“Oh, you’re going to be like that? Okay then.”
Do you believe in karma?
I used to think karma was this grand, poetic thing …good deeds quietly rewarded, bad ones eventually punished, some cosmic balance sheet closing itself out. Then I watched it play out over a parking spot, and now I think karma has a much smaller, pettier sense of humor too.
There was this guy in my apartment building Sameer, who had a whole system for stealing parking spots. Not illegally, just… aggressively early. He’d literally watch from his balcony and the second someone pulled out, he’d sprint down in his slippers to claim it before anyone else could even reverse out of their lane. He wasn’t shy about it either. If you were slow, that was on you.
This went on for months. People complained in the building WhatsApp group. Nothing changed. He just got smugger.
Then one day, he pulled his classic move ,sprinted down, claimed a spot the second it opened up, victorious as always. Except this time, he’d been in such a rush he’d left his own flat’s door wide open. Went out in slippers, no wallet, no phone, nothing. And of course, this was the one day the building’s electrician with his team had shown up unannounced to “check the wiring” in a few flats and let himself into Sameer’s, assuming it was fine since the door was open.
Nothing was stolen. Nothing dramatic happened. But when Sameer came back to find total strangers casually standing in his living room, he was taken back and he had to have the most awkward five-minute conversation of his life explaining why some random guys was in his house, while still holding his parking triumph in one hand and mild horror in the other.
He never fully lived it down. People still bring it up. And weirdly, he parks like a normal human now.
Nobody “punished” him. No lightning bolt from the sky. Just a small, absurd inconvenience showing up exactly when his guard was down, because he was so busy winning something petty that he forgot the basics.
That’s the karma I actually believe in, if I believe in any version of it. Not moral justice. Just the universe occasionally goes, “oh, you’re going to be like that? Okay then.” Small, ironic, and honestly kind of funny to watch from a safe distance.
