Someone controls everything

I saw mishti , from our building, with her mother near the school van. I was coming home at lunchtime and i hoped that i would go up to my flat , in the lift, alone. It was not to be, as when i came near the lift i saw that someone was just going up in it. Third floor, fourth floor and on and on went the lift right up to eleventh. By now i could hear the voices of the children talking to each other, coming nearer as i waited patiently by the lift. Soon they appeared, two little girls in school uniforms, shepharded by their mother and the other by her maid. I smiled and spoke to them. The lift arrived at last and all of us trooped in. I wondered at coincidences what if the man had gone only to the second floor. The lift would have arrived and i could have escaped into it without meeting my neighbours , enclosed , insulated in my own cocooned , comfortable existance, but someone had decreed otherwise, someone had decided that i would have to meet my neighbours and appraise them about my existance.