Jugadh - The Magic of Creative Ingenuity

Location: Road between Bangalore, Mysore, Coorg and Wayanad in Karnataka and Kerala South India

There is a word in Hindi - jugadh - which is roughly translated as "the magic of creative ingenuity." An example of jugadh is when you see a heaping pile of coconuts and one guy who needs to carry them, and you wonder- how is that guy possibly going to carry 100 coconuts? 

Somehow those coconuts reach their destination. 

How? 

Jugadh.

People often ask me why I like India so much. Now I have a one word answer - Jugadh. 

India is a colorful and fiercely unique country with 1.2 billion people of vastly differing religions, cultures, ethnicities, languages, economic statuses and everything that goes with that. Yet, when I think about what unifies India's people across all these different characteristics, what I find most endearing and inspiring about India is this magic.

Nothing in this world is perfect. Marketing is all about creating illusions of and desire for perfection. As such, on my personal list of first world problems, being concerned with a lack of perfection permeates much of my existence despite my efforts to the contrary. In the corporate world, being concerned with a lack of perfection is encouraged - it drives employees and organizations to identify problems and fix them. In personal lives, striving for something closer to perfect is a strong motivator to many people, whether it's more money, a bigger house, nicer clothes, or a better relationship with spouse, friends, etc. In one form or another the pursuit of perfection is what drives most people in most developed nations. Yet, it is an unachievable goal.

We forget that it's unachievable because we, as Americans, have so many resources at our disposal. Yes, America has its problems, and living in San Francisco I am reminded of the many flaws of our system with the vast number of homeless people in one of the richest cities in the richest country in the world. Yet, in comparison to most others, we have unbelievable resources right at our finger tips, which leads us to expect to eventually reach perfection, even if perfection is a loosely defined moving target. This is simply not the case in India, and so there is no pretense that anything can be perfect. What that results in is a much more tangible daily visualization of problem solving and jugadh - people doing what they can with what they have, even if what they have is next to nothing.

While traveling in India, it is quite noticeable to foreigners that people everywhere are doing seemingly ridiculous things - strapping a full-sized refrigerator to the back of a motorcycle, a family of five stuffing onto one motorcycle with mom riding side-saddle in a sari while holding a baby, auto-rickshaws so over-stuffed with hay that it looks like they might actually explode, shepherds pushing hundreds of goats across the national highway, etc. But foreigners who judge or fixate on how dangerous or seemingly inconvenient many of these activities are should take a moment to understand and appreciate the role that jugadh is playing in keeping one of the world's most populace countries running. 

If you need to get a refrigerator home and all you have is a moped - delivery service is not an option, renting or borrowing a car is not an option - what exactly would you do? You could 1) not buy the refrigerator (but you really need it), 2) wait until you have access to transportation (which may be never), or  3) you could take it home right now with a little jugadh and some (hopefully) strong rope. 

Need to get to the grandparents' house with your whole family and all you have is a motorcycle? You can 1) stay home 2) try to find alternative transportation or 3) pile onto the motorcycle that you have and just go. When option 2 is clearly not available, people are left with options 1 and 3. While option one sounds the safest, in India it is the equivalent of cutting your most basic lifeline - family. They are your support, emotionally and financially, and staying close to them provides intangible values that are more important to people than the risk they take by piling the family onto the motorcycle. Does this mean that it's safe? Of course not. Would that family chose to take a car if they could? Very likely. But they don't have that choice. What they have instead is jugadh. 

Let's return to my example of the guy with 100 coconuts. I don't have some sort of sadistic enjoyment of watching people suffer while doing difficult things. I enjoy observing examples of the perseverance and creativity of jugadh because it reminds me that with a little jugadh you can achieve far more than anyone thought possible. Don't sit around complaining or sulking that you don't have the perfect tools - figure out how to do what you need to do with whatever you have. What I have in comparison to coconut guy is a lot - so I'd better get cracking. 

If that guy could move 100 coconuts with a bicycle, then what can I achieve? I'd better roll up my sleeves and get to it - there's a tall pile of coconuts waiting for me.

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