The Deep Divide: How Starting Points Shape Our Lives — And What We Can Do About It

 

 

We all start life from different places — literally, culturally, economically, and socially. These differences create starting point advantages and disadvantages that deeply influence our opportunities, confidence, and long-term growth. As someone born into a historically privileged zamindari family but raised away from metropolitan exposure, I’ve intimately felt this edge — or at times, the lack of it — throughout my life.

 

The Invisible Gap: More Than Just Money or Status

On the surface, my family’s history and financial standing may look like a head start. But digging deeper, I see how subtle, multigenerational gaps shape who we are and what we can become:

• I grew up in a remote town, isolated from the kind of social mixing that city youth experience naturally.

• My youth was spent in a boys-only environment, without early opportunities to mingle or build relationships across genders.

• Unlike many peers, financial planning, investments, and tax awareness came late for me because my parents’ professions didn’t encourage such knowledge.

• I lacked exposure to common social hobbies like video games or urban sports that many city-born kids take for granted.

• Even simple things like visiting metropolitan cities or understanding modern pop culture were experiences I encountered much later in life.

These may seem small, but they add up — like compound interest on a bank balance — creating a growing “invisible gap” that can make us feel out of sync with our peers.

 

Multigenerational Awareness: The Deep Privilege

Consider higher education: In many families, pursuing a PhD or advanced studies is a given, passed down through generations. For me and many like me, this is a new concept. When I meet people with multigenerational academic exposure, I sometimes feel a gap that money or hard work alone can’t bridge. This is a deep privilege — rooted in history, culture, and environment — that requires decades, if not generations, to cultivate.

 

What Does This Gap Look Like in Everyday Life?

• Socially: Friends who grew up in apartments easily navigate urban networks; I’ve only recently adjusted.

• Financially: Early financial literacy was missing, delaying investment and tax planning.

• Culturally: Exposure to hobbies, languages, and global trends varied greatly.

• Emotionally: Feeling out of place or less mature in areas where peers had early starts.

Yet, despite these gaps, I’ve also seen how values and persistence can help bridge many divides. 

 

The Power of Starting Early

The most powerful lesson I’ve learned is that starting early matters — whether it’s education, social skills, or financial planning. Starting early builds foundations that compound over time, leading to lasting advantages.

This applies not only to individuals but also families, communities, and nations. For example, India’s late liberalization and historical oppression delayed our global integration and progress compared to countries that had centuries head start in education and research. Today, over 50% of India’s population still struggles with basic English literacy, while Western universities produce thousands of research papers yearly.

 

Feeling Powerless Beyond Our Borders: Social Awareness and Civic Sense

Another striking example of starting point disadvantage emerges when we travel abroad. Many Indians, including myself, have felt a sense of awkwardness or powerlessness in foreign countries — not just from language or cultural barriers, but from a lack of civic awareness ingrained by our social environment.

In public places abroad, behaviors such as noisy conversations, littering, or disregard for queues stand out sharply and draw criticism. This is not a reflection of individual intent but a legacy of long-delayed urbanization, education, and social development.

This form of social awkwardness and visible cultural misalignment isn’t about moral failure—it is a reminder of how long-term systemic delays in civic education and global exposure can manifest as discomfort or embarrassment. While these behaviors may be correctable, the internalized sense of inferiority or “outsider syndrome” can linger and shape how we see ourselves on the global stage.

 

Introducing “Gap Mapping”: A Framework for Awareness and Action

Inspired by ideas from thinkers like Cal Newport and my own reflections, I propose a simple but powerful framework I call Gap Mapping — the conscious awareness of the gaps we carry within ourselves and our communities, categorized into:

• Shallow Gaps: Easily bridged in months or a few years (e.g., learning basic financial literacy)

• Deep Gaps: Require strategic effort and decades to close (e.g., multigenerational educational attainment)

• Deepest Gaps: Systemic and cultural divides that need multi-generational, value-driven vision and societal transformation (e.g., literacy rates, social mobility)

By honestly assessing our personal and collective gaps, we can design targeted actions — from quick wins to strategic, long-term plans — to bridge these divides and build stronger futures.

 

A Call to Action: For Ourselves and Our Nation

My experience fuels a strong desire: for my family, my close ones, and my country to never face these gaps unprepared again. The solution lies in starting early and preparing deliberately — whether for a child’s education, family financial health, or national development.

No shortcuts. No easy fixes. Only sustained, value-rooted effort over time.

 

Why This Matters Beyond the Individual

These gaps are at the root of many societal divisions — caste, gender, geography, and economic status. When groups feel powerless or irrelevant compared to others, social cohesion breaks down.

Our leaders and policymakers must recognize these starting point disadvantages and invest in long-term, generational solutions that foster equality of opportunity and dignity for all.

 

Final Thoughts

Acknowledging the deep, sometimes painful reality of unequal starting points is not about blame or despair. It’s about awareness, responsibility, and hope.

We can chart a new course by mapping our gaps, embracing early action, and building inclusive, resilient identities for ourselves and our communities. Together, we can transform our collective starting points — from limitations into launchpads for lasting success.

 

Resonance: Reflections on Music, Memory, and the Ghazal

 

 

There are songs that don't merely play; they reverberate through your being, stirring something elemental inside. For years now, I’ve felt a persistent vibration within—an urge to write about certain songs, to document their impact on me, not just as a listener but as someone transformed in their presence. Music, for me, is not entertainment; it’s an invocation. A doorway to depth. A reminder that I am alive, and meaningfully so.

Recently, I returned to a song that’s haunted me in the best way: Kal Chaudhavin Ki Raat Thi, rendered with understated magic by Jagjit Singh. This ghazal evokes not just aesthetic pleasure but a bittersweet nostalgia—for the era it echoes, for the elegance of Delhi’s retro high society, and for a time when live concerts felt like gatherings of souls, not just audiences.

“Kal chaudhavin ki raat thi…”
When he sings this, it doesn’t feel like a performance. It feels like a friend—an old, poetic friend—sitting with me under a silver moon, narrating a scene with affection and wonder. It’s intimate. Almost confessional.

The best ghazals do this. They are more than songs; they are finely crafted speeches, delivered with the weight of personal memory and social grace. Like a piece by Pu La Deshpande or Gulzar, they create not just resonance but reverence. They offer emotional texture, like soft silk across the skin of the heart.

I’ve seen this effect firsthand. After my paternal grandmother passed away, I couldn't stop crying whenever I heard Chitthi Na Koi Sandes. I had spoken to her just hours before her sudden passing. That song became a vessel of grief—too powerful to bear. Eventually, I stopped listening to it. That is the potency of lyrics paired with perfect delivery: they can become too true.

Which leads to a hypothesis worth exploring: could certain types of ghazals enhance emotional intelligence or even social bonding in communal settings? Might some genres of music increase empathy, while others deepen introspection? These are not idle questions. They merit inquiry.

My own early encounters with live music came from an unusual yet beautiful source. My grandmother’s home was adjacent to a Lingayat math in our village—a center of cultural life. It was here I was exposed to mesmerizing mehfils, especially those led by my grandmother’s elder brother, Ramanna—affectionately known to all of us as Ram Mama. If alive today, he would be a hundred years old.

Ram Mama’s performances, held in open courtyards beside a Shiv Ling, were electrifying. Old men—his lifelong friends—would set up simple platforms and sit in quiet reverence as he delivered alaps, taans, and swaras. I didn’t understand much technically, but emotionally I was enraptured. The audience, too, was transformed—silent, wide-eyed, with an almost sacred peace on their faces. In those moments, music was not a performance—it was a collective awakening. And these memories remain etched in the social DNA of villages like Billur and Adhalli, where Ram Mama had fans in every household.

Those of us who grew up in temple towns or in the slow magic of the Doordarshan era will relate. The crackle of a tape recorder. The anticipation of a favorite song. The family falling silent as the music took over the room. Today, music is often a private, solitary experience—streamed in earbuds, consumed quickly, forgotten faster. But once upon a time, music was an event. A celebration. A mirror held to our collective soul.

This contrast between private and public listening is not trivial—it has changed how we experience music. The old way fostered social memory. The new way fosters emotional consumption. Perhaps what we need is not to choose, but to consciously blend both. Let the headphones deliver intimacy, but let concerts create communion.

Among other songs that have moved me recently are Yesudas’s Bangaradinda Bannana Tanda, the Marathi masterpiece Mala Sanga Sukh Mhanje Nakki Kay Asta, and the Tamil gem Aasa Kooda. Each of these songs, from different linguistic worlds, holds its own emotional charge—another essay for another day.

What binds these songs together is the era in which they were composed. The setting. The emotional climate of their time. Every truly great song is a time capsule. It reflects the heartbeat of the society it emerged from. This is why remixes so often fall flat—they miss the soil in which the original song was rooted.

I once read a book on Gulzar’s songs called "Jiya Jale", and what struck me was how each track was anchored in a story—rich with context, history, mood, and texture. We do ourselves a disservice when we strip songs from their original atmospheres. Listening to them in their purest form isn’t just an act of nostalgia—it’s a necessary cultural archaeology.

If we wish to feel the full power of a song, we must pay attention to its vital signs:

• The emotional setting: Is it a friend’s confession? A lover’s whisper?

• The nostalgia it triggers: Does it carry echoes of a bygone time or lost innocence?

• The rhetorical power: Does it speak with the gravity of a meaningful speech?

• The genre’s role: Ghazals for intimate gatherings, folk for community bonding.

• The era it reflects: What does it tell us about the social, emotional, or political climate of its birth?

Music, in its finest form, is more than an art. It is a psychological, social, and spiritual phenomenon. A good song does not just entertain—it shapes our perception, our memory, even our identity.

We need more music philosophers among us. People who can decode songs like one would decode dreams. People who can help us engage with music not as consumers, but as seekers.

If we can listen mindfully, music may yet become one of the deepest tools we have to reflect on the human condition—and to elevate it.