Never Say Die

"No battle is lost till the last boat is sunk."

Both the above quotes are a variation of the same theme. Essentially do not give up. I just happened to remember a sunday evening, in which my group in the college fest was supposed to perform a skit on stage. We had not rehearsed even once. All the characters knew their parts. That was it. The appropriate background scores had not been found. Just before we were to go on stage, I lost all hope of putting up atleast a decent performance that would not earn any boos from the full packed audience. Stubborn in my belief that it was no use to get up on stage and then find everything screwed, I decided not to appear. Had this sunken feeling in my heart and total hopelessness. Then a few people around encouraged me. Somehow, I got up on stage and did the small part that I had. Then came the bomb. The pre-recorded voice over we had brought along did not work/stopped working. Even the audience had started loosing interest. But two guys handled the situation by providing real time background lipsync.

Anyways at the end of the skit when the audience burst into cheers, I was pretty relieved of having passed through a very trying circumstance. Haven't felt so low on confidence since then. If there was one thing that I realised that night, it was the fact that until you put in effort and pursue what you set out to do, you don't know if you will pass or fail. It the courage of conviction in my ability that I must carry with myself as my sole weapon against all opposition in life.

And then there is this good anecdote that I always quote:

A man enters a party, where there are among the guests 100 women. He knows that there is exactly one woman amongst them all that he will be able to take out that night. So his probability of success is 1/100 or 1%. That sounds pretty imposing. But we must see ahead. He goes upto one and proposes. She refuses. Now the probabillity of success increases to 1/99 or 1.01%. He goes up to a second and so on. Each time his probability increases 1.02%, 1.03%, 1.04%, 1.05%, ... So we see that he fails each time, he also keeps increasing his probability of success each time, until such time that he succeeds. Some might find the example a bit crass, but I find it much more potent in driving home the point of not giving up till the last, than most that do the rounds, especially by the so called management gurus.

Anyways for the sake of information the quote at the beginning of the essay (No battle is lost...)can found on the desk of the late Shri Pramod Mahajan. His loss is going to hurt the BJP a very good deal. Sometimes I do wonder if his death was really by a wronged younger brother, or was it a part of a larger political gameplay. Who knows...??

- Suchintya