"A Home Owner now..."

"A Home Owner now..."

About 55 years ago, on a wintry day, Professor Lorenz, meteorologist at MIT was simulating weather patterns based on 12 variables on mainframe machines. That particular evening, he was recreating a weather pattern of two months ago with 12 verified, documented values. As he stood up after hours of concentrated work, and grabbed his coffee cup to walk out for a short break, he lazily punched in the decimal number .506 for one of the variables ,instead of the original recorded value .506127. When he came back after fifteen minutes, he stood staring at the screen in disbelief. All the wavy graphs on his monitor for last two months looked radically different from what he had earlier tabulated and observed. There was no resemblance between the original graphs and the new ones simulated by his software. At that breathless moment, he had a tremendous insight into what had happened to generate this drastically different simulation. The minute rounding off he had done on a value had triggered a complex chain of changes in the software algorithm, eventually snowballing into something totally different, unpredicted and catastrophic. He had unwittingly, accidentally stumbled upon what we have now come to know and understand as "The chaos theory" - When a butterfly flaps its wings in New mexico, it could cause a hurricane in China. It means, it is impossible to predict the future, because a single insignificant change in an initial condition can lead to completely indeterminable outcome.

Now why am I recounting this story here? Because, around Mid November last year, on a rainy evening In Dunwoody, Atlanta, I was mugged by three inebriated young men. No bodily harm was caused, and the financial loss was very minimal; but that small incident released a chain of events in my life that would quickly alter the way I "materially" lived.Within a month of that mugging, I happened to see a car I liked and bought it. Considering i have lived without one for a long time, and never felt the pinch of it, this was a major decision. Very quickly following that purchase, in the month of March, I woke up one morning and decided I was going to buy a Home here in the US. Now that I had a car, mobility was no more a problem. My search for a Home lasted exactly three days. My real estate agent ( an adorable man of 72 years with a great sense of humor) showed me five homes. I picked the fourth. It is a town-home, a corner plot and in a wonderful locality. My search ended, and next steps to acquire it began.

Again, there was absolutely no hurdles at all along the way during the process of acquiring it. Acceptance of my offer by the Seller, Home inspection, professional Lending service, right rate of interest, Appraisals, documentation - all flowed one after the other like waves upon an ocean . I sometimes had this strange feeling that I was a mere spectator to this unfolding drama around. Almost everyone close poured their generous advice into me.Their inputs proved invaluable to make right decisions without any effort on my part. After all, they had done all the needed thinking for me; all that I had to do was to pay heed to their thoughts and execute it. Which is what I ended up doing.

So well, Today morning 16th of May, I finished closing formalities; and officially, as my Manager in his inimitable style said " Bala, you now own a little part of America...". True, there is a place now I could call my own and can live in it the way I would love to - surrounded by racks and racks of books, groovy sounds from Vinyl records permeating the air with vibrant strings of Mozart, Cooking rasam and Potato curry in a fairly large and comfortable kitchen, sitting out on the patio watching the sun go down, recline on a Lazy-boy chair with Boethius "Consolation of Philosophy" or a Ellis peter's Brother Cadfeal mystery, and choose the bedroom I would like sleep in. Sounds like a good deal!!!

This home is most definitely dedicated to my Parents and Family. My father's invisible presence and Mom's ever present unconditional love and support in everything I do is a constant source of solace and joy for me. Without their blessings, My life in many ways would not have taken the turns it took to reach this point. My Brother has stood behind me in my decisions. Finally, I cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude to all friends for their time, support and inputs in helping me make this important decision.

So ending this essay with what I began : here is the Butterfly effect in action. What started as a small , incident generated an avalanche of decisions, which I believe ,would not have come to pass , if those three boys had decided to let me alone that rainy evening.

Definitely, food for thought... :):)

God bless..

Yours in mortality,

Bala