3 Life Lessons I Learned From Mumbai
Leaving Mumbai at 18 years of age for a better life is the biggest leap I have taken in my life. Fear, sadness, excitement and curiosity all bundled into one, it was nothing short of an adventure. Reflecting back, raised in suburban Mumbai and now living in Toronto, I learned my fair share of life lessons in my most formative years. Here’s three major ones:
1) Perspective Is Everything
You only see what you can see. As you leave the Mumbai International Airport, you see the modern India. In 2008, the stretch of wall on the airport road was covered with an Ad for an Italian Marble company. Their marketing slogan was Beautiful Forever. Behind it was this slum called Annawadi, filled with people suffering and left behind amidst the success of modern India. How ironic! The pulitzer prize winning book “Behind The Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo tells stories of individuals like you and I, living in Annawadi, and how they see life.
You might not see what is behind that wall unless you looked beyond it. Your perspective blocks you from seeing the whole picture. Perspective dictates reality. Expanding your perspective can help you develop better understanding of the people around you. Your decisions and actions depend immensely on that. Perspective is everything!
2) Don’t Just Be A Monkey With A Wrench
“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.”- Charlie Kaufman
This is evident in a lower-middle class society in Mumbai. Case in point, a man in his early 40s, Rick, needed cancer treatment. He couldn’t afford the medical costs.
Back then, you could take a small loan from the government on a very low interest, if you had a business. It was a government scheme to promote small businesses. People from societies like such would request loans, for their “Business” in dire situations like this. Technically its corruption, but people got by because of it. People got educated, recovered from diseases, bought houses etc this way.
An year later, a new politician was elected and getting rid of corruption was his first priority. He somehow found this loophole, and added stringent rules to make sure this doesn’t happen. The plan worked! Rick could neither get the loan nor make near enough money by begging. 3 years later he passed away leaving his wife and three kids.
In the eye of the politician, he saw corruption and got rid of it. For all he knew, he was doing the right thing. In reality he merely shifted the corruption from people to bureaucrats and replaced it with a void. Although unintentionally, it killed a man and affected many lives. Like a monkey with a wrench he whacked at the first sight of a snake, not knowing that the snake kept a plaque of rats at bay.
Real problems in life are way complicated than you think and you need to be better than the archetypal monkey to fix it for the better. It is crucial to understand the problem completely before you can even think about solving it. You don’t want to be the reason for making someone’s life worse when all you wanted to do was fix things.
3) People Are Tough
“People are tougher than things are terrible.” — Dr Jordan Peterson
A man lost his entire family to a car accident, a single mother lost her only child to suicide and another man was imprisoned for 5 years on a false charge of murder.
I have seen people go through the worst things you can imagine and still come out the other end unbroken or at the very least functional. These people although hurt, are not resentful, bitter or nihilistic. I believe that a human being’s ability to overcome tragedies is akin to godliness.
Rick’s family pulled through at the end. Instead of breaking apart, the family somehow built their boat and sailed away. It is a reminder that it doesn’t matter how bad the situation is, you have the tools necessary to tackle it. There is utility in knowing that, believing that. You are way tougher than you think.
I consider myself an agnostic, but the closest thing to God I have seen is the spirit of people like this. It is proof that we can strive in the face of tragedy.
