In the cheerful town of Lalgudi, where boys still measured greatness by the number of runs scored in a single afternoon and elders measured it by the size of a man’s house, young Krishnan had begun to feel the weight of a new and troubling word: loser.
It was not a word that belonged to the old Lalgudi. In the days of his uncle’s youth, a boy who failed an examination was simply “a little dull in studies,” and a man who remained a clerk all his life was “steady and content.” But these days the radio, the magazines, and even some of the new teachers spoke a different language. Success meant money, rank, position, and fame. Anything less was failure. Life had become a binary match—winner or loser—and the scoreboard was visible to everyone.
Krishnan felt this pressure keenly. When Rajam scored higher marks, when another boy arrived on a shining new cycle, when a classmate’s father was promoted, a small voice inside him whispered, “You are falling behind.” The self-help books that had begun to appear in the town library only made it worse. They spoke of becoming rich, becoming powerful, becoming famous—nothing else seemed to count.
One evening, sitting on the terrace with Uncle Venkatesh, Krishnan finally spoke his worry.
“Uncle, these days it is tragic to be a loser. Everyone celebrates only the winners—the ones with money and rank. The rest of us feel we have failed at life.”
Uncle Venkatesh put down his book and looked at his nephew with quiet amusement. “A thoughtful man named Alain de Botton has written about exactly this. He says the modern self-help industry, driven by many new-age gurus, measures success only in material things. While money and position are not entirely wrong, this one-dimensional view distorts reality. It turns life into a harsh contest of winners and losers.”
Krishnan leaned forward. “Then what should real help look like?”
“Real help,” his uncle continued, “should teach us four quieter things. First, to know our own fickle minds—the way desires and fears rise and fall without warning. Second, to find a purpose that is truly our own, not borrowed from magazines. Third, to connect meaningfully with others instead of competing with them. And fourth, to achieve small intervals of composure and acceptance—moments when we can sit still and say, ‘This is enough for now.’”
That night Krishnan tried to practise these four things.
He watched his mind and discovered how quickly it jumped from envy to self-pity and back again.
He asked himself what purpose felt real: not becoming the richest man in Lalgudi, but becoming someone who could be trusted and who enjoyed a good game of cricket without needing to win every time.
The next day he shared his tiffin with a quieter boy who usually sat alone, and found the conversation surprisingly pleasant.
And in the evening, instead of brooding over marks, he sat on the back steps for ten full minutes, listening to the temple bells, and allowed himself a small interval of acceptance.
Weeks passed. Krishnan still studied, still played, still competed in the ordinary ways of schoolboys. But the desperate fear of being labelled a “loser” slowly loosened its grip. When Rajam won the running race, Krishnan felt a clean happiness for his friend instead of the old sharp envy. When his own marks were only average, he no longer treated it as a final verdict on his life.
One evening he reported his progress to Uncle Venkatesh.
“I still want to do well, Uncle. But I no longer believe that only money and rank make a person successful. Knowing my restless mind, finding a small purpose, talking properly to people, and accepting ordinary days—these feel more real.”
Uncle Venkatesh smiled. “That is the beginning of a wiser kind of success. The world will continue to shout about winners and losers. But you can quietly refuse to live inside that narrow scoreboard.”
In the soft dusk of Lalgudi, while other boys argued about who was ahead and who was behind, young Krishnan walked home with a lighter step. The old binary game still played loudly around him, but inside his own mind a gentler scoreboard had begun to appear—one that valued understanding, purpose, friendship, and small moments of peace. And on that quieter scoreboard, he was no longer in danger of being called a loser.