Fate always gives you two choices: the one you should take, and the one you do

Fate always gives you two choices: the one you should take, and the one you do is a maxim about the gap between knowing the wiser course and choosing another. Lin recalls Scorpio George’s words while weighing the likely future of the Bombay mafia councils: Salman Mustaan can walk away from a conflict with Chuha, or defeat him and inherit the criminal trade and power that make Chuha formidable.

Meaning and Form

The saying presents fate not as a single unavoidable outcome but as a choice between a course one ought to take and the course one actually takes. Its force lies in the mismatch: the right choice is recognizable, yet recognition does not ensure that it will prevail. The maxim therefore holds moral responsibility alongside inevitability. A person may anticipate where a decision leads and still be drawn toward it.

The Choice Facing Salman Mustaan

Lin applies the saying to an approaching struggle between Khader Khan’s council, under Salman Mustaan, and the Walidlalla gang, led in practice by Chuha. Walid remains the council’s nominal head, but age and illness have left him with diminished power; Chuha has gained ground through conquest and coercion. Lin expects the expansion to lead to open conflict unless Salman agrees to merge with Chuha.

The alternatives are unequal in moral cost. Salman could avoid the fight by walking away, or win it and absorb Chuha’s territory and trade in heroin, women, and pornography. Lin sees the money involved as too powerful to approach without becoming compromised: it can do both good and harm while concentrating power in too few hands. Victory, in this formulation, risks becoming a form of surrender to the system being fought.

Narrative Significance

The maxim distills Lin’s divided judgment. He hopes Khader Khan’s council will win, but recognizes that defeating Chuha may make Salman into his successor rather than preserve a better order. The saying gives this political forecast a personal ethical shape: the decisive question is not only who wins, but what the winner must become.

Lin introduces the thought as something Scorpio George once said, then leaves the argument unresolved. He claims that the conflict has nothing to do with him and that he does not care which way it goes, even as he has just traced its likely consequences in detail. He stands to leave when Abdullah arrives on his Enfield motorcycle, while Sanjay’s protests and his friends’ laughter continue behind him. The departure does not settle which choice Salman will make; it leaves the maxim hanging between prediction and responsibility.