Saturday, August 25, 2012

THE RISE AND FALL OF SHOOTING STARS

There is an old saying that shooting stars always fall. This adage has been proven time and again.  I greatly admired some persons who have recently fallen from grace. To see them fall/fallen makes me feel very sad. Rajat Gupta, Fareed Zakaria and Lance Armstrong are some of my heroes who have become zeroes. They all had a meteoric rise in their careers. But then like meteors they fell to the ground. It was a rapid but short stay in ascendency. Their growth was spectacular but they came crashing down with their reputation in tatters.

They are all unquestionably great achievers. Brilliant, persevering and ambitious. Rajat Gupta came from a humble background but scaled great heights. He became the CEO of the world's largest and best management consultancy firm. He rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty. Known to be a devoted husband and a loving father of three daughters, what went wrong?  Why did such an intelligent person have to indulge in insider trading and be so careless about it?

Fareed Zakaria was also a brilliant student. He studied at Yale and Harvard. He is a prolific writer and India's show piece to the US world for his excellence in reporting and news coverage. He was with Newsweek and then Chief Editor of Time magazine. He has written many books and some of them were best-sellers. Why did he have to plagiarise? Did he imagine that he would get away with it?

Lance Armstrong, six times winner of Tour de France, the toughest cycling competition in the world, has been recently accused of continuous usage of drugs over the years and he is being stripped of all his titles. He suffered from cancer and heroically fought the disease and wrote a best seller and inspired thousands of people by his courage and stoic determination. He battled all these charges all these years but now has given up fighting anymore. What made him take to doping to win competitions? And if it is true, did he not know that he will be exposed sooner or later? What made him to continuously take drugs before cycling competitions?

The answers are there for all of us to see.

Arrogance, over-confidence, ego and greed. All negative qualities which must be abhorred. There is a saying in Sanskrit- "vinasha kaale, vipeerata buddhi" which explains the behaviour pattern of these shooting stars. The very mighty fall when they become egoistic, arrogant, over-confident and greedy. History is full of such examples. In the above episodes, there is a lesson for our present younger generation. We see many of them very successful in India as well as abroad. Fame and wealth have come to them very fast. They must preserve what they have gained and scale greater heights. Modesty, integrity, sacrifice, helpfulness, empathy and concern with and for the down-trodden should be their guiding values. Then they can be called truly outstanding and remain at the top and not crash down like meteors.