Low Profile

Hello,
I have two friends in Atlanta who are Raj and Soumya. Very warm and kind people. Raj narrated a story to me recently and since I love stories I listened. Raj hails from Srihari kota and Soumya from Vizag. The story goes like this:

Not so long ago in late eighties India was gunning for a Space Program. Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle was a program that was to be the spear-head of many such programmes. Initially there was incredible hoop-la about this program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASLV

Ofcourse, a lot of things in India get easily politicized. The then chief minister of Tamil Nadu(a state in India), the Chief Minister of Andra Pradesh(another state in India) and the Prime Minister of India (late Rajiv Gandhi) were all invited and made appearance at the launch site in Sriharikota. In 1987 there was a launch which was nothing short of a disaster. A repeat of that event took place the following year. And another failure was to follow in 1992. Since these events happened the culture of Sriharikota scientists has changed. They do not declare openly what is going to happen. They have shed their pompous way of proclaiming to the world their latest and greatest innovations. In all, the initial failures humbled them. Nowadays, one hears of a launch in the morning of the day of launch in a small section in the newspaper. I guess the scientists have had their share of bad ju-ju and now have a healthy respect for badluck.

Listening to Raj I realized an analogous concept applicable to humans. We must also play it down and be modest. I will keep a low profile and achieve success and let my success speak for itself. So that's that. This is just a small grain of blog posting for you. But there is enough to make you think, I think.

Best Regards
Your 'humble' author!