Since September of ’97, I’ve been either cycling, using some form of public transportation or carpooling to work. Soon after coming to the US, I began to be exposed to the consequences of the much desired and flaunted American lifestyle, consequences such as loss of biodiversity, soil loss, pollution and global warming. I had started volunteering with this extremely unusual, far thinking and radical non-profit organization, Magic. Even as a child, I was struck by Gandhi’s integrity, was haunted by his line: “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Like him, I wanted to live a life in synchronicity with my thoughts. Working with the folks at Magic, I was face-to-face for the first time in my life, with people who seemed to possess the same kind of integrity. They were all extremely well-educated and most had been very successful in their professional lives. The founder had started transforming his life at the height of his success, disillusioned by the seeming good life that is so constantly projected as the root of true happiness in this country (and the world over). Here they were, now living without a car, bicycling everywhere they needed to go locally and rarely venturing beyond. It seemed to me that not driving a car would be the simplest way for me to start reducing my ecological footprint.
The first time I biked to work, I was still at this small company, going nowhere. The job had been initially interesting, but then petered out. The company was located in one of the few tall buildings in this area, the executives officed on the top floor of the building, with a spectacular view of the city of San Jose and the brown, brush-covered mountains of East Bay. During sunset, the mountains sometimes looked golden. One time, I had taken Shanthala to the top floor and we had stood there for a while, admiring the view. We were both still new to the country. She had been happy that I had found a job that had been substantially better than the one I had come to the US for. Now, six months later, I was looking for a job again. I was earning a fairly paltry sum and we barely managed to make ends meet. Shanthala was to start applying to residency programs very soon. In those days, it was not uncommon to apply to as many as 200 schools with the hope that you’d land at least one. We labored under some constraints on the choice of the school. Besides being a good school, it had to be in a place where I could find a job and the school had to sponsor Shanthala’s H1 visa, a rarity in a country where most residency programs only provided the J1 visa, a visa that required its applicant to return to the home country for two years or work in a underserved area of the US for three before they could convert their visa into something more permanent.
In any case, one early summer weekend evening, when daylight stretched to nine at night, I set out to bike to this workplace, about five miles away. I planned to follow the same route as my drive, along a busy expressway, but one that had a broad shoulder and dedicated bike lane. I was bushed by the time I arrived at the workplace. The parking lot was mostly deserted and I sat outside the building, collecting my breath, a little apprehensive about the bike back. Shanthala hadn’t yet learnt to drive and so I had no choice but to bike back. After a while, I got on the bike and started the journey back. I had to go over a highway overpass and as I huffed up the overpass, a car zipped closely by and switched lanes right in front of me, the driver honking at me as he deserted the expressway for the highway. I was startled by the honking, surprised by what I thought was rude behavior not practiced in this country. I got worried about going over this overpass everyday, especially during a busy weekday when people seem even less patient in their hurry to get home.
I didn’t bike to work again. I switched companies, but continued to drive to work. A friend finished his PhD and came to work for the same company, even moving into the same apartment complex as the one we lived in. Biking to work was a little farther now, about six and half miles. My friend had biked everywhere in the little university town he lived in before coming here and he was eager to continue the practice. So, in his company, I set out biking to work every day.
Soon after, Shanthala started her residency at Stanford University and became the primary driver. I was stuck with biking to work or sometimes carpooling with my biking partner. I found routes that were more bike friendly, that were less dangerous than the one I had first started using. Gradually, biking the six miles or so each way became easier. The office had showers in the same building and so changing after getting to work was not a problem.
A year or so later, we moved out of the apartment, to get closer to Stanford. There was a train station that I could bike to, about a mile and half away and take the train to a point from where a company shuttle would pick me up and drop me off at work. This was a convenient arrangement, only constrained by shuttle and train times. With little or no recourse to carpooling, I biked more often, come rain or come shine.
One day, I decided to bike all the way to work, a distance of about eleven miles. I was in better shape now and could do this much more easily compared to my rather paltry first effort. As the saying goes, the hardest part of any activity is getting started. Soon, I was biking one way to work, about two or three times a week, using the train for the other times. I biked when it was freezing, when it was pouring and on that summer day when record high temperatures were set. If it was raining badly before I started from work, I’d try and hitch a ride with a colleague and Shanthala would drop me to the train station the next day.
When we decided to put down our roots a little bit by buying a house, Shanthala was adamant that the house be close to public transportation. Without it, some days you’ll be tired or it’ll be pouring and you’ll not want to bike and very soon, we’ll end up owning two cars, she said. How wise she was. We eventually ended up getting a house just a few blocks from our old place. Meanwhile, the local public transportation started a light rail (a tram) service that started near where we lived and took me straight to work without requiring the use of a shuttle. As part of the expansion plans of the company, the local city council got my company to provide passes to its employees to encourage the use of public transportation. So, I was traveling to work free of cost. Laptops became more commonplace at work and I began to use the time in the train to continue working.
Not having a second car made it very easy to bike. This may seem counter-intuitive. After all, the classical wisdom is that the more choice we have, the better it is for us, the happier we are. But a lot of studies have begun to show that we actually get paralyzed when faced with a multitude of choices, that we’re actually more stressed in the presence of many choices. In one study, customers in a local food store were allowed to sample gourmet jams, which they could then purchase. In one case, customers were offered six different varieties to sample while in another, they were offered thirty. The study found that while more people decided to sample when there were thirty samples, the number of samples people tried were about the same as when there were only six samples. More interestingly, only about 3 percent of the people who sampled thirty items ended up purchasing something, compared to thirty percent who purchased something, when they were only six samples. Another study found that compared to people who had the choice of returning what they bought, the people who did not have that choice were more satisfied with their purchase. Books such as Barry Schwartz’s “Paradox of Choice” synthesize the research on this subject and present the information in a highly readable way. For those who want a glimpse of this without getting the book, there is an online video on the subject, part of the reputed TED series of lectures.
We became fast friends with one of our neighbors. They both consulted from home to spend more time with their kids. They had two cars, one of which rarely got used. There were days when I was so pressed for time at work, that I’d borrow their car to go to work. It takes me only 15 minutes one way if I drive while it takes 45 minutes if I take the light rail to get to work. So, it clearly saved me a lot of time on busy days. They were only a few such days, but still the luxury of having the option to borrow their car was advantageous.
I’d show up at customer meetings and company offsites in my bike. Everybody joked about how diligent I was with my biking. If the meetings stretched on late into the night, someone offered a ride home. If we had to go to a restaurant, people remembered that I biked and would offer me a ride to the restaurant.
Once I started working part time, my days at work became even more frenetic. A colleague at work who lives a few blocks from our house and with whom I had biked a few times, suggested that we carpool. So, for the past year and a half, I’ve mostly been carpooling to work. He prefers to get to work much later in the day than me, but almost always accommodates my meeting schedules and leaves early if I need to. The only condition he has is that I give him a wake up call. He says that he enjoys carpooling with me because of the conversations we have. The days he is unable to make it, I walk about twenty minutes to the light rail station. I usually get a ride home or Shanthala comes to the light rail station to pick me up. Two days ago, I was late for my meeting as I set out walking. It was cold and foggy. Our gardener offered to drop me off at the station, which I accepted. Once, Maya’s nanny dropped me off at the station.
I’m saved in this big world by unforseen
friends, or times when only a glance
from a passenger beside me, or just the tired
branch of a willow inclining toward earth,
may teach me how to join earth and sky. – William Stafford, Grace Abounding
Malcolm Gladwell is one of the rock stars of non-fiction. His previous two books, “The Tipping Point” and “Blink” are enormously popular. Just recently, his third book, “Outliers – The Story of Success” came out. The New York Times review of the book starts off with:
In 1984, a young man named Malcolm graduated from the University of Toronto and moved to the United States to try his hand at journalism. Thanks to his uncommonly clear writing style and keen eye for a story, he quickly landed a job at The Washington Post. After less than a decade at The Post, he moved up to the pinnacle of literary journalism, The New Yorker. There, he wrote articles full of big ideas about the hidden patterns of ordinary life, which then became grist for two No. 1 best-selling books. In the vast world of nonfiction writing, he is as close to a singular talent as exists today.
Or at least that’s one version of the story of Malcolm Gladwell. Here is another:
In 1984, a young man named Malcolm graduated from the University of Toronto and moved to the United States to try his hand at journalism. No one could know it then, but he arrived with nearly the perfect background for his time. His mother was a psychotherapist and his father a mathematician. Their professions pointed young Malcolm toward the behavioral sciences, whose popularity would explode in the 1990s. His mother also just happened to be a writer on the side. So unlike most children of mathematicians and therapists, he came to learn, as he would later recall, “that there is beauty in saying something clearly and simply.” As a journalist, he plumbed the behavioral research for optimistic lessons about the human condition, and he found an eager audience during the heady, proudly geeky ’90s. His first book, “The Tipping Point,” was published in March 2000, just days before the Nasdaq peaked.
These two stories about Gladwell are both true, and yet they are also very different. The first personalizes his success. It is the classically American version of his career, in that it gives individual characteristics — talent, hard work, Horatio Alger-like pluck — the starring role. The second version doesn’t necessarily deny these characteristics, but it does sublimate them. The protagonist is not a singularly talented person who took advantage of opportunities. He is instead a talented person who took advantage of singular opportunities.
Growing up, I was enamored by Ayn Rand’s protagonists, Howard Roark, Francisco D’Anconia, Hank Rearden and the hero of heroes, John Galt. I admired their independent spirit and brilliance. I bought into the myth of a “self-made man”. But as my story of biking illustrates, my success in persevering rests on my fortune of being the beneficiary of much kindness, from friends to strangers, of Shanthala’s wisdom in selecting a house so that we wouldn’t be forced to get a second car. We are rarely self-made men. While a lot depends on us, as much if not more depends on the ecosystem that we’re surrounded by. If we lived in a place where it snowed, if Shanthala had not argued for a house close to public transportation, if bicycle activists had not fought for a separate bike lane, if I had not met Magic, I may not have succeeded in avoiding buying a second car. I’m glad that there is a book by someone immensely popular dealing with this subject, of attempting to shatter the myth that many of us are made to grow up with. Gladwell writes:
“It is not the brightest who succeed, nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities — and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”
