Dealing when I should be wheeling. And vice versa!

I don't consider myself a failure but by most criteria of the society I live in, I probably am one!

I went to IIT and qualified for IIM. I worked for leading multinationals before I became disillusioned with them.

I went abroad many times each time wanting to return home more desperately.

I left Miraj, the town where I lived for first 21 years of life, with some excitement but now I realize I have ended up "on a hillside far from home under an alien sky".

CHARLES ISHERWOOD has written an excellent essay “Take a Bow, Loser, the Spotlight’s Yours” NYT April 8, 2007.

I really liked a few points he has made:

“……Behold a new face of the Broadway musical, bearing a wry comic grimace that reflects the new mood abroad in America. A country renowned — for good or ill — as the land that enshrined success as a prize to be cherished above all others has lately evinced a sneaky fascination with failure. The losers on “American Idol” are almost as famous as the winners — sometimes more so. Kicked off one contest show, a new-minted pseudo-celebrity becomes a star of the next. Paris Hilton’s very pointlessness constitutes the whole of her appeal; no one really wants her to acquire a talent………

The affection for life’s also-rans is equally strong at the moment in the more popular media. Exhibit A in the case for the country’s new love affair with flopdom would have to be “American Idol,” arguably the most influential showbiz phenomenon of the last decade. ……

Maybe this new mood enshrining failure as the new success is related to the last decade or so of dissatisfaction with the country’s ostensible political winners, and the policies they’ve pursued. But it surely reflects a population embarking on the new century with a perhaps not unhealthy dent in its self-esteem……….

But everyone of a certain age (say 30) has probably lived through a few of those startling moments when you take stock of your life as it is and wonder: How did I get here, exactly? When did the curves come that moved me away from one destiny and toward another? I guess it all must have happened during intermission.”
Artist: Richard Decker The New Yorker 13 Oct 1962