The fates of two girls born worlds apart.

I always imagine this, two young girls coming to God and asking to make their dreams come true. 

God then shows them two earthly fates to be born into: one is about a girl born into a broken home with a mother who left her at 9 for another man and a father who is unemployed due to diabetes, and the other fate is about a girl who is born into a home that is practically a skyscraper, all 27-storey high, like a mansion in the sky. 

How would the girls choose then? 

Because if you think about it, there is nothing different about the two girls standing before God. One is not anymore special than the other. 

In looks, they are about the same. In intellgence, it is not something that separates them that much. And in ability and drive, both traits can be taught, inspired and developed over time on earth with the right setting and encouragement. 

Now, I know the choice would be obvious. Like Warren Buffet once said, if he had been born into the streets of Calcutta, he thinks that he would not be where he is today. 

But the catch is this. The two vastly different fates are not for the choosing. The two girls are not allowed to pick what they want, even if what they want is painfully obvious as one is a pauper’s daughter and the other is a king’s princess. Mind you, the latter is the life of a fairy tale, and the former, well, lets just say it is fairly scary.

So, they will have to draw lots. They would have to pick one of them and hope they choose the right earthly fate. 

And guess what, Aida chose the shorter stick so to speak, while Isha (Ambani) chose the unimaginably charmed life of untold excesses. That is their fate for the rest of their lives, and that brings me to the news this morning. 

An article written by Raul Dancel (Philippines Correspondent) caught a snapshot of the life of a 22-year old Aida from Philippines. 

Yes, her mother left her when she was 9 and her father is sick and can hardly make ends meet. So Aida has to come to Singapore to work. 

She answered a local ad asking for the jobs described as ”brand ambassadors”, “beauty consultants”, “push girls”, message therapists and waitresses, and Aida became a waitress hoping to make enough to send money back to her father.

But simple dreams like that don’t come true the way they are advertised. Aida was promised that if she works one month, she will be debt-free”. 

Yet, after a few months, Aida said she wants to go home. She is tired, and she had barely “made a dent on the debt she owed the manager-cum-owner of the pub” she works in. It reports that “she owed $3000 for her air ticket, work permit and bribes paid to get her to Singapore.”

According to the article, Raul described what it meant for Aida working in a pub. It is based on a points system. Aida earns her pay based on “the total amount of alcohol a customer buys for her.”

“”This is how it works. Each week, (Aida) has to rack up 210 “points” so she can pay down her debt and earn a little extra for herself. A point is equal to one serving of any alcohol a customer buys for her that costs $10.””

Here is how Raul broke it down in the article.

“A $10 shot of tequila gets a point. A bottle of beer at $50 earns five points and a bottle of whisky at $300 earns 30 points. In a week, that means a staggering 30 shots of tequila or six bottles of beer consumed (by Aida) over nine to 11 hours every day.”

Raul added: “You know how to tell if the girls have been here too long? When they already look like a walking sack of potatoes.”

Aida admitted that in that state of complete inebriation, she allowed the men to do whatever they like to them. She said, “that’s my job.” 

Next comes the life of a princess, that is, the daughter of the richest man in Indian and Asia, Mukesh Ambani. 

His only daughter, Isha, is married to the son of another industrialist billionaire. Isha apparently won the ovarian lottery and her wedding costs US$100 million with a $64 million diamond-themed mansion waiting for the newly wed. 

The wedding was so big and grand that Beyoncé performed in it for 45 minutes and the bill for that is US$4 million. And the guest list is literally the who’s who of the world - John Kelly, Hillary Clinton, Salman Khan and so on. 

One sociologist (Dr Parul Bhandari) said: “”In modern times, “neoliberal” times, heightened consumerism, along with the influence of Bollywood, has created an image of a “perfect” Indian wedding as one that is big, loud and glamorous.””

This is in fact how the rich defines themselves. Their identity is wrapped up airtight with the symbolism of wealth flaunted as a kind of cultural/status signal sent to the other bIllionaires in the country. 

While billionaire Lakshmi Mittal’s splurge of up to US$60 million for his daughter’s nuptials in 2004 was once considered the “gold standard”, the Ambanis saw it fit to up that to another US$40 million. 

And in terms of education, health and weddings, the fate of Aida and Isha cannot be more different or worlds apart. While Aida had little schooling, having to work at a young age in a foreign land to support her father, Isha is a graduate from Stanford, and her only worry now is probably on counting her wedding gifts and thinking about home decor. 

In terms of health, Aida is now being treated as no more than an alcohol barrel and she is only in her early twenties. Need I say more about the charmed life of Isha who is only 27? 

Lesson? Well, on a Sunday morning where some section of our society are all dressed up for Sunday service (that would include my family), I apologise for starting this post mentioning God as a gift-giver or dream weaver. 

My point is about the luck of the ovarian draw and you cannot make it any more visceral than contrasting the fates of Aida and Isha. 

Now, let me preface this by saying that this post is not about what we can do about it or how we can close the gap. God knows there are many out there making a difference in the lives of people like Aida, and our collective hearts should be duly lifted and encouraged. 

But I am afraid that the luck of the ovarian draw is often the stark reality that we rather not talk about, especially not when we are singing songs of victory and joy. 

And that is understandable because when you offer hope, whether in a closed-door seminar before a paying audience or in a public, all-inclusive church congregation, you offer it regardless of whether you honestly and completely believe it or not. 

For faith is the evidence of things not seen, or of substance of things hoped for, therefore, it is oxymoronic for one to hope for hopelessness or have faith in faithlessness? That is also wholly against human nature. 

But alas, human nature and reality are very different and most times, our continual survival and flourishing depend very much on faith, hope and persisten belief. For some, they are the cornerstone of their eventual success and for others, it is a recurring delusion that they never give up pining their hope on till their expiry on earth. 

So, in the end, between stark reality and faith, between the luck of the ovarian draw and hope, and between the fates of Aida and Isha and persistent belief, I admit that I am biased towards human nature, towards faith, hope and belief - because the alternative is quite unthinkable. 

As a believer, there is another version of that God encounter I would like to end this post with - which some may agree or disagree.

I concede that you can’t change where you are born into, or which family, and in reality, that could very well determine your fate for a long long time. 

Admittedly, a lot of us never escape from our place of birth. It still haunts us, debilitates us, even condemns us. Like what William Blake said, “Every night and every morn some to misery are born. Every morn and every night some are born to sweet delight.”

But having considered that, I still believe our birth tells only half the story. I also believe that half the battle in life is about taking over penmanship, that is, writing your own story notwithstanding the place of birth. 

At this point, this risks degenerating into a self-improvement talk, but not all self-improvement talk deserves the same treatment by us. Most times, most people attend self-improvement talk not so much because they want to change, but because they want to feel good about wanting to change. 

So, that God encounter may just end up differently for many people including Aida. As long as we are alive, we cannot say that we have no faith and hope in a better tomorrow. Oxygen is to life what hope is to living, and hoping is surely a sign of living. 

And while Aida’s story has so far been written most times by the dire circumstances she was born into, I believe she and many of us who are born not into wealth and power are not denied the power of choice. 

What makes the difference eventually is to never give up writing our story, crafting our dreams into it, and holding on to our hope one sentence at a time, one page at a time, one day at a time. 

That is not just our human nature. It is what I would call rising above our human nature, and going beyond the deck that life had initially shuffled and handed to us. Cheerz.