The reluctant Chartered Accountant — Failure in slow motion
By: Dwarak Narasimhan
Tags: Failure, Life, Courage, Corporate Culture, Nonfiction

September 3, 1998. 3 AM. Malnad Towers, Thippassandra, Bangalore.

I manage to turn the key the right way on my third attempt and walk in to the flat I share with three others. The light blinds me. I shield my weak eyes from the brightness and spy my dear friend Dinkar lazing on the bed, reading. A massive, ugly, poorly-bound, yellow, loose-leaf book. I loosen my tie and lie down beside him.

“What’s that crap you’re reading?” I ask.

“Hmmm? I’ve to study.”

“For what? We’ve already got a job. Life’s good.”

“We’ve to pass exams. And ten tests before that.”

And just like that, my short, sweet, corporate honeymoon came to an end. As part of my employment, I was required to take up the chartered accountancy exams. A fact that I had clearly dismissed to a remote corner of my brain, never to be re-visited, but sadly, one that I now had to face.

The weeks went by. The weekdays (and Saturdays) went by in a blur of work. Sundays were reserved for “Sunday tests”. Test after test after test, every Sunday, morning and afternoon (evenings were spent watching movies on a rented VCP from SS Video — yes, as shady as it sounds). My propensity to fail came back with a vengeance. Accounting, auditing, taxation, EDP — I failed them all with a flourish, and then some. I hoped that I had passed my tenth test (not without a little help from the kind invigilator — God bless her) on the last possible Sunday that would have allowed me to appear for my intermediate exams. The results came in a week later — I hadn’t. Never one to give up, I sent it in for a re-evaluation, where a sympathetic examiner added the four marks I had needed to pass. And just like that, I was deemed ready to appear for the intermediate exams.

There did remain that one small matter of celebrating this small success before proceeding on 3 months of study leave. Needless to say, a grand party was organized. I drank till 5 am, duly threw up, and went straight to the airport to board a flight back home to be with my parents for the next 3 months.

Three months went by quickly. And no, it wasn’t a daze of studies and tuitions. It was a haze of alcohol and cigarettes, interspersed with an hour or two of studies if I felt the mood overcome me. I’ve never been one for bookish knowledge. Life teaches us what we need to know. Exams to my mind were (and still are) a waste of everyone’s time. And therefore, firm in my belief, I proceeded to write — for the first time –the intermediate exams of the chartered accountancy course.

January 15, 2000, a fancy corporate office on MG Road, Bangalore

The results were out. After two months of waiting. The dial-up connection was frustratingly slow. We scrolled down the page. It took an eternity to download each page when a roll number was typed in. Machines are unhurried. Measured. Detached. Dispassionate. Everything I was not.

Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass. Fail.

How life changes in an instant. Even if that instant seems to pass in slow motion.

They had told us that they only hired the best and the brightest. They had told us failure was not an option. They had told us stories of their successes in years past. Sadly, I had missed the memo. There was my failure. Absolute. Open. For the world to see. To smirk at. To sneer at. To laugh at.

I turned away as my eyes welled up and my ears reddened with embarrassment and humiliation.

Youth does not prepare us for failure. It does not teach us the deep, dark, desolate place that it is. Indeed, we do not at that stage (or maybe ever) understand success beyond the immediate validation, or failure beyond the immediate humiliation, that it brings within our small, insignificant world. We are unable to step back and look at it through the lens of a longer timeline or the larger world — which at most times does not care. It is only when we step away from the noise that we can appreciate success and failure for what they truly are — minor events in the course of our lives that we choose, sadly, to be defined by. But that is youth. That is life. And that was me at 22.

World — 1. Dwarak — 0.

To be continued…

Also read:

The reluctant Chartered Accountant — Be still, my beating heart! | by Dwarak Narasimhan | Dec, 2020 | Medium

The reluctant chartered accountant | by Dwarak Narasimhan | Dec, 2020 | Medium