You Were Never Meant to Do This Alone

An immigrant’s first job, a broken mop, and the moments of kindness that shaped a lifetime of leading

Let me tell you a story about a mop, a polyester apron, and the snow that never quite melts in the Mohawk Valley.

I was 22. A first-year graduate student from India, newly arrived in a small town tucked between the Adirondacks and rolling farmland. People called this region Upstate, but to me, it felt like the North Pole with a diner. Cold wind, quiet streets, and sky that turned gray by 4 p.m. even in October.

My campus sat beside a half-frozen canal and a stretch of desolate state highway. I didn’t know anyone. I’d never shoveled snow. I had two suitcases, a scholarship, and a borrowed winter coat from a senior who said, “Trust me, this isn’t Delhi.”

He was right.

I came to study computer science and engineering. I stayed to learn the language of loneliness. And later, of grace.

To pay for books and food, I took a job in the campus dining hall. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t optional. It was survival.

They assigned me to the back stations. Dish return. Salad prep. Floor mopping. The shifts started before sunrise, or ended long after the last tray of Jell-O had been served.

My bosses were undergraduate sophomores, younger than me, half as tired, and twice as confident. Some were kind. Some… weren’t.

I remember one of them saying, “Try to smile more when you work the line. You kind of scare people.”

I wanted to say, “I left my country, my family, my language, and the sun behind. I don’t have the energy to smile while scrubbing ranch dressing off a sneeze guard.”

But I just nodded.

Because when you’re an immigrant in a town that can’t pronounce your name, quiet obedience becomes your safety strategy.

---

Apathy came in many forms.

Like the kids who dropped half-eaten burgers on the tray and never looked up.

Or the supervisor who barked, “Can you speak up?” every time I asked a question, as if my accent was a volume issue.

Or the professor who called me “Mr. Mumbai,” even though I was from Delhi.

And yet, what hurt the most wasn’t the cruelty. It was the invisibility. The ease with which people looked past you. As if you were just one more piece of machinery in the service line.

I kept my head down. I worked hard. I didn’t complain. My parents had already taken a loan to buy my flight. I wasn’t about to call home and say, “I’m struggling.”

So I wrote them (yeah - calls cost $3.75 a minute) that I was fine.

Even when I wasn’t.

---

Then came November.

Mohawk Valley Novembers are not just cold. They are quiet. The kind of quiet that gets inside your bones. The trees turn skeletal. The sidewalks vanish under wet snow. And everyone seems to disappear indoors by 6 p.m., leaving behind glowing porch lights and empty crosswalks.

One night, I slipped near the drink station. The floor was wet. The mop bucket had jammed again. I fell - hard. My elbow hit the tile. Trays clattered across the floor.

Nobody helped.

Nobody even asked if I was okay.

They just stepped around me. Avoided eye contact. Like I’d made things awkward.

I went home that night with a swollen arm and a new rule for myself: Don’t fall again. Not where they can see it.

That was the beginning of my hyper-independence.

Not the empowered kind you read about in startup bios. The kind born of fear, humiliation, and necessity.

The kind that says:

“You don’t need anyone.”

“Never ask for help.”

“If you fail, fail privately.”

And for a while, that belief got me through.

Until it didn’t.

---

Then something small happened.

Mia, who worked the pizza oven, slid me a slice one night after my shift.

“You didn’t eat, did you?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“You always do a good job cleaning the counters. I appreciate that,” she said. “Eat.”

It wasn’t pity. It was presence.

Another day, Jesse, a junior from Skaneateles, handed me a cup of cocoa in the loading bay.

“Too cold, man,” he said, teeth chattering. “You look frozen.”

He was right. I was frozen - outside and in.

That hot chocolate thawed more than my hands.

Those moments didn’t fix everything.

But they reminded me that some people choose to see you.

And once you’ve been seen, it’s hard to go back to pretending you’re invisible.

---

So I began to unlearn what the Mohawk wind had etched into me.

I started saying thank you louder. I offered help more freely. I let myself accept it, too.

One of the student managers - I think his name was Kevin - once asked, “Can you help train the new guy?”

I said yes.

Not because I wanted the task. But because someone thought I was qualified to teach.

That moment, small as it was, rebuilt something in me.

Dignity. Belonging. Trust.

---

It’s been more than 25 years since that winter.

And I still think about that dining hall.

Because it taught me the hardest and most important truth I’ve learned in my life:

We are not meant to do this alone.

Not school. Not work. Not leadership. Not parenting. Not living.

I carried those early lessons with me into boardrooms, team meetings, late-night project reviews, and even bedtime stories with my kids.

I’ve led teams across continents. I’ve mentored high performers. I’ve been called a transformational leader.

But I’ll tell you what mattered more than any title:

Knowing how to recognize the one person who’s quietly breaking - and offering them a cocoa.

Knowing how to create the kind of space where it’s safe to say, “I’m struggling.”

Knowing how to look someone in the eye and say, “You belong here.”

That’s the kind of leader I became.

And that’s the kind of father I chose to be.

Because I remember being the one who felt too old, too brown, too foreign, too uncertain.

And I remember who showed up anyway.

---

Maybe you’re reading this today, holding it all together with duct tape and quiet pride.

Maybe you’re the one who says “I’m fine” before anyone finishes asking.

Maybe you were raised, like I was, to equate needing help with failure.

Let me offer you this:

Asking is brave.

Receiving is human.

And generosity? It’s not weakness. It’s glue.

So when the world gets cold,

when the trays crash,

when the mop slips,

when no one seems to see you, remember:

You were never meant to do this alone.

And the Mohawk Valley? It may be cold.

But even there, kindness finds its way in to warm you up.

One slice. One cup. One small moment at a time.

Have a wonderful Father’s Day and enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

With warm regards,
Adi