A friend of mine, Chandru, sends me a message most mornings. Most are pleasant, some are thoughtful and a few stay with me through the day. One such message arrived recently and refused to leave my mind.
“When the hand of God is on your life, nothing can stop you from being blessed. Good morning.”
It was simple—almost stark. And yet, it set me thinking. Not in a theological sense, but in a very practical, lived way. About people whose lives have been altered by forces they neither planned for nor deserved. About moments when the carefully-drawn charts of our lives are quietly erased and redrawn. And, inevitably, about the many times I have been the beneficiary of such interventions—if one may call them that.
A few days earlier, I had read a story about a young woman at a subway station in New York. She came from a rural area outside Hyderabad, India, and had travelled to the US to pursue a graduate programme. Money was tight, as it often is for students abroad, and she worked her way through college, taking on odd jobs whenever she could. Nothing unusual so far.
One day, while waiting on the underground platform, a man approached her. He introduced himself as someone associated with the fashion industry and asked if she would consider modelling for a clothing line. She was startled. She was not dressed extravagantly, nor did she consider herself exceptionally beautiful. Presentable, yes. Confident, perhaps. But a model?
She did not dismiss him outright. They spoke, exchanged contact details and that brief conversation changed her life. Today, she is a leading model across the United States and Europe for some of the biggest fashion brands—largely European. She completed her degree, but part-time jobs became irrelevant. By Indian standards, she became a millionaire.
How does one explain this? A chance meeting with a stranger on a railway platform. No audition planned. No application submitted. Was it luck? Destiny? Or what Chandru’s message alluded to—the hand of God?
Then there was a newspaper report about an Air India flight that crashed while taking off at Ahmedabad some months ago. Over 200 passengers lost their lives. Only one man walked out alive to tell the story.
Why him? Not because he was stronger, more alert, or better informed. He did nothing differently from the others. How does one person survive when everyone else perishes? Was it probability? Was it fate? Or was it, again, the invisible hand?
We all have our own encounters with such moments. I have had more than my share.
In the early 1960s, when I was travelling as a salesman in Karnataka, covering Belgaum and Bijapur, I met another salesman from an American pharmaceuticals company at the Belgaum railway platform. We chatted briefly. He suggested that I join him in his compartment, since he was travelling alone. My seat was four compartments away.
For reasons I cannot explain even today, I declined.
Three hours later, the train came to an abrupt halt. There had been a murder. The man I had spoken to—whose invitation I had politely refused—had been killed. His body dismembered, his limbs thrown out onto the tracks.
I have often wondered what might have happened had I joined him. Would there have been no murder? Or would there have been two victims instead of one? That night, as the train stood still during the investigation, destiny felt uncomfortably close. Or was it divine protection?
Many years later, in the early-2000s, I was scheduled to attend a management consultants’ convention in Bengaluru. I was booked to fly from Mumbai on Thursday night. On Monday, a client in Hyderabad called urgently. He was negotiating an acquisition and needed me to be present before the Bengaluru trip, not after—as I had suggested. He insisted that I cancel my flight from Mumbai, come to Hyderabad first, and then fly onward to Bengaluru.
I agreed.
On Thursday evening, while waiting at Hyderabad airport, our flight was delayed by over two hours. Just before boarding, we were informed why. The Mumbai–Bengaluru flight—the one I was originally booked on—had crashed while landing. Almost everyone on board had died.
When I arrived at Bengaluru airport, chaos reigned. Information desks listed injured passengers who had been sent to different hospitals. Taxis were impossible to find. Eventually, I reached the Bengaluru Club, where I was staying. Three consultants who were attending the convention, and also staying at the club, stared at me as if they had seen a ghost. They had gone to the airport to receive me and assumed I was among the dead. I had forgotten to inform them of my change in plans.
Had that client not called, had I insisted on my original schedule, my life might have taken a very different turn that night.
And then there was the most personal of these encounters.
I accompanied my wife to see a gastroenterologist for a routine consultation. After finishing with her, the doctor casually asked if I had any issues. I said no—but mentioned, almost jokingly, whether it made sense to do a colonoscopy. He asked about symptoms. I had none. But two close friends—one in the UK and one in the US—were battling advanced colon cancer. It worried me.
“If it worries you,” he said, “it’s worth doing.”
The test revealed nodules. No symptoms, yet there was malignancy at an early stage. Surgery followed. A small section of the colon was removed. Five years later, I am still here—healthy, active, and grateful.
That entire sequence began by accident: accompanying my wife, a casual conversation, a test done almost on a whim. Had it been discovered later, the outcome might have been far more serious.
So what do we call these moments? Chance? Destiny? Or the hand of God?
In business, we plan obsessively. We forecast, strategise, hedge risks, and assume control. Yet history—and our own lives—remind us that control is often an illusion. Wisdom, perhaps, lies in doing our best while accepting that not everything is in our hands.
However learned or experienced we may be, there will always be forces beyond our comprehension. And sometimes, those unseen forces work quietly, decisively, and mercifully on our behalf.
(Walter Vieira is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of India - FIMC. He was a successful corporate executive for 14 years, capping his career as Head of marketing for a Pharma multinational, for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- and then pioneered marketing consulting in India in 1975. As a consultant, he has worked across four continents. He was the first Asian elected Chairman of ICMCI, the world apex body of consultants in 45 countries, in 1997. He is the author of 16 books, a business columnist, international conference speaker and has been visiting professor in Marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia for over 40 years. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for Consulting in 2005, and for Marketing in 2009. He now spends much of his time in NGO work - Consumer Education and Research Centre, IDOBRO, and some others.)
