KARMA IS LIFE’S WHIPLASH. Murder is a debt karma collects without mercy
The theory of KARMA entered my life at an age when children rarely challenge what they inherit. Born into a Buddhist household, in a nation of more than sixty million believers, karma was never presented as a possibility — it was presented as truth.
I did not question its strength or weakness; I accepted its authority instinctively. Misfortune, suffering, reward, success — all were believed to be consequences of previous actions, a reckoning delivered by a higher power to which humanity must eventually bow with humility.
Then life widened.
My international travels introduced rival ideologies, opposing faiths, and intellectual arrogance disguised as enlightenment. With each new country came another explanation of morality, divinity, fate, and human suffering. In my endless thirst for knowledge, Karma was slowly pushed into a quiet corner of my mind, only revisited when life presented questions too disturbing or too complex to answer logically.
I began to view religion with scepticism. Divine intervention and mystical forces seemed, at times, the refuge of the weak-minded — a convenient weapon wielded by the fortunate to justify their superiority over those born with fewer opportunities. I rarely voiced these thoughts aloud, but privately they hardened into a kind of intellectual rebellion.
Yet despite all my cynicism, I cannot escape the unsettling belief that, in this life, we occasionally brush against evil. Sometimes we stand close enough to feel its breath. Sometimes we touch it — and afterwards instinctively seek goodness again, as though trying to scrub away an invisible contamination. Buddhism taught me that karma does not always wait patiently for another lifetime.
Karma arrives with breathtaking speed, exposing wrongdoing with terrifying immediacy. Perhaps it travels silently through bloodlines, settling its debts across generations long after the original sins have been forgotten.
My innocent matchmaker carried a burden that was never hers. Three times she came close to marriage, and three times the relationship collapsed when prospective suitors discovered that her father had been executed by firing squad. His crime had shocked the nation. Even now, I choose my words carefully. Some stories carry consequences long after the participants are dead.
His daughter inherited a sentence of her own.
His sins became her inheritance. Though blameless, she paid the price for a history she neither created nor controlled. When her fourth relationship broke-down, her revenge to humanity was brutal. She violently committed suicide with anger in such a macabre scene, imprinted for everyone concerned, nothing was left to the imagination.
Karma has a theatrical streak.
Yet karma is not always a brutal debt collector.
Is there a positive side to karma? Most definitely.
The older I become, the more I wonder whether the ancient thinkers who created these beliefs understood human nature far better than we give them credit for. They lived in a world without psychologists, sociologists, prisons, television, or social media, yet somehow recognised a simple truth left unchecked, human beings can be remarkably destructive creatures.
Greed becomes corruption.
Jealousy becomes hatred.
Hatred becomes violence.
Violence becomes war.
Perhaps karma was never intended merely as a religious doctrine. Perhaps it was society's earliest behavioural guidebook — a warning that every action, however small, leaves a footprint.
The positive side of karma is far less dramatic than its punishments. It rarely arrives with thunder and lightning. Instead, it accumulates quietly.
A kindness shown today may return years later from an unexpected direction.
A favour freely given often finds its way home.
Integrity earns trust. Loyalty earns loyalty.
For fifty years I was fortunate enough to experience this side of karma through the unwavering love of my husband. Looking back, I see countless examples of goodness returning when least expected, often through complete strangers whose paths briefly crossed mine.
Perhaps karma is not mystical at all.
Perhaps it is simply the mathematics of human behaviour.
Whatever its true nature, I remain convinced of one thing: betrayal eventually presents its invoice, and kindness eventually earns its dividend.
The seeds we plant, whether noble or destructive, always seem to find a way of growing.
Today with 73 years on this earth, it is long enough for naughty and rebellious me to possibly return in my next life as “Gallum” the bedroom gecko that I killed violently and with great satisfaction, when it slid to hide into my gym shoes.




