Nothing succeeds like Success

There I go, searching for the route to success and someone pops up with this one - Nothing succeeds like success. Indeed! So, if I want to succeed, I must have already succeeded? Eminently sensible and easy to do, of course. Now, why didn't I think of that?

As a route TO success, it is about as useful as cold water is to start a fire. But...it is not entirely senseless as most such aphorisms turn out to be when you think of them.

Talk of success and, as a Tamilian, Rajnikant sort of pops up in you mind with the inevitability of the night following day. There, possibly, was a time when a director may...MAY...have told him that his Kannada-accented Tamil was a handicap. (Said director would stoutly deny any such accusation today. Lynch mobs are not exactly the sort of spectacle that you want to wake up to in the morning). Today...I am sure that, somewhere in Tamil Nadu, there are elocution classes for wannabe actors training them in THAT wonderful manner of dialogue delivery.

I also wonder about how much the going rates were for the bribes to get to be a conductor on the same bus route in Bangalore that Rajnikant once sold tickets on - as a surefire way to break into stardom. The point about all this, I hasten to add, is the fact that when someone succeeds, it is automatically assumed that ALL that he was and is are necessary characteristics of success. So, Success means that you can successfully get social respect for ALL your characteristics as well. (Actually, though, I must also hurry to say that all this was before he was deified. Today, to even dream that ANYONE could emulate Rajnikant is a one-way ticket to the nearest cemetery, if someone can patiently gather together all the pieces.)

THAT, though, is not the end of it. You succeed in one thing and, presto, you are the fount of wisdom on ALL things. Your views on politics, on society and on history will ALL find takers; and, even those who deride your views, will...well...actually deride your views instead of merely ignoring them. If you chose to write a book on the String theory or Einstein's General theory of relativity, it would probably outsell Stephen Hawking - so what if you consistently flunked every physics exam you were forced to attempt, not to mention that the fact that your physics teacher did not commit suicide after one tuition session with you can ONLY be because he was an abnormally strong character?

Unfortunately, though, the day has not come when people start doubting Hawking's views of the Universe on the grounds that 'Trump says the stars are God's daisy chain' or some such, but it is on its way. The physical sciences are so obdurate...so unwilling to change, unlike the more forward looking social sciences. THERE we have successful businessmen, actors, and whoever having THEIR opinions treated with appropriate seriousness - on politics, sociology, history - and without piddly considerations about whether they have the knowledge to make those comments. Why should these physical science guys be any different?

Soon, the day will come when Hawking WILL have to defend his physics against such critics. We have made a start with Darwin...we will get to Einstein et al as well.

THEN will come the day, like someone once said of someone else, when Trump can repeal the law of gravitation.

And THEN we can indeed say...

Nothing succeeds like success!