Long before R Madhavan became an actor, he spent time in Canada as an exchange student — an experience that exposed him to a way of life vastly different from the one he had grown up with in India. From living with families who “slaughtered cows for a living” despite being a strict vegetarian to navigating communal showers with his basketball teammates, Madhavan has described the experience as one that played an important role in shaping him.In a conversation shared by the Indian School of Business on YouTube in 2023, Madhavan looked back at his time in Stettler, Canada, and called it “very important for my formative years”. He had travelled there as an exchange student through Rotary and found himself living in what he described as cowboy country.“I got an opportunity to be an exchange student on behalf of Rotary and I went to Canada as an exchange student. I went to a place called Stettler, which was the wild, wild west. It’s cowboy country. I lived with cowboys. I am a hardcore vegetarian but I live with families that slaughtered cows for a living so all that was ‘adharma’ for me,” he said.But it was not just the difference in lifestyle that challenged Madhavan. He also recalled an incident from his time on the local school’s basketball team, which he described as the “biggest adharma” he encountered during his stay.Making it to the basketball team was a “huge achievement” for Madhavan, particularly because he was an Indian student who was not as tall as many of the other boys. However, his excitement soon gave way to anxiety when the team travelled to a neighbouring town for a seven-day tournament.“Like it happens over there, after the match, you come back to the boys locker room and you get into the shower. My ordeal started when I had to go into the shower because unlike what it is today, when you go to the men’s shower, it is just one pillar with six shower heads around it and all the boys go there like god made them and they take a shower together. It’s the most normal thing for them to do,” Madhavan recalled.For someone raised in a conservative South Indian household, the situation was completely unfamiliar. Madhavan said the thought of entering the shower was more nerve-racking than playing the basketball match itself.“I didn’t know how I was going to muster up walking there and so I decided to say, ‘To hell with it. I am going to wear my underwear and not take that off’,” he shared.His decision immediately made him stand out. While the rest of his teammates showered without clothes, Madhavan entered wearing his underwear and soon realised that his attempt to preserve his privacy had made him even more conspicuous.“When I went into the shower just wearing my underwear and the rest of them were not wearing anything, I cannot tell you how naked I felt because no one was looking at each other. They were all like, ‘What is he hiding?’ and I had to do that repetitively for seven days because the tournament was for seven days,” he said.Madhavan admitted that he initially tried to convince himself that he should simply adapt to what everyone else considered normal. By the third day, however, he realised he was better off staying true to his own comfort level.“I realised, ‘That’s not me. I am never going to be comfortable so I kept myself covered for seven days’. It was during that time that I realised that if your instincts are telling you that if you are going to be uncomfortable doing something… And for you to have the guts to actually not go with what is considered a norm, then you will have the ability to be comfortable with yourself and that was a very essential quality to get into the film industry,” he said.For Madhavan, what began as an awkward cultural adjustment eventually became a lesson in individuality. Years later, he remembered the incident not merely as an embarrassing moment, but as an experience that taught him the importance of listening to his instincts and being comfortable with standing apart from the crowd.