Jealousy - a natural emotion...

(Extracted from my personal diary / blog)

IPL-2 was one of the best things that happened to my sporting-life. But there are also things about it that I hated, and one of them was the Rajasthan Royals.

There was a match between the Rajasthan Royals and some other team in IPL2. When the line-up was shown, I saw a name crop up among the Royals – Paul Valthaty. He was actually the grandson of my grandmother’s closest neighbour in Mumbai. She and my grandma had been friends for more than 40 years. I, like the usual jackass, mentioned the name to my parents (who would not have noticed it anyways) and suddenly the entire house became excited as if one of their own was playing in the match. I could hear many “he has done so well in his life” and “look at him playing in the top league of the country for the former champions’ team (I happened to mentioned that point to them)”. They even called up that old-time neighbour when Paul came to bat. When he was our after scoring just 1 run, perhaps the happiest person in the house was me. Inside I was rejoicing that he was out so cheaply, although outside I showed no emotions (as usual).

Why did I feel that way? Inspite of doing fairly good in life, I was never told to my face “Good for you!” or “Well done!” Every mark I scored below 100 in school was met with criticism (for “where did you lose the marks”) and each time I topped my class, which was a fair number of times, the reply was the same, “You are just the class topper, that doesn’t matter at all because there are so many ahead of you in the country.” They had the patience to appreciate a stranger, whom they never me, but not  enough to appreciate their own son, whom have raised for the last 25 years?

What I wrote after this (in my original post), was written in a fit of anger, and hence am not posting it here. But looking back on that moment, I felt I was (and perhaps still am) a very jealous person by nature, no matter how much people may say I am not (and no matter how much I deny that myself). I went to the extent of writing that “Nothing can be more mentally discomforting for me than staying at home”, something that I do not subscribe to.

But then, aren’t we all jealous in our own small ways? Isn’t jealousy just another natural emotion? If someone can do what you cannot do, and someone has what you don’t, you might console yourself with all sorts of excuses – only because you are jealous. Else what is need for an excuse there – he/she has it, and you don’t – it’s as simple as that.

The world is not fair, and it won’t ever be fair. But then, you know that already. We have to live with the fact that we can do what we want to do, only when we really want to do it. Waiting for things don’t make them happen, doing them makes them happen. But I guess I am not mature enough to realize that, yet.

Ciao for now.