Failure, Resilience and Success. A sprint into the arms of nothingness.

Ever since I let corporat

e go. Ever since I waved a cheery goodbye to the monthly pay package. Ever since I said Tata to regular work hours, failure has been snapping at my heels.

Sometimes it gets close. Too many times have I felt it breathing down my neck, snaking its feet between my legs, trying to drag down the heel of my sneakers - much like that boy in the line behind - at the school assembly.

Every time I feel it close in, I run a little faster. I flay around in desperation, for something to hold on to. Till now, I have just about avoided Failure's comforting arms. For, if I fail, there is nothing to do. It is just an endless cuddle in the warmth of self pity, blankness, day dreams and imagination. It is not a bad place - Failureland. It gives nothing away and expects even lesser. Once one has decided to fail, it is a success in itself. After all, it takes a brave man to fail.

Does it?

Failure is a bit like suicide. One needs to know how to let go. One needs to master the art of doing nothing, being effected with nothing.

One needs the skin of Godzilla and the attitude of a sleeping crocodile. Nothing can flap you. Your wife screams and you stare into the horizon like Shivjee on a hilltop facing the wrath of Maa Kaali, without even turning a hair....a bit like the rock he is carved out of. Your debtors call and you stare into nothingness, your mobile phone screaming obscene caller tunes vibrating in your pocket. Nothing.

You tower over the world like a giant. looking at scurrying people around you - like an elephant looks at ants - safe in the knowledge that there are only a few of you - but millions of them, shimmying around the world, making pests of themselves, while you lethargically stretch your arms in the air, turn around and dissolve into a state of permanent hypnagogia, imagining yourself as a child in the warmth of your mother's bosom, quickly transitioning into an adult in Angelina Jolie's bosom and then slowly travelling your fantasies to the end of the world. Sometimes imagining fantastic adventures in the Himalayas and sometimes Wrestling with an Anaconda in the Amazon.

When you fail - you dont need practicality you know.

And yet, whenever you find failure pout its sexy lips at you, you find sudden reserves of strength you didn't know existed. Each time you feel yourself sucked into the decadent vortex of failure, you feel some heartless soul pull you out, restore your dignity and force you to work. That heartless soul is called Resilience. Resilience is Success's Officer on Special Duty. Resilience is that brute that continues to push you towards Success, while it is busy running away from you.

And all the while, when you sprint towards success, pushed by the prodding thorns of resilience, Failure is just at the heels....following you with unconditional lust, just yearning for a glance, knowing that you too are burning in its desire.

And then one day, with Success just a step ahead and Failure just a step behind, Resilience pushes you over brink. You skid. You fall. And this time you don't get up. You cant get up.

Nothingness remains.

Smell the coffee. Redefine success parameters.