India, March 7 -- I have worked hard; shown up on days when I would rather have rested. Done more homework than was required. Treated discipline as a virtue.

But if I'm being honest, I have also been lucky. That is the part of the story most of us rarely narrate.

The ability to work hard is itself a form of luck. In India, we confuse stamina with virtue. But stamina comes more easily when one has been well-fed as a child. Studying hard is easier when one isn't worrying about unpaid fees, or the lights going out. Growing up, these didn't feel like privileges. Which is precisely how privilege disguises itself: as default.

Health is luck. I know this from experience. When I had a health scare some years ago, what followed was not just res...