3 min readAug 13, 2026 06:20 AM IST
First published on: Aug 13, 2026 at 06:20 AM IST
Before a superb fairywren chick has seen the sky, and even before it has broken through its shell, it has already begun learning something essential to its survival: A password. During incubation, the mother repeatedly sings to her eggs. Embedded in her call is a distinctive signature sound. The developing embryos learn it, and after hatching incorporate elements of it into their begging calls. It is an extraordinary system of recognition. Belonging has a sound. Human beings have passwords too.
We prefer to believe that our schools, universities and workplaces judge people according to intelligence, character and ability. Yet almost every institution develops an invisible code of belonging. It may be an accent. A vocabulary. A manner of speaking.
Consider two equally intelligent children entering the same prestigious school. One comes from a family familiar with such institutions. At home, adults discuss books and current affairs. Questions are encouraged. Confidence in speaking to authority has been cultivated almost unconsciously. The other child may be the first in the family to enter such a world. The intelligence may be identical. The cultural preparation is not. Perhaps one simply learned the song before hatching. Those who understand these unwritten rules move through organisations with an ease easily mistaken for superior ability. Those who do not may begin to doubt themselves. This is where belonging becomes a mental-health issue. We often locate this discomfort entirely within the individual. But perhaps we should also examine the institution.
India should understand this particularly well. We are a country in which language, schooling, caste, class, geography and family background can determine which social codes a child learns long before talent has had any opportunity to reveal itself. English fluency, for example, can open doors. But fluency can also become confused with intelligence itself.
Genuine meritocracy requires us to distinguish qualities essential to excellence from social codes that merely resemble excellence because those already in positions of power recognise them. A university should demand intellectual rigour. It need not demand that intelligence always speak in the same accent. A workplace should demand competence. It need not assume that the most confident voice in the room is the wisest. This is also why diversity cannot be reduced to counting how many different kinds of people enter a room. The more difficult question is what happens after they arrive.
Can they speak without translating themselves into somebody else’s idea of acceptability? Can they question established assumptions without being treated as troublesome? There is, of course, a fundamental difference between ourselves and the fairywren. For the bird, recognising the wrong call may be a matter of survival. Nature is not required to be inclusive.
There will always be codes of belonging. The moral question is what we do when somebody does not know them. Do we immediately hear the unfamiliar note as evidence that the person does not belong? Or can we recognise that talent, intelligence and human possibility sometimes arrive speaking in a voice we have not yet learned to hear? The fairywren survives by listening for the familiar song. A humane society must learn something more difficult: How to listen beyond it.
The writer is a retired psychiatrist
The fairywren survives by listening for the familiar song. A humane society must learn something more difficult: How to listen beyond it. 
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