way of saying no). I would have missed all of it. Every single frame of it.

But I didn't. Because something in me, some instinct, some gut feeling, some tiny voice said, "Dude. Just say yes."

And I did!

Mahakumbh: The Craziest Event Ever!

A different day. A different friend. Another phone call that was about to rearrange my priorities in the most beautiful way.

"Hey bro, so one of our friends just cancelled his ticket to Mahakumbh. Are you interested?"

Let me be completely honest with you, Mahakumbh was never on my radar. Not even slightly. It wasn't on my bucket list. I hadn't watched documentaries about it thinking "man, I need to be there someday." I knew about it, sure. Everyone does. But in the way you know about a lot of things, distantly, vaguely, as something that exists in the world but probably won't intersect with your life.

And then, in one phone call, it did.

My response was immediate and, looking back, almost comically enthusiastic: "Hell yeah, I'm in."

No hesitation. No "let me check my schedule." No mental math about whether this was practical or sensible or well-timed. Sometimes your gut just knows before your brain catches up. This was one of those times.

And what I experienced there? I genuinely don't have enough words for it. I'll try, but I'm warning you, words will fall short.

Imagine being in a gathering so massive, so overwhelmingly enormous, that the concept of "crowd" doesn't even apply anymore. It's not a crowd. It's an ocean. A literal ocean of humanity stretching in every direction as far as your eyes can see. Millions of people. MILLIONS. From every corner of the country, from every walk of life, every age, every story, all converging in one place for something bigger than any single person.

The energy was electric and sacred at the same time. The chants that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The smoke from the rituals curling up into a sky that felt closer than usual. The sadhus with their painted faces and eyes that looked like they'd seen centuries. The absolute chaos that somehow miraculously, felt orderly. Like even the universe had organized itself for this moment.

I stood there, this regular guy who almost didn't come, who got a spot only because someone else cancelled and I felt something shift inside me. I can't even explain it properly. It was humility, maybe. Or awe. Or that rare, fleeting feeling where you suddenly understand just how small you are in the grand scheme of things, and instead of being terrifying, it's actually... freeing.

I witnessed one of the largest human gatherings in the history of civilization. Not because I planned it. Not because I saved up for it. Not because I had some spiritual awakening that led me there.

Because my friend called and someone else cancelled their ticket.

That's it.

That's serendipity doing its thing with zero subtlety and maximum impact.

On my own, left to my own devices and my own planning abilities? I probably would have never gone. I'd have thought about it. Bookmarked a YouTube video about it. Maybe told myself "next Kumbh for sure." And then 12 years would pass and I'd still be saying "next time." But life didn't care about my planning timeline. It knocked on my door, said "you coming or not?" and I had exactly two seconds to decide.

I said yes.

And I'd say yes a thousand times over.

The College I Never Meant to Join (But Thank God I Did)

Okay, this one. This one is probably the most important story I'll ever tell when people ask me about serendipity. Because this wasn't just a trip or an experience. This shaped who I am. Four years of my life. Some of the most defining relationships I've ever built. A career path that I'm still walking. All of it, every single bit of it, started with the most casual, zero-stakes, "eh, why not" decision I've ever made.

Here's what happened.

The college I ended up becoming an engineer from? It was never The Plan. I had my eyes on a different place. A different dream. I'd built it up in my head, you know how you do when you're young and you've decided that THIS particular college is where your life truly begins, and everything else is just a consolation prize? Yeah, that was me.

But then one random day, my childhood friend was heading to this other college to take his admission. And I just... tagged along. That's it. No agenda. No backup plan in motion. Nothing strategic happening in my brain. I literally just went because my friend was going and I had nothing better to do. Pure "let me tag along for the ride" energy.

While I was there, I noticed the admission forms. Computer Science. I don't even know what made me pick one up. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was that tiny voice again, the same one that made me say yes to Kashmir and Mahakumbh, whispering in the background: "Just fill it out. What's the worst that could happen?"

So I did. Filled out the form. No fire in my belly. No "this is my destiny" moment. No dramatic background music. I filled it out.

And then I got in!

And then, slowly, gradually, all at once those four years became the BEST four years of my life.

I'm talking about friendships that didn't just happen but were forged. The kind you build in hostel rooms at midnight, sharing food you probably shouldn't be eating, having conversations about life and dreams and fears that you'd never have in the daylight. The late-night coding sessions that made you want to pull your hair out but also made you fall in love with problem-solving. The professors who didn't just teach you subjects but taught you how to think. The festivals, the chaos of college events, the last-minute project submissions, the bittersweet feeling of the last day of the last semester when you realize you'd give anything literally anything, to do it all one more time.

And it all started because I tagged along with a friend one afternoon and filled out a form I didn't care about.

If I had stayed home that day, if I'd been lazy, or busy, or just not in the mood my entire life would be different. Not necessarily worse, maybe, but fundamentally different. Different friends. Different experiences. Different version of me. And honestly? I don't think I'd trade the version I got for anything.

So What's Actually Going On Here? Is It Just Luck?

Alright, let's get a little philosophical for a moment. Because I know what some of you are thinking.

"Bro, you're just lucky. Not everyone gets random invites to Kashmir and accidental admissions into good colleges."

And you know what? You might be right. Maybe there's a luck element. Maybe the universe has been disproportionately kind to me. I won't deny that. Gratitude is the least I can offer.

But I also think there's something deeper going on. Something that doesn't fit neatly into the "lucky/unlucky" box.

I think serendipity doesn't just randomly fall from the sky. I think it finds people who are open to it. People who say yes more than they say "let me think about it." People who tag along even when there's no clear reason to. People who fill out forms they don't need to fill out. People who pick up the phone and say "I'm in" before their overthinking brain gets a chance to list seventeen reasons why they shouldn't.

And here's the part I really believe in: I think the work you put into being a better human every single day, not just the career grind, not just the hustle, not just the resume-building, but the genuine, quiet work of being kind, being present, being the friend who shows up, being the person people think of when they have an extra ticket or a random plan THAT pays off. In ways no spreadsheet can track. In ways no KPI can measure.

You can't quantify it. You can't optimize it. You can't A/B test your way to serendipity.

But you can make yourself the kind of person that serendipity wants to visit.

The Beautiful Tension Between Planning and Letting Go

Here's what I've come to understand about life, and it's a bit of a paradox, so stay with me:

You absolutely should plan. Set goals. Work hard. Be disciplined. Build skills. Save money. Create structure. All of that matters. All of that is the foundation.

But.

If your life is so rigidly planned that there's no room for a random phone call to reroute your entire month... you're missing out. If your schedule is so packed that you can't say yes to a spontaneous trip because "it's not in the plan"... you're leaving the best chapters unwritten. If your mind is so focused on where you think you should be that you can't appreciate the magic of where you accidentally end up... man, you're missing the whole point.

The skills you learn on your own, the hours you put in, the disciplined grind — all of that makes you capable. But the unexpected stuff? The surprises, the detours, the "this wasn't part of the plan" moments? That's what makes you alive.

Planning builds the house. Serendipity fills it with the furniture, the art, the warmth, the memories, the laughter, and the chaos that turns a house into a home.

You need both. But if you had to bet on which one would give you the stories you tell your grandchildren someday? My money's on serendipity. Every single time.

A Word About the Other Side

I'd be dishonest if I wrapped this up in a neat little bow and pretended life's surprises are always pleasant. They're not. Sometimes the unexpected phone call is bad news. Sometimes the plot twist is a gut punch. Sometimes the chapter you didn't write is one you'd rather tear out of the book entirely.

And I know that not everyone who reads this has had the same experience with life's randomness. Some people got dealt harder cards. Some people said yes and got burned. Some people's "serendipity" showed up wearing a disguise and left scars.

I see that. I acknowledge that. And I'm not going to sit here and preach "just be positive and everything works out" because that's not real, and that's not helpful.

But here's what I will say and this comes from genuinely observing the people around me, not from some motivational poster on the internet:

Most people I've seen? They survive the bad surprises. They grow from them. They get knocked down by something they never saw coming, and after the dust settles, they get up. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not gracefully. But they get up. And more often than not, they come out of it stronger, wiser, and more human than they were before.

The possibility of being destroyed by life's randomness? It exists. I won't pretend it doesn't. But the probability? Looking at the people around me, looking at how resilient humans actually are when you really observe them? That probability seems low. Really low. What seems far more likely is that you'll stumble, hurt, learn, adapt, and eventually look back and think, "I can't believe I survived that. But I did. And it made me who I am."

The Takeaway (If You Even Need One)

I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. I'm just a guy who said yes to a few random things and ended up with a life full of stories I genuinely love telling.

But if I had to distill everything I've learned into something you could carry with you, it would be this:

Plan your life. Set your goals. Work your ass off. Build the discipline. Show up every day.

But for the love of everything good in this world, leave some margin. Leave some white space. Leave some room in your perfectly structured life for the universe to sneak in and surprise you.

Because the trip you didn't plan might show you who you really are.

The admission you didn't care about might lead you to the people you can't live without.

The ticket someone else cancelled might put you in the middle of something that changes the way you see the world.

And the phone call you almost didn't answer? That might just be the beginning of the best story you'll ever tell.