Dressed in a pastel saree, twisting my hair tighter into a bun, I glanced at my phone. The application’s interface lit my face a soft purple. Letters in serif fonts spewed out: “A single native will be happy to find someone special through a family member at an event.” Amazed by the coincidence, I scoffed and hurried out of the room. Often it all seemed meaningless. But then suddenly, in that moment, it all held significance, eerily accurate, even if that was simply the result of a random occurrence. Occasionally, this uncanniness, like the notion of a foretold event, can rattle the very core of even the most level-headed ones. I, however, was hardly the most level-headed person. So, I spent the rest of the day shuffling among uncles, aunties, cousins, relatives, and distant relatives, entertaining their queries on my marriage.Reading horoscopes was a secret ritual folded into the beginning of my day. Nothing in my Islamic faith encouraged this and its origin remains unclear. While pretending to solve the crossword as my sisters fiddled with the clues, a furtive scan of the last narrow column of the page announcing the Weekly Horoscope was the most thrilling act for my teenage self. A vague caution on monetary choices. An anxious caution on what my faith allowed me. An optimistic promise for the second half of the day. Mostly these predictions would be forgotten when a steaming plate of appams and a tumbler of filter coffee found their way to me on the breakfast table. Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyBy the time of my sister’s wedding, I had replaced my newspaper column for an ad-riddled message on my phone that portended my future. Origins, anyway, are inventions, traced after the discoveries.Hedge-fund managers, nervous teenagers, sceptical sports fans and emperors with their ambitious plans – all consulted the stars when in doubt. Unlike theirs, neither planetary movements nor pixelated messages had any influence on my decisions. I rationalised having this ritual, regardless of my belief, to manage a bearable level of uncertainty.Some days, it was enacted slowly, pulling the blanket down, yawning in bed, and reaching for the phone to unlock the horoscope app. On rare days, with half-opened eyes, I rushed through the gentle, authoritative sentences that seemingly wrote my day. Meanwhile, life became more chaotic; horoscope check-ins were occasionally interrupted, yet it persisted. Two years later, I fell in love with a man who was meticulous about his minutes and had no patience for things outside his control. To prove otherwise, I stretched my meticulous ritual to read his zodiac sign too. Meeting him never felt like a prediction. We flickered into each other’s lives through email exchanges. “Is that really how you start your day?” came his response upon discovering my routine. Our relationship grew quietly and uncertainly, like moss gathering inside furrowed tree trunks. None of it was decided, except for the pastel saree I wore.Then, when he eventually crossed continents, holding onto planetary movements became a desperate hope for a sign. Our hands never joined, neither did our clocks. It was past midnight for me and still yesterday for him. When he sent in photographs and videos of early November snow, I watched them in the steadily droning company of ceiling fans. As he prepped for his New Year’s Eve, I had already lived the new calendar. Could our horoscopes account for the differences in our time zones? I began to worry about newer variables: distance, loss, touch. Sometimes I think about emperors who would divine their reign using the stars. Did they also have to account for time zones? I grew to forget that question soon. Instead, I went back to the latent thrill in friendly reminders, deflating predictions and signs of Venus misbehaving as a notification on the corner of my screen. These infinite permutations and combinations re-offered the comfort of a bearable certainty, a refuge in entanglements that anchor my day. Hedge-fund managers, nervous teenagers, sceptical sports fans, emperors with their ambitious plans, and even this curious fan of coincidences, after all, consulted the stars.Fathima Noora is an enthusiast of social anthropology, currently winding through the corners of her doctoral study at the University of Hyderabad.We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.Read the series here.