Luck or Effort in Varanasi Stories
A few days ago I was reading about exam pressure in India, and it reminded me of something I saw online. I ended up on https://www.wvgazettemail.com/sponsored/articles/the-cosmic-dance-of-luck-and-effort-in-south-asia/article_758b98eb-724c-43a5-963c-3946605b3ac2.html, which opens with a personal story set in Varanasi. The author describes spending three weeks there in 2019, mostly struggling to write. There’s a scene near Assi Ghat where he talks with a woman named Lakshmi at a chai stall. She shares that her son passed the civil service preliminary exam on his fourth attempt after five years of studying. What stayed with me was her comment that his luck was also good, almost as an afterthought. I’m still thinking about how naturally she combined effort and luck in the same sentence.
I read the same piece and noticed how much of it is built around that quiet conversation. The setting near Assi Ghat feels grounded and ordinary, which makes the reflection on luck more striking. The son’s achievement is clearly tied to persistence, since five years and four attempts are not small details. Yet Lakshmi doesn’t describe it as purely hard work. The way she frames success suggests a worldview where outcomes are shared between personal effort and external forces. The article doesn’t argue this directly, but the narrative tone makes it clear. It feels less like analysis and more like observation.