Success

I wish someone would start listing the most unsuccessful people of the world - a sort of Fortune-less 500. I am sure that I would find a place there. Why, I have not even been successful in identifying exactly what is success.

It is not merely a fad of my adult days. My tryst with obscurity started right in my childhood. My mother - with all the good intentions in the world - started me off on the alphabet with A for Ambition, as opposed to the customary Apple, and went on to teach me B for Bravery, C for Caution etc. The only problem was that I never did manage to figure out what Ambition was and, thus, could not go beyond the first alphabet. Thus, my potential academic achievements got nipped in the bud - the very first bud, in fact.

About the only sign of ambition I ever displayed was when we were standing in line for the school assembly. Being among the shortest in the class, there was always a tussle with another vertically challenged chap about who was the taller of the two.

Me: (Hiking up the shoulder next to his) See, I am taller.
He: (Standing on tip-toe) No, I am taller.

No bean-pole ever took more pride in half a centimeter of height than two short guys vying not to be the first in the line. Do you think Amitabh Bacchan ever stood on tip-toe to be considered the taller one?

In fact, my only problem is that I failed to continue on the same lines. Maybe, just maybe, I would have achieved success too. The issue was that I, somehow, had the mistaken impression that adult ambition was different and lofty. In retrospect, I find that this one mistaken impression ruined all chances of success for me.

Adult 1: I have a huge car.
Adult 2: My car is bigger than yours.

(Of course, they say it all differently. Adult 1 probably says, "This BMW is such a comfortable vehicle" and Adult 2 probably replies, "Once you use a Rolls, you will never look at another car" but it all amounts to the same thing)

Or

Adult 1: I know big shots.
Adult 2: I know even bigger shots.

(In adult parlance:
Adult 1: I was just telling Rahul the other day...
Adult 2: Next time Barack calls me, I will tell him this)

Or

Adult 1: I go on foreign vacations every year.
Adult 2: I go to even more expensive places.

(In adult parlance:
Adult 1: When I was in Kuala Lumpur last year..
Adult 2: Nothing can beat skiing in Switzerland)

They teach all sorts of things at school but they fail to teach you this simple thing. The difference between schoolboy success and adult success is purely a matter of semantics. Your ambition is only as childish as the words you use to boast about your achievements.

Not that it would have helped me much, come to think of it. At school, it was always the other chap who proved himself to be taller even at the cost of standing on tip-toe all through the assembly. I just could not be bothered to put myself out so much.

So - I wait for that Fortune-less 500 to give me my fame (That, incidentally, was the F of my mother's alphabet!)