Trust / Vishwas

Our ability to trust might be the defining quality of how we live in the world. But what is trust? How do you differentiate it from plain old naivete? And can it be learnt?

(The Loved Ones, 2022 by Salman Toor)

“Aap aa jaayenge na?” I found myself shouting at a disembodied, unfamiliar voice emanating from my phone. It was Friday evening and my agenda was singular and simple. Get cooking gas in the kitchen. The voice on the other end of the phone assured me it would happen. I wasn’t so sure. And here again I was being asked to call upon that fundamental quality that seems to run the world — that of, trust 

Moving houses is an act of many things. But above all else, it’s an exercise in trust. There’s an entire economy of people you have to trust. A broker — that they would show you something you like. A neighbourhood — that it won’t spring up unpleasant surprises. A house — that the blank walls would eventually feel like home. And perhaps most importantly, yourself — that you haven’t just made a giant expensive mistake. It was while learning to place trust in each of these that I realised that trust was a quality I called upon every day. For the smallest of gestures and for the biggest of life decisions. 

A child trusts parents for protection. A friend trusts another for the pleasure of being seen, warts and all. A lover trusts that they won’t be betrayed. A worker trusts that work will not let them down. Smaller things — like buying a new brand of shampoo or figuring out what to watch on Netflix — is us expressing trust in our choice. It’s as if we have a network of glistening, silvery threads of trust tethering us to people, things, and the world we live in. 

Of course, some people have a denser network than the others. People who are happy-go-lucky or have an ease of being with the world often have a greater degree of trust in…everything. They are the ones we call when we are lost in our everyday anxieties so we can hear them tell us, “ho jaayega.” They seem to walk the world believing that it’s looking out for them. And maybe because they believe that, the world often does. 

Then, there are the other kinds of people who trust ferociously. Their density of trust doesn’t flow outwards. Instead, it is glowing ball of light inside them. The odds might be stacked against them. The challenges might be insurmountable. But if they’ve decided something will happen, well, it will happen. Their self-belief is the bedrock of their ambition. And they are ready to take all kinds of bets on it.

Trust, then, seems to be a good thing to have. But can you have too much of it? In children’s stories, the word “trusting” is often followed by the word “fool.” You don’t want to be too naive. A little bit of shaanapanti is good, as any ride on a Mumbai local will teach you. Cynicism has some, albeit small, benefits. How do you draw the line then? 

It’s a question I have been thinking of a fair bit. If trust is such a fundamental quality of living, I want to get better at it. But it’s the fear of being taken for a fool — of being conned, of being scammed — that holds one back. Sure, I want to trust the universe and believe everything will eventually work out. But what if it doesn’t?

Turns out, the superpower of trust is underlined by something else — the comfort at making a mistake. It’s when you are okay with being the fool of children’s stories. Once failure ceases to be a looming shadow over every exercise of trust, and instead becomes an inevitable outcome of at least a small percentage of choices, it becomes easier to take that leap of faith. Because even if your trust fails — if the lover betrays you, if you find yourself in a bad friendships, if that Netflix show was really just horrible — at least you find yourself facing a mistake and not running away.

So we come back to our original question — does trust make the world go round? (As an aside, isn’t love a form of trust anyway? But I guess “love” makes for a better catchphrase.) The answer is it definitely does. The bad news is, there is no way to know for sure that you won’t find yourself a fool and the moral of a Panchatantra story. (Or a Reddit sub.) The good news is, life is long, nothing is permanent, and we get many, many chances at this thing anyway. 

PS: The name of the essay comes from a memory from undergraduate college where I glimpsed the phrase “trust/vishwas” written on the first page of a stack of photocopied notes. The notes were on contemporary English literature. What the phrase was doing there is anyone’s guess. Somehow though, I found myself saying this phrase to myself many times in the last few weeks.  

PPS: The cooking gas did come. 

It’s been a while since I wrote here, and the reasons for not doing so are as commonplace as you would expect. But I am trying to be regular, she says expectedly. As always, I would love to hear from you, so hit “Reply” to say hi. If you liked what you read, share it with a friend. If you didn’t like it, share it with an ex.

I’ll write again, soon.