Salman Khan, the Bollywood actor in one of his hit films- Ready, laid the emphasis on I, Me and Myself, i.e. one’s own self. I remembered those lines when I watched Leander Paes and Vishnu Vardhan fight it out heroically, though in vain, against the second seeded French pair of Tsonga and Llodra in the Men’s Doubles Tennis at the London Olympics.

Tennis, one of the few sports in which India was expected to do well at the Games became a lost cause, even before the contingent arrived in London for the Olympics.

I, Me and Myself became paramount and the Men’s Tennis Team lay in tatters in the vicious battle of egos of the famed and previously feared “Indian Express” as Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi were popularly known, when they played as a team.

Though, Paes and Bhupathi lost with different partners, as Bhupathi refused to play with Paes, the ultimate losers were the players themselves and India as a whole. Not only were the medal hopes dashed, the acrimony between the players became a point of many a discussion and the whole world had a hearty laugh at our expense.

The predominance of I, Me and Myself in today’s world has led to a lot of chaos, be it in professional, personal or social spheres. In the professional world, everyday there is news of discord brimming in corporate families.

The struggle for I, Me and Myself led to a very public spat between the brothers of a corporate family, after the demise of their father and then a division in their company, one of India’s biggest.

Their mother, somehow, was able to bring about a very shaky truce between them. The brothers fought, the shareholders suffered and in turn the company’s goodwill took a beating. The ultimate losers were the brothers themselves and the Nation again, as well.

In the personal sphere, ‘I, Me and Myself’ has created havoc in a large number of families especially in the Tier1 and Tier2 cities.

Spouses fight a never ending battle for “Personal Space”, resulting in many cases of divorce and separation. The ultimate losers again are the people themselves and their immediate family.

In the social sphere, the ‘I, Me and Myself’ phenomenon has resulted in a great surge in crime and discriminations.

The recent cases in Udaipur involving the resident doctors or the killing of a woman by her own son or the continuous rise of demand for bribery by public servants are all glaring examples of this.

When the whole concentration is only in the upliftment of “I”, then the world definitely becomes a more difficult place to live in. Unconditional love is fast dwindling and even emotions are being traded off for the betterment of “I”. What’s in it for me is fast becoming a criterion in almost all the decisions that we take.

Helping a friend, relative or the society, making donations or charity, all are gradually having strings attached. Even platforms formed by people with noble intentions like the Anti-Corruption agitation as created by Anna Hazare has gradually lost its sheen as it has been increasingly hijacked by individuals, who in their quest for the betterment of their “I”, have diluted the focus of the agitation.

They use it to advance their own ulterior motives and gain political or in some cases, even economic mileage.

In a nutshell, it has to be learnt, the sooner the better, that it is always an “I” that is the differentiating factor to Run or Ruin a partnership.

In this world, we continuously need partnerships be it the mandatory corporate partnership of its employees and its customers, the husband needing the partnership of the wife and the family as a whole and humans needing partnership of other humans in the society; easier said than done, maybe, but a universal truth that cannot be ignored, which if otherwise ignored would make Humans digress from being Social animals to just Animals, the commencement of which has already begun.