Beyond the Broken Egg

 

Beyond the Defeated Egg

 

The mobile rang. It was Colonel Biju Thomas (Retd), a friend, colleague, and former school junior. He asked if I was joining my schoolmates' Onam celebrations. I had seen messages on the WhatsApp group about the celebration. I was not keen because I had other things to do. When he insisted, I relented.  As the date approached, messages about the function started pouring in. One such message was from Captain Ramesh Babu (Retd), a former Indian Navy officer and one of the organisers of the function. He wanted people to bring along anything that would rekindle memories of our school days. 

On the appointed day, there were about 90 people, against the fifty the organisers had initially struggled to put together. The excited conversations, part of the Meeting and Greeting, filled the room. As always, such interactions eventually gravitate towards groups of classmates and batchmates. 

When Ramesh Babu announced it was time to place what we had brought along on the table, very few of us moved. Sports banians, a school belt, autographs, a coconut and a jackfruit found their way onto the table. I placed a boiled egg on the table. Among the impressive collection of school memorabilia, my boiled egg looked ridiculous. I also knew that an insignificant, fragile egg would not be the winner. But I was not there to win. That fragile-looking egg carried a memory that had survived for more than five decades, and it had to find a place. The egg fight we engaged in at school had, in its unique way, prepared me for life ahead.  I wanted someone to ask, “Why a boiled egg?”

Nobody asked! But, like the ancient mariner, I must tell you the story.

I had never encountered egg fighting anywhere outside our school. But after reading up, I realised the game is played in several parts of the world. I do not know how it reached our school, but we were playing it way back in the early 1970s. The game is simple. Two players take a hard-boiled egg each and tap the pointed ends of the eggs against each other. The person whose egg cracks loses. The winner stays on to fight another egg. The egg that survives the most challenges is declared the winner. In the initial days, the game was benign fun. There was nothing to lose. But soon, an enterprising boy changed the nature of the game. While the no-stakes game continued, a new version for the not-so-faint-hearted evolved. Here, the loser lost the egg, and the winner took it.

We were served boiled eggs once or twice a week. On those days, the school mess dining hall became the Colosseum. The chatter of over 500 boys noisily eating made the hall resemble the ancient Flavian Amphitheatre. Hungry boys armed with boiled eggs became gladiators. For a child in a residential school, losing an egg is not a small loss. Yet many of us egg-fought.  Some won and some lost. As far as I remember, I lost most of the time. Initially, I blamed the eggs I got. When I was done blaming everything else, I watched the winner and realised that my technique was the problem. I tried to correct it. I fought with and without stakes. After losing a few eggs, I stopped playing. Some winners amassed so many eggs that they couldn't consume them that day. Slowly, the craze faded out as we took to more physically challenging games.

The lessons I learnt from egg fighting in school stayed with me and, in many ways, influenced how I approached my career. I was always aware that every conflict and confrontation had stakes. I could either win or lose, and when I lost, I understood that my handling of the conflict had contributed to my defeat. I realised it is important to take risks, but one needs to be realistic when evaluating one’s chances. There are times when one has to engage, but one must always bear in mind that it is equally important to retreat before losses become irrevocable. It is foolish to remain invested in reinforcing failure. There is always a tomorrow, a better chance, and a better method. Risk-taking is not gambling. A gamble is a risk taken without adequate assessment, hoping the dice will roll in our favour. Occasionally, the dice do roll in our favour, but mistaking that for deserved success is foolhardy.

Often, we normally attribute our failures to our opponents, competitors, and even adversity itself. It is difficult for us to look within and find the flaws. Often the adversity itself would have been brought upon us by our own actions. The lesson applies everywhere: career, relationships, business, sport and home. Retreating from failure is not necessarily giving up. It is recognising that continuing to reinforce failure is irrational. Repeated failure should call for deep introspection before attributing the reasons to somebody else. If our actions are led by ego, we tend to justify past losses and continue our march towards future losses.

The most powerful lesson of all still came from the egg on the table during the Onam celebration. There was no egg fighting that day. The lesson came from my boiled egg, lying inconsequentially on the table, yet silently fighting for relevance. Our story, our rationale, our aspirations, our justifications are only ours. They may not matter to others at all. But whether they matter to others or not, if they matter to you, they are important.