Friendship with Mudit and Shatabdi = Destiny

I'm fairly certain that I was destined to become friends with Mudit and Shatabdi. And here's why:

Last week I was showing Mudit and Shatabdi some pictures on my laptop. Shatabdi had mentioned that she worked in Orissa, so I decided to show them my Orissa pictures. When she saw my pictures of the Adivasi Mela, she exclaimed, "oh my god! I worked on the committee that organized that mela! I can't believe you were there! I organized so much of that!" She had something to say about nearly every picture. When I showed a picture of the entrance, she exclaimed "I designed that gate!" Several pictures evoked a "that was my idea!" But the biggest coincidence of all? I have a picture of the organizing committee's work shack, and ALL of Shatabdi's coworkers are in my picture. Shatabdi pointed to every single person in my photo, telling me their names, what their jobs were, and what she thought of them (whether or not she liked them). At this time, she had been inside the shack figuring out some last-minute logistics (and was the only organizer missing in my photo). She apparently emerged from the shack two minutes after the picture was taken. I was literally two minutes off from taking a picture of her. Insane. Clearly, our friendship was destiny. (Or India is just really small for a country of 1.1 billion people.)

You know how else I know our friendship was destiny? Mudit and Shatabdi first met at a work training session held at the Indian Habitat Centre, where the TERI office is located (they were trained in Delhi before being sent off to their respective field offices--Patna, Bihar for Mudit, Bhubaneshwar, Orissa for Shatabdi). Yup, I was in the same office complex as them when they met each other. Probably just a couple hundred feet away.

I wore a scarf I bought in West Bengal the other day, and Shatabdi, who is from West Bengal, said she had the same one. Again, destiny.

Destiny. (To Nadeen and Ellen: Beauty.)

(As a side note, I really need to make more friends than just one married couple.)