Monday, November 25, 2013

Success Again

It is almost a truism that it is the 'unsuccessful' who have a multiplicity of reasons for their lack of success. The successful, almost invariably, have only one reason. Of course, it is their own inimitable abilities and dedicated hard work that yielded success. Luck? Only the losers prate of luck!

Being unfortunate enough to belong to the former category, I need to exercise all my ingenuity to determine why success has eluded me. The main reason, of course, is that I never did understand what constituted success - as I have explained in great (Excruciating? Not at all. There are too many of you people intent only on spreading unhappiness) detail in my previous post. But why was it so difficult for me to identify what was success?

In the not too long gone past, the successful man was the master of his time. While lesser mortals toiled to earn a living, the man of success had the time to go chasing after foxes, whacking a small ball all over the place trying to put it into a small hole and other such eminently important pursuits as would take his fancy. It is true that success was determined at birth and the only contribution of the person to the success was being prescient about selecting his parents - but that is not the point. The point is that a successful man was a man who had the freedom to use his time as he saw fit.

Having read extensively about success of this sort, I was all agog to succeed myself. Not that I had anything against foxes - and everything against strenuous physical exertion - nor was I particularly keen on working at putting a ball into a hole only to have someone else take it out immediately. It was just the fact of being able to do anything with my time and I would have used that liberty to laze around in bed and desultorily read a book. So, as I said, I was keenly anticipating becoming a successful man.

Society played a scurvy trick on me. Suddenly, I found that all the successful men were people who were saying things like,"Oh! I cannot make it this evening. I have an important meeting"; "How I wish we could catch up on the good old days. Unfortunately I can spare only ten minutes" and "I hardly get to see my children. Too busy traveling all over the world". I would have conveniently assumed that these were the failures of the world but for the fact that they say it all so proudly and seem to expect you to genuflect in their presence, full of gratitude that you had been granted the privilege of hearing a few words from them.

So, apparently, one works 12 hours days in order to achieve a successful upgrade to a position where one could work for 15 hour days. If you proved your mettle there, then you may ascend the dizzying heights of being able to work for 18 hours a day. And, all the while, you would have a Smart phone hanging around you like a dog's leash to ensure that you did not feel unwanted by your office during the rest of the time. So, you could be woken up at 2 AM by a tug at that leash - just so you feel all the more successful - without even the dog's pleasure of being able to lift a leg and piss on the other guy's trousers.

I am a sort of hide-bound character and find it difficult to change my ideas all at once. To me success still meant being the master of my own time.

Oh! And, by the way, there was one way whereby I could have been successful both in my eyes and the eyes of Society. I came to know of it when a friend of mine said that his driver was now a multimillionaire thanks to the fact that his dad had a few acres of land near Sarjapur Road in Bangalore.

It is thanks to the fact that my dad made bad investments that I have not achieved success. Instead of investing money in the stupid exercise of trying to get me educated, he should have bought land around Sarjapur Road.

So, now you know why I am not a success. It is all my dad's fault!

50 comments:

  1. Thank for at least partly unravelling the crux of my failure too, Suresh. You are quite the visionary. On the flip side, I and one of my colleagues had a chance to invest Rs 3,75,0000- in 2001. He acquired a boring piece of land in a rising city while I rolled home the latest rage, the tallboy Santro. Today while his investment is being valued at Rs. 1.50 crores, mine has slumped to Rs, 75,000 only!

    There are many more takeaways from your post -those aphorisms.

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    1. Ah! Uma! I have lost crores of money that way - office keeping me too busy to even find time to sell off the IT stocks that had risen to dizzying heights (involved more work than a phone call since demat had become mandatory then and I was holding physical shares and had no demat account) even though I knew it was time to sell - till the crash came; Office bringing in a Voluntary Retirement scheme with a lucrative golden hand-shake six months after I quit - I could go on and on. To me, success has always been what I DID in the world and not what I made, a point of view that is increasingly seeming like the vapourings of a senile man :)

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  2. ha ha..... yes, yes Suresh, keep blaming others! But on second thought, I wish my dad had brought land there too. :(

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    1. Me - I am blaming the fact that Society values money - no matter how it is come by - and values achievement only if it leads to money :)

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  3. Yeah, success is indeed being master of one's own time. Its converse though may not necessarily always be failure. As for dear Dad, he made the perfect investment, the reapings of which are glaring in the words & thoughts of his son.

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    1. The converse is not failure ONLY when the person is doing something of value to Society or if what is being done is what he wants to do.

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  4. Ohh God! You have completely confused me! So since I am no longer a master of my time - I am successful or unsuccessful!!! Though I identify with the latter a lot more !! :)

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    1. Success is a goal - So you work towards it :) So the question is "Are you progressing toward what you really think is success?" :)

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  5. Money and Time are the key words here - as one keeps making more and more money - the lesser and lesser one has time to spare for one's loved ones! Then again there are a few rare individuals who straddle every role with ease! And then there are chaps like me who spend a major part of their time travelling between office and work for a regular salary!!!!!! Perhaps it will all balance out in the bigger scheme of things :)

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    1. Ah! It is not what people HAVE to do that I am talking of, Mahesh! It is only about what people CHOOSE to do or what people aspire to do :) When you have a choice, making the right choice is all-important.

      I have never seen the sense in making money hand-over-fist at the cost of not having any time to spend it in :)

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  6. ROFL! the end seriously had be in splits :P By any chance are you a PG Wodehouse fan (too)?? :)
    On a serious note, I think as long as you are supremely satisfied in achieve the goals you set out to meet.. you are successful.. what others think doesnt really matter, all that matters is your belief in yourself.

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    1. Of course I am! What aspiring humorist could fail to be a fan of the inimitable Plum aka Pelham Grenville Wodehouse!

      I live my life that way - my ambition being to be Bertie Wooster without the aunts, cow-creamers and Jeeves' sartorial strictures :)

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    2. Hahaha Wooster wouldnt be the same without Aunt Agatha and Jeeves! :P I just read Aunts arent gentleman, hilarious to the say the least! :) Here's more power to the humour and the pen!

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    3. Of course, Bertie would not be :) But I did not want to become a total Bertie clone :)

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  7. I know many such drivers, farmers and security guards who now drive BMWs in Punjab. Contrary to what successful people say, you have to Lucky to be born to such parents who own acres in a remote place which will become SEZ after 30 years of your birth. :D

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    1. Ah! Saru! Just as the unsuccessful do not want to blame themselves, the successful do not want to credit anything other than themselves :)

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  8. Ah, I hope my parents had brought land right next to the Bangalore airport then. That time was like 50k for a 30x40 plot, today its worth crores. Sigh, parents and their decision making skills of which we are the obvious proof :P

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    1. Hahaha! I am single and there is no child who can level that accusation at me in the future :) Hope you can be safe too :)

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  9. Yet again a post which resonates a little too much with my own thinking. Each successive post of yours gets scarier and scarier as I realize that we just might end up being a couple of old, balding middle aged men who share the same self deprecating view of ourselves, and end up looking for that unattainable pot of gold, that the rest of the world calls success.

    Loved the post a lot, and yes, am desperately missing your plumbing references. Please do try and incorporate a plumber into your next post, as it has been a while since you did it.

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    1. Speak for yourself, Jairam! I am already old and bald (not just balding :) ) AND I have achieved what I always wanted to achieve - a retired life :)

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  10. One thing is sure about success that it is relative.
    More successful you are,more relatives you have.....just kidding !I am looking for success for myself.

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    1. They do say "Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan"! So, if you are married to success, you certainly will have a lot of in-laws :)

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  11. What is the sign of success?Peace of mind,contentment.

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    1. True, Indu! We somehow seem to measure everything with money, though :)

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  12. I am laughing. And I am thinking.
    I wish we had bought land on Sarjapur Road too! Even Bannerghatta was not a bad proposition for acquiring that label of success! Phew. Missed it.

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  13. Hi Suresh ,

    The paragraph that started with 'So, apparently' is the perfect description of todays scenario. True, in the mad rush of so called success people lose out on a lot of things. By the way to laze around on a bed reading a book, education is more important than lands around that road right ? Your dad did make a right choice :)

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    1. I did not mean no schooling at all Jaish :) I meant all that education after school :) And I was quite capable of reading fiction at school - in fact I did nothing else :)

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  14. Suresh, I have experienced gusts of success during my life. And those brief periods all involved 60 hour work weeks, so you are absolutely right about 'free time' being a myth. I've decided to settle for a success that I don't have to work for, that will afford me the opportunity to do nothing but what I wish to do ... winning the lottery! I'm waiting patiently.

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    1. My brotehr-in-law is competing with you there - equally as patiently :)

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  15. An absolutely delightful read, Suresh! One of the best i have read in a long time.

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  16. Lovely, CS. The language, the message and most of all, the humour - 'upgrade' to working 18 hour days - hahaha.

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    1. Thanks KayEm! I 'downgraded' myself to working zero hours :)

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    2. Zero hours! Sure your dad didn't leave you property on Sarjapur road, CS?

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    3. He did not! I had to slice down heavily on the lifestyle lead in order to save enough to retire early

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  17. As long as we don't let others define success for us, I guess we are doing okay :-)

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    1. Not just OK, Purba, that's perfect - even if you work 18 hour days by defining success for yourself :)

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  18. Humourous . Who knew a mere piece of land would define your success one day .ha ha..neverthless liked it a lot :)

    http://www.sweetsharing.com/

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    1. Pieces of land seem to determine success for a lot of people these days, Garima :)

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  19. An absolute master piece of writing. You are always a sparking point to get inspired for whenever I read your posts. Achieve your goals to get inspired for the success rather than lazy mind zombie. True I got the inspiration as well as the touch of humor through this post. Thank You again Suresh Sir...

    --Vajra

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  20. The third last sentence is right! But who knew about the escalation of the land-prices!
    Very right observations. The more successful people become, the lesser time they can afford to spare :)

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    1. Hmm - Success is such a difficult animal to describe :)

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  21. Very correct, Suresh. Success only means working more number of hours than an unsuccessful person.

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    1. I always knew I would get something right some time :)

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  22. Suresh, I think that the time is right to start a facebook group called 'the losers' or 'the unsuccessful'. You and I could be co-admins. Its mandate would be that the members had to be brutally honest about themselves. What say? But seriously, I don't know how but I had the impression you had happily retired with a pot of money made on the stock market. Isn't that success? :D

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    1. I am happily retired, yes, but no pot of money and certainly not from the stock markets :) You probably got that impression from "Desi Wild Hogs" where the main protagonist claims this - but THAT was only me living my dreams through my fiction :)

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  23. For me success definitely means having some time in the day for myself. And I think I am doing ok by that standard.

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    1. Me - I am greedy. I want all my time to myself - and, largely, I have succeeded too :)

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