This magazine's thrift in the use of appellations such as prodigy, whiz kid, and wunderkind has not rendered the terms any less popular in a culture obsessed with youth and success. India's fixation with the genus stems from an ethos that stressed extreme humility. "Try and be spectacularly pedestrian," used to be the unspoken message, "and if you make the mistake of succeeding, do not advertise the fact." Primogeniture, not meritocracy, was the norm. Events of the past 13 years may have changed things some-it is all right to publicise success, for instance, even sport visible signs of it-but even today, people well past middle age dominate the fields of politics, religion, and cinema, all opiates of the masses.

As it often happens in such cases, rather than lessen the appeal of wunderkinds, this has served to amplify it. India sees them everywhere. A two-year-old's ability to spell a-p-p-l-e is all it takes to convince well-meaning parents that they have a child prodigy on their hands. A schoolchild aware of the Sicilian Defence is hailed a Vishwanathan Anand in the making. Every street where cricket is played boasts its own Sachin Tendulkar. And in a lemming-like rush to prove themselves, their parents, teachers, or friends right, young people compete in everything from neighbourhood fashion contests to dance competitions (Boogie Woogie anyone?) on television to examinations that promise entry into India's hallowed halls of academia, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

Flameouts abound. Engineering and business schools such as the ones named in the last sentence have chestnuts about toppers who could no longer take the pressure and flunked in their later semesters or trimesters, some dropping out altogether. Corporate India is replete with tales of fast trackers whose careers disintegrated after one extravagant failure. If there's one thing the world loves more than a wunderkind, it is a fallen wunderkind. For every one of the 72 of the species that constitute this magazine's universe of wunderkinds (and the shortlist for its Young Super Performer survey), then, there are a few thousand others that began well and promised much, only to fade into the kind of insignificance that can only be found in the teeming dome of the great bell curve that is life. Now that we've paid our respects (and maintained the regulation two-minute silence) to these shattered dreams, on to more cheerful matters.

Like the one thing we would like to highlight about the winners, Sulajja Firodia Motwani, the joint MD of Kinetic Engineering; R Subramanian, the MD of Subhiksha Trading Services; and Prasoon Joshi, the national creative director of McCann Erickson. No, this isn't the factoid that all three have been to business school. Instead, this has to do with the two metrics relevant to the survey: youth and success. The trio features in this magazine because it has done great things (albeit, in different fields), and because it satisfies the age-limit criteria set (Young Super Performers need to be under 40 years of age). That, though, doesn't necessarily mean its achievements will fade into insignificance once we start considering those of people over 40 years of age. Firodia Motwani's turnaround effort at Kinetic, Subramanian's revolutionary discount-store model, and Joshi's trend-setting use of vernacular street lingo in advertising are all accomplishments that are age-neutral. As the advertising line for the Business Today Young Super Performer Award puts it in the kind of ungrammatical splendour that only ad-lines and song lyrics can carry off: Below 40, Above Everyone Else.