Elisabeth Moss plays Offred in the TV adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale

I'm aware of how tacky it sounds, to say that the universe conspires, to speak of stars as though they wilfully align around each other to evoke clusters of meaning and significance, and to believe that the future can be foretold, or that events that transpire in the present somehow are the consequence of cosmic ramifications. To say something is serendipitous instead, has also become cliché, given the programmed nature of our cyber existence, the algorithmic manner by which we are seduced into believing that the laws of coincidence are incidental. There must be a better, more effective and precise word or phrase for when something seemingly random gets registered in the brain as momentous, because of how certain specificities get underlined. Remember how, in my last column, I spoke about the series of unintended gestures that led me to watch the film, The Women, in a cab in Mumbai? A few days later, after boarding my return flight, I took out my Kindle and decided it was time to finally read Maggie Nelsons' 2009 book, Bluets.