My eldest brother always kept wearing his dress for success on, over his body.
So much so that he never wore any other that would have rendered him easy!
Life to him meant success and nothing else as such.
I was a little child then, when he was planning his life in big ways.
He decided to write the administrative services examination after his masters was over.
He was very fond of consulting astrologers who, in a chorus, had predicted about him that he would be a top administrator in his professional life and that he would get selected in the Indian Administrative Services -sure not in first - but certainly in his second attempt at it.
He believed their predictions like God's commandments.
I remember he did get selected in his written examination in his very first attempt, though not for the main administrative services but for the allied ones like transport, taxation et cetera et cetera.
But he wouldn't opt for them as he was more than 100% sure of getting selected in the main administrative stream in his attempt as the astrologers had predicted for him too.
Next year, I remember, one day when I came back home from my school, I found around 20 people sitting in the drawing room along with him consoling him in every possible manner.
I came to know that he was not selected in his written examination even for the allied services this time.
He had only one chance left with him to write his exams again, which he did not avail as he had gone through an unbelievable shock of his life by not getting selected in any stream in his second attempt that he had always taken to be a surest dictate of his destiny for his entrance into the glamorous world of administrative power professionally.
The astrologers had locked their mouths and said not a word to him.
He felt like being left alone in the world.
His dress for success was still put on, over his body!
He tried to get some administrative job in a few private companies now, which he didn't get as the entry level in them was not administrative but executive that he was not ready to take up as his profession.
His idea of success matched only an administrative job in his mindset that he had made for himself.
He started an agency of some southern private firm in the northern part of the country but met with partial success only.
His ambition wouldn't let him continue like that and soon he left his country for Italy marrying an Italian lady over there.
But in Italy also his tight dress for success that he had got stitched for administrative jobs only wouldn't fit any other, which he could have got when he failed to get the administrative.
His wife gave birth to a daughter and within a year they had come to a stage in their relations where fighting was the norm and love, an exception.
It ended in a separation and he moved on to Ireland with his tight dress for success still worn over his body.
He got a marketing job there and a friend to live with in a live-in relationship.
For the next 10 years the two lived together without marriage, but then she started insisting for it which he wasn't ready to go for as he was scared of his first experience of marriage a little bit too much in his life.
She warned him she would marry someone else if he didn't do. He warned her he would kill himself if she did so. She took it as a false threat and went ahead in her plans. As she did, my brother did too, what he had threatened to.
He killed himself in front of her eyes by drowning himself into the Irish Sea where his skeleton was found by the police near the Isle of Man two months later.
While drowning too, he was still wearing his dress for success on, over his body!
