Arun Singh

Crisp. It’s an adjective I understood only after moving to California, where the days are hot or cold or dry or wet, but where they are seldom crisp. “Briskly cold, fresh, and invigorating” is how Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines this emphatic adjective, and it’s a fine definition to describe the weather, up here in the Northeast, the day my friend Arun and I go for a stroll in Washington, D.C.

I am in D.C. for work, but have come a few days early to spend the weekend with Arun, whom I haven’t seen for more than three years. On this crisp fall day, we are headed to Big Bear Cafe, a spot that was a safe haven for Arun during the work-from-home days of the COVID-19 pandemic. There, relaxed patio vines hug the off-white walls of the café, their last remaining leaves basking in the afternoon sun, almost as if they were told to hang on for just a bit longer and divert the attention from the cozy, quiet cottage-like interior. It’s a vibe, one unmistakably emblematic of Arun: understated, warm, thoughtful, intentional.

The two of us met in grad school in the fall of 2015. I have trouble remembering when it was during our two-year Master’s program that we started hanging out regularly, but all that I know is that many of my memories of Boston from 2016 to 2017 invariably portray Arun as one of the central characters. In some of them, we are walking to the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, our noses nuzzled against our scarves, our teeth chattering in the biting Massachusetts winter. In other ones, we are drinking fragrant tea at Andala Coffee House in the springtime; I am complaining to Arun about their service and Arun is laughing at me because I keep going there despite being continuously annoyed by their service.

“I don’t think I could do Boston again,” he says once we find a patio table that’s in the sun. “I like living in D.C.”

“Because of the Boston winters?”

“That’s definitely one of the reasons,” he laughs. “I also think Boston is very competitive. Every conversation there eventually converges to some form of comparison, whether it’s what degree you have, what job you have, what achievements you have. There isn’t as much of that here. D.C. is a much more diverse city. It has a lot of cultural stuff, it’s artsy, it’s activist.”

Technology and policy was the name of our Master’s program, and Arun—unlike me—remained committed to the personal statements we had submitted to the admissions committee, in which we promised we would use the degree to solve technological problems in society through responsible policy solutions. After graduation, he moved to D.C. and joined The World Bank as an energy specialist, working with the governments of developing countries to build and advance their energy infrastructures. Arun’s focus so far has been on Africa, particularly on Rwanda and Mozambique, where he travels often and works with the national energy ministries to reform and advance the Rwandan and Mozambican power sectors.

That’s the intentionality that I speak of when I think about Arun. Nothing about him is incidental. Every facet of his life is a fitting thread—its purpose perhaps inapparent to those who know him only distantly—that eventually weaves itself into one marvelous web. One cohesive life story. The move to D.C., the work on energy infrastructure, the interest in economic development, all these threads begin to look apparent if one starts from the beginning: from Arun’s roots.

Arun grew up in Ayodhya, a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India. That said, the city of Ayodhya itself is on the smaller side and is a bit more bucolic, with its urban core surrounded by the Ghaghara river on the north and vast, sprawling fields on the east and the west.

“My home and its surroundings were very green,” Arun says. “I think growing up in that setting made me very environmentally conscious as a kid.”

“But Ayodhya is not where you were for university, right? You moved?”

“Correct,” he adds. “For university, I moved to Roorkee, further up north in India.”

Arun studied chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee. He loved science even as a kid, so a career in engineering seemed like an obvious choice. And, it turned out well—he loved being a university student. It was the first time he was on his own, he made new friendships, he developed his tastes, and he became a voracious reader during those four years.

Then, naturally, came the seismic shock of entering the real world. For his first job after school, Arun moved to Jamnagar, a city in the state of Gujarat, to work for an oil company. It didn’t take long for the contrast between his profit-centric work and his sustainability-centric values to evolve into volcanic self-questioning.

“After about a year and a half, it was all,” he adds and pauses, “I just kept thinking, ‘Where is this leading? What am I doing?’”

“So, what happened next?” I ask.

“It was during that job that I began reading newspapers more often, especially around policy. I realized that if I really wanted to implement positive change in the world, engineering on its own would not be enough. Knowing how to develop strong policy solutions was essential.”

Arun then moved to Mumbai and started working at The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Lab, more commonly known as J-PAL, a global research center whose mission is to fight poverty through scientifically-informed policies. The new job was the natural fit for where Arun wanted to go. It attracted people with highly technical skill sets who wanted to solve a pressing global issue with a measurable, scientific approach—in this case, randomized controlled trials—instead of doing the default political power move: throw money at poverty and let someone else implement the actual solution, whatever that might be.

Albeit difficult at first, his life in Mumbai eventually led to a personal renaissance.

“I really disliked it in the beginning,” he describes this period of life. “It was my first time living in a really big city. The commute, the pollution, the size of Mumbai, it was a lot to handle. But, over time, I started noticing the good things. It was a city where people minded their own business, and where you were left alone to just be. Mumbai is also the center of Bollywood, so I started watching films more often. The first time I went to Mumbai International Film Festival, I just thought: ‘Wow, I have to keep doing this.’”

His friendship circles, once again, started to expand. The J-PAL coworkers, many of whom worked in a different office, in New Delhi, became his lifelong friends. The night before our interview, we went to a Diwali celebration in D.C., hosted by a few of his city friends, and it was there that I learned those city friends were the coworkers whom he had met in India through J-PAL. Many of them now work in the development sector in D.C., just like Arun. It took me a minute to buy into the story, and when I noted in disbelief how improbable that sequence of events sounded, Arun nodded and laughed.

The personal renaissance became obvious to Arun only during his holiday visits to Ayodhya, when Mumbai’s fast-paced and energetic lifestyle collided head-on with the slow and quiet lifestyle of his hometown.

“It was such a reverse culture shock,” Arun notes. “That visceral contrast, I distinctly remember experiencing it. I remember going back home, and my dad saying, ‘What are people in Mumbai rushing after? What is the point of that fast lifestyle?’”

It’s starting to get chilly at Big Bear Cafe so we start walking toward Meridian Hill Park. The first time I visited D.C. was on a hot weekend in September 2020, and Arun, who was my host then as well, brought me to the same park on a Sunday afternoon, right after we had devoured the most delicious lunch at an Eritrean restaurant. Seeing the park back then—during what I thought erroneously was the post-pandemic period—bustle with music and loud chatter completely electrified me. I had yearned to see crowds of people after months of desolation in the pandemic-shattered San Francisco, and I finally found them in a park in D.C.

This time around, the park is quieter. The trees have changed colors. Some have turned red, some have turned orange, others yellow. With no people around, the fields of grass, covered with gorgeous fall foliage, now seem much bigger. It all somehow feels more welcoming compared to three years ago. Without all the exhilarating stimuli this time, I happen to notice an imposing statue of Dante Alighieri in the park.

“You know, I still don’t understand why a statue of Dante is here,” Arun says, bewildered.

For a few seconds, we both stare, in silence, at the gargantuan bronze reincarnation of the poet.

“Washington, D.C.” I whisper. “The ninth circle of hell.”

Arun laughs.

We continue with our conversation. It occurs to me that I had never explicitly asked Arun why he went from working at J-PAL in Mumbai to applying to the Technology and Policy Program at MIT. Wasn’t this the perfect job for him? Why did he move to the US?

“I really liked it,” he clarifies, “but, after some time, I realized that research centers often don’t have enough influence to get a seat at the table with the folks who actually make things happen. During my time in Mumbai, I worked directly with state government employees who dealt with pollution, but what that entailed was spending half of my time outside these people’s offices, sipping chai, and waiting for them to eventually come out and talk to me. And, I would also say, this is when I became aware that pure scientific research methods, like the randomized control trials that we were doing, on their own weren’t enough.”

For context, a randomized control trial is a form of scientific experiment that helps eliminate selection bias, as well as other confounding factors, by randomizing study participants and therefore creating a control group that is as similar as possible to the treatment group. It’s not a new scientific technique, but it had not been used to study the impact of policy solutions until recently.

As an example, in a randomized control trial that studies the health impacts of distributing mosquito nets to rural people in a developing country, some villages would be randomly assigned to a treatment group and some villages would be randomly assigned to a control group. The people in the treatment group would receive the mosquito nets, and those in the control group would not. The health impacts would then be analyzed over a long-term period and recommendations would be developed. Bunch of other rigorous research setup happens behind the scenes, but this is the premise of randomized control trials in a nutshell.

“They can be a fantastic way to come up with the right recommendations for very specific development problems,” Arun adds. “But randomized control trials are not the solution to every issue in developing countries. In many cases, adequate state capacity has to be built, institutions have to be strengthened, legal systems need to be reformed, laws have to be enforced, and policy implementation needs to be thought through. That’s really when I became aware that I wanted to go in a different direction.”

We find a bench in the park and sit down. I ask Arun to give me a minute to write down all these details, which probably sounds like I need to simply transcribe what he is saying. But what I actually need to do is underscore all the sentences that contextualize the thoughtful and intentional twenty-six-year-old Arun whom I would meet in Boston, in the next chapter of this story, when he leaves Mumbai and takes the necessary steps to go in a different direction.

When I first met Arun, in Boston, his thoughtfulness and intentionality were immediately apparent to me. But it’s only now that I feel comfortable using the word intentional when talking about him, primarily because the word itself can imply a degree of premeditation, which does not apply to Arun. His intentionality is instead a result of being a lifelong experimentalist, of being someone who figures out how to be himself through unfaltering trial and error.

That is obvious in the way Arun weaves his sense of purpose but it is also noticeable in the way he lives his life, fearlessly trying things out until he figures out what works for him. It’s a great method because treating life as an experiment means that, after many unsuccessful results, one eventually encounters success and acquires wisdom. I mention to Arun that it seems he is now in the phase of life when he gets to reap the rewards of his experimental setup. First, he gets to do what he loves and what he deems to be impactful.

“Definitely, I think it’s a career with a purpose,” he adds. “From the outside, the World Bank is a financial institution, but I feel that what we do goes beyond just being a bank. We are financiers in the sense that we give loans to sovereign countries, but we are also there to collaborate with the governments and provide technical assistance. With the projects that I am co-leading in Mozambique and Rwanda, I am there to help support the projects as an energy specialist, and I get to work with the energy ministries and electric utilities on ensuring they have what they need to run the projects.”

I ask him what it is about this job that drives him.

“That’s a good question. I think it just bothers me that there is a place like the US, where you have private companies sending rockets to space or Silicon Valley companies working on problems that actually aren’t problems at all, while there are countries with millions of people who don’t even have electricity. I find it fulfilling to work on this.”

“Do you think everyone in your line of work is driven by that?” I ask.

“There are always people who are in it for the power. But I have met people at my job who I truly admire, who always push on these projects to get the right thing done, not to just do the bare minimum. They see themselves as international civic servants, and I find that very inspiring. To work with others' interest in mind, not just one's own self-interest.”

Second, beyond the professional fulfillment, it seems that he has surrounded himself with people he loves and cherishes.

“That too, for sure,” he says, “I have a great group of people in D.C. now. All these things, I would say: having a meaningful job, being financially stable, being emotionally in a better space, having a truly meaningful and fulfilling relationship. This has definitely been the most peaceful time of life for me since childhood.”

We start walking again because we have to meet another friend from grad school for dinner in the city, and Arun wants to stop by Lost City Books before that. A ten-minute walk from Meridian Hill Park, in the heart of the Adams Morgan neighborhood, Lost City Books is one of the rare bookstores in D.C. that sells used books. If there is one thing that Arun misses about Boston, it’s the abundance of bookstores selling used copies.

From the outside, Lost City Books looks small and unobtrusive, giving off the impression that it’s a quaint reprieve for the city’s introverts. Yet, inside, everything about it is oddly chic and lively. The aisles are spacious and uncluttered, the colorful books on display are flawlessly arranged, and the four bookstore workers at the register are eagerly describing their favorite music album covers to one another.

“What are your favorite books?” I ask Arun as he peruses the ancient history section.

“I often think in terms of authors instead,” he says, “and I would say I really like the authors of the Russian realism era, like Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. I do like George Orwell’s writings as well. I guess, if I had to pick one book that profoundly influenced how I think, it would be The Plague by Albert Camus. Have you read it?”

I think about that month in the spring of 2020 when I had borrowed The Plague from my friend Mariana. I had read the first thirty pages of the book, and then realized that reading a book about the plague during an actual pandemic was plunging me into an existential crisis. It feels weird to suddenly bring up this solipsistic story, so I decide to spare Arun from my superfluous stream of consciousness.

“Uh,” I mumble, “I think I started, but then stopped. I think, you know, I just got busy or something.”

“I really love that novel,” he adds. “I read it when I was living in Mumbai and when I was going through the existential turmoil of questioning my own purpose. I found comfort in how Camus accepted life's meaninglessness as the starting point to ask what one should do. In The Plague, the doctor tends to plague-infected patients daily, knowing well that all of them will die. When another character questions the doctor's actions, the doctor responds that doing his job in fighting the plague is a matter of ‘common decency.’ This idea of common decency has stuck with me all these years.”

“You handle existential crises better than I do,” I laugh.

We linger at the bookstore for a bit longer. At some point, while walking around the aisles aimlessly, I notice that Lady Gaga’s song “Monster” is playing in the background, which for a moment seems absolutely ordinary, but then I realize the song is fourteen years old because The Fame Monster was released in 2009 and, wow, that means fourteen years had passed since then, and here I am now, all those years later, in a bookstore in Washington, D.C. with Arun.

The whole thought process begins to sound like the beginning of another existential crisis, so I tune out Gaga’s rhythmic “mo-mo-mo-monster” and join Arun, who, at the cash register, is checking out a copy of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard. We put on our coats and leave Lost City Books, and when we step outside, it’s already dark and the night air is not crisp but is instead frosty, and the city lights are bright and warm under the shimmering winter stars.