Through the Cracks

How to get filthy rich in rising Asia.

I have always been interested in narratives that span lifetimes. Where the story starts young, and the protagonist goes through a series of events that mold him into a different person as he ages. You read along every challenge he faces, every decision he makes, every mistake, and in every turn of events, his constraints become your own.

Here's a truth: The world is governed by randomness. In that, events happen without any order and are influenced by the variants in their inherent environments. Narratives that span lifetimes are not an exception. But it’s this kind of randomness that raises the stakes in different lives. And in the end, all happy narratives are alike, but each unhappy narrative is unhappy in its own way.

There’s a narrative I’m particularly interested in.

That of a person who, through sheer will, wit, or stubbornness, makes it to university, or a tertiary institution, having worked their way through an arduous set of circumstances. Maybe this person had parents or guardians who acknowledged the importance of education and strived to get them through school, but that’s as far as the parents could go.

So, in such a narrative, our protagonist finds themselves coming from some kind of backwaters into a modern, savvy world, exposed to a myriad of cultural shocks. The skills or tactics they relied on to get them ‘here’, aren’t enough to get them further, but they are hungry for a different life, so they keep adapting even though not fully belonging.

As the story unfolds, their life becomes a tapestry of high highs and some low lows. And with all that range, they at some point tend to become what Nassim Taleb calls ‘antifragile’. They benefit from the shocks. They thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors. They grow to love adventure, risk, and uncertainty, having lived a life with plenty of unknowns.

Life, by Lu Yao, is a popular book in China for having created a narrative that espouses this. But my favorite book so far is How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid. I’ve been thinking about it since I read it.

It starts in the slums of Pakistan, when the protagonist is still a child, sick in bed with Hepatitis. But he fortunately recovers, and they then move to the city into some form of servant quarters where his father worked.

Soon he’s correcting his teachers in class.

His independence peaks early. As a teenager he’s already selling DVDs, saving some of his proceeds for enough protein to build muscle at the gym. It earns him a savage reputation in the street brawls that break out among the boys of his neighborhood.

In college, a gangly student leader takes him under his wings. This is the person he turns to when his mother gets cancer. Her death leaves him dazed, and he distances himself from the college ‘brotherhood’ as a result.

It goes on and on. He becomes a sales rep, but the business later collapses. Years on, he starts a bottled water company at around 35 and makes it through turf wars. He buries his father. Soon, he is well on his way to becoming a man of means. His marriage suffers from a lack of intimacy, mostly his fault. She tries to make it work, but he spends too much time working and is emotionally distant. A child eases the situation. But she later leaves him.

At some point his accountant steals from him, leaving him bankrupt. But he finds comfort in a woman with whom he’d been friends when he was selling DVDs as a teenager. They meet in old age, both worn out and having done their best.

This is a very high-level summary of the book. There are so many lessons, and they helped me align my priorities. Reading through an entire life made me think more about the right things to focus on, and how to avoid the things that don’t matter. There are so many things that we focus on that are not in our control. That 10000ft perspective on life sometimes makes me feel like Columbus with a compass.