Losing Is Fun!!!

Sure losing can be fun. Why not? You'd love to lose to a kid just to see a smile on their face (trust me there are losers like that) or to an attractive person of the opposite sex, just to score with him/her (Please note I am trying to be gender neutral here. Ya, you got it right, "trying").

But that's not what I am talking about here. I am talking about losing against your wishes, making a stupid stupid fool out of yourself, something that breaks your heart and makes you want to jump off a cliff!! Ya, that's what I am talking about here. No one wants to be in such a situation right. But let me try to change the way you look at it. I'll recount two instances - one in which losing completely ruined my day and one in which it made my day. As it happens both the scenarios are set in out of town vacations.

As a kid, I often used to go out with my parents on touristy vacations. Used to be fun going out with parents in those days, you don't have to be responsible for anything. Your parents are there to cover for you. But on one such occasion, I was given the responsibility to take care of my mum's purse while she paid tribute at some shrine (don't laugh, I was a kid back then and looked cute with a purse). As you've probably guessed by now, I managed to somehow lose it. I don't really remember how, maybe some tout managed to get it off my hands while I was appreciating the future potential of a kid of the opposite sex (notice the gender neutrality again).

Of course my parents were angry with me when they realized it, but tried not to show it. In any case I felt really stupid and dejected and angry at my carelessness. Losing my mom's purse had completely ruined that vacation for me.

Now take another scenario. Recently me and my buddies took a trip to the ultimate Indian bachelor party destination, Goa. We were all meeting after many years and it promised to be a gala time. We reached our hotel, pooled our money in one wallet, handed it over to the most "responsible" person in the group and headed for the beach. And as fate would have it, the "responsible" person was duped by a tout and we lost all our money. For reasons beyond my control, I cannot describe how exactly the tout duped my friend, but it was rather ingenious. And do we mourn our loss? Not at all. We couldn't believe what just happened and how foolish we were not to see through the whole con. We couldn't help laughing at our stupidity. We laughed till tears started running down our cheeks. We laughed for days thinking about it. Losing the money and in such style really made our day. We hadn't hoped of laughing so much on that vacation. We enjoyed it so much so that the person who had lost the wallet also started participating in our merry making. So in a way it was money well spent.

So in a nutshell Losing can be fun too, it's just how you look at it or in the above case how your friends make you enjoy it by laughing mercilessly at you.