1st & 2nd

So there was this boy who always came 2nd in class. STRAIGHT THROUGH. All the way from Nursery to Class 12. And not for lack of trying. He put everything he had in it. He read stuff that wasn't in the syllabus. He gave the most expensive gits on Teacher's Day. Fuck, he even tried cheating.

But the guy who always came first just kept coming first. Unabated.

So when he was done with school, this boy went psycho.

He topped his IIT entrance exams. He made new records in all the papers when he was studying there. He made it through the country's best MBA colleges. He decided to study in the best of the lot. He topped all his papers there. He got the best placement in that college's history. He shot up through the ranks setting new standards in the industry. Once he was global head, the company shot to the top of the industry. Once that was done, he quit and started his own thing. The startup established a whole new industry, with his thing ,quite obviously, floating right on top of the game.

then one evening, he was back in his hometown, doing the whole nostalgia thing because he was bored of everything else. He was sitting in this open air cafe enjoying a lovely hot chocolate. When all of a sudden he saw this bum walk by.

He paused for a moment. Put his coffee down. And ran after him.

The bum didn't try and flee. High on his smack trip, everything was a blur to him.

This guy grabbed the bum and pushed him against a wall.

'How could you?', he screamed, 'How could you do this to me. Everything I've done, I've done it for you.' Tears streamed from his eyes as he said this. Wiping them, as he could feel another sob build up around the back of his throat, he said, ' Everything I've ever done is to get over coming second in class. Everything...'

'Funny', said the bum from his pedestal by the dusty, broken column where he had fallen, 'Everything I've ever done is to get over coming first.'