People I was once very close to, I unconsciously relegated into becoming acquaintances. Later still, I let them slip out of my life altogether -- all because of non-communication on my part stemming from inertia. At times an occasional email would have sufficed, but now they are gone, and it is difficult to re-contact them. Even if I do manage to re-contact them, it would be far more difficult to reconnect with them. What I really regret is not connecting with folks on a deeper level. So many opportunities missed, often due to resorting to the short cut of mere quick wit or the easy laugh.
These are but a few of my numerous failures. I thought that I would try and start off the New Year by listing as many of those as I could -- preparing my failure resume of sorts.
I suppose we classify as the greatest those failures in fields and endeavors that people around us hold in high regard. In that sense, my academic failures have been my biggest ones. In India they have an exam called the NTSE (National Talent Search Exam) where they search out and grant scholarships to a bunch of the brightest kids in the country. I once did very well in an exam that tested my "General Aptitude" and this led some people to feel that I would therefore succeed in qualifying for an NTSE scholarship. And so, one summer break, my dad parted with a sizable chunk of cash and I started to attend specialized NTSE coaching classes. The exam is tough, and they have over a dozen different subjects, and I sat in as many classes as I could, learning what I cared to or what appealed to me. But from the beginning, right from the very get-go I had mentally written off my chances of ever qualifying for the scholarship. And yet, I attended all those classes, never once rebelling. Sure enough, I fared poorly in the exam. Doing something without fully applying myself to the task was a huge failure on my part.
But it took me one more failure of a bigger magnitude to start learning that lesson. There might have been things that I wanted more fervently than to secure admission into the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras (IIT-M & not just any old IIT) 
but I cannot remember what they were. There were times in my eleventh and twelfth standards when I would literally ache for the opportunity to get in, but I would do everything except study for the Joint Entrance Exams. I would make elaborate calculations about my chances based on percentiles and probabilities, but I simply wouldn't study the booklets that Agrawal Classes relentlessly kept sending home week after week. Also, I had a zillion extra-curricular interests in those days. That year, I was relying more on prayers than on practice, on hope rather than on hard work. Obviously, that didn't work. The following year, I applied myself a lot more and a few concepts started to fall into place. Most importantly, I was lucky the second time.
I started out this list by making one rule - to list only those failures that are, for all practical purposes, irredeemably lost and gone forever. While considering and discarding things to include in this list, I came to realize that failures come in many flavors.
In my failure resume, I am not including the seven cardinal sins, for we all have them. Those sins are not failures - they are the things that make us human. Also, I am not including what could be called character flaws. I don't possess the self-awareness necessary to identify and list my character flaws, though I am not disputing that there are many.
If I leave out cardinal sins and character flaws, I am left with two more flavors - disappointments and regrets. Disappointments result when expectations are not met, and so they are also not what I am really after. But in everything that I classified as a failure regret was present, so much so that I have started to think that a failure isn't a failure unless it is accompanied by regret. In that sense, I suppose, this resume could also be viewed as my regret list.
I really regret not truly appreciating the things that came my way. So many good things were so easily available to me that I didn't savor them deeply enough. For twenty years, I lived in India - the land of plentiful sun and delightful food and so much more. I took it all for granted; I wandered among precious things with a mistaken sense of entitlement. Now, 10,000 miles away, sitting in the middle of snow and food that I don't particularly care for, I realize that what I had then was pure gold. But even now I am afraid to show my appreciation too keenly for fear of being labeled a "foreigner" who coos over the silliest of things.
Only about five years ago I started keeping journals. All through my school and college years, I didn't write down anything when I should have been busily jotting down notes and anecdotes. I would have had so much material, and I could have re-lived through so much. My failure has been in letting all of that go unrecorded.
Ever noticed how selective some people's memories are? They never forget any wrong that was done unto them, and they seem to always remember the tiniest good that they ever did. But most of the good that was done unto them, they believe repaid as soon as the word "thank you" leaves their mouths. There must be 10 or 20 or more people today in Chennai, who recall kindnesses that they bestowed upon me, which I failed to reciprocate. Worse yet, I probably failed to even recognize their generosity. My failure is that I simply took them for granted. And all these years later, it is too late to even say thank you because I don't know who they are and what they did for me. I have now come to the conclusion that kindnesses cannot really be repaid, they can only be forwarded on by doing something for others. It is rare and difficult for us to repay the same people who were kind to us.
On a related subject, I used to have a lot of qualms about accepting material gifts from relatives and friends. Sometimes I would make a fuss, and other times I would let it go. It finally dawned on me that this was really a failure on my part, and that accepting gifts with grace was to actually repay the gift in a very small way.
Here's one failure that doesn't seem to belong with the rest, but it bothers me from time to time. Some time ago, while on a business trip to Istanbul I was given a tour of the city, which included a visit to a place that manufactured Turkish silk rugs. In that carpet factory, we were given a live demo of how silk was extracted. My colleagues watched in fascination as a handful of silkworm cocoons were dropped into boiling water and "cooked" for 10 minutes. This allowed for "reeling" - the unwinding of the silk thread. We were then led to a room, seated and served strong Turkish coffee. A dazzling array of colorful rugs was spread out for us to purchase. I walked out of that demo resolving not to ever buy silk in the future if I could avoid it. I am not opposed to animal research when it is done, say, for the advancement of medicine. But to kill these worms in such large quantities when there are so many other alternative fibers seems unconscionable to me. My failure is that while I know of dozens and dozens of silk wearers, I have not spoken out and thus been a tacit accomplice to this practice.
For the sake of brevity, I will just touch on a few more of my failures without elaborating. I often catch myself saying or believing one thing, while doing the opposite. I don't know if this hypocrisy is present in everyone, but it is certainly a failure of mine - one that I try to eliminate by thinking through the dichotomy. I started out by mentioning the people I am no longer in contact with. But another version of this is not having what are sometimes called "real moments" with the people that I am communicating with, not "connecting" with them even after spending considerable amounts of time. And then there is the double whammy of mediocrity. The inability to rise above mediocrity in fields of my choosing is a failure. But a greater failure is making peace with mediocrity.
As I started to think about failures, I came to believe that much more than our successes, it is our failures that define us. All successes seem alike, as though stamped out from the same cookie-cutter, but each failure is unique and custom-built and thus interesting. Also, success is transient, but a failure is forever.
In fact, there is something hard-edged and alienating about success, but failures seem more rotund and even cuddly. Success gets you gossiped about maliciously, but no one grudges you your failures. Failures win you friends. In a sense, I think that our failures are our old friends, especially after we have made our peace with them. In time, our failures could become comforting, like old wounds morphing into pleasant little bumps.
With age came the realization that over 99% of the things I had hoped to do or become are not really going to happen. Somewhere inside me there must exist a graveyard of lots of small, unfulfilled aspirations, now conveniently forgotten - dead hope. To let hope die, must, I think, rank among the greatest of all failures.
Ram Prasad
January 2003