Envy

That’s not an emotion I like to entertain but then there has been one friend of mine whom I have been envious of for quite a few years now. Its been a standing emotion as pertains to my feelings towards him and its never gone away.

We were batch-mates for degree, studying three years in the same college, part of the same extended group that hung out together. After degree, as commonly happens, our group went different ways in search of our own places in society. My search took me to Chennai to do my MBA and subsequently pursue my career there. His search took him to Coimbatore which is only 3 hours from my home town Thrissur, where he completed his MBA as well. The only difference was that he chose to get a job which posted him back to our home town. Our common group of friends, including myself, felt it was not a good career move that he had decided on. Don’t get me wrong, I love Thrissur, its my home town and I appreciate it for a lot of things. Career prospects, however, is not amongst the many things I like Thrissur for.

While the rest of us were experiencing new adventures of striking out on our own, molding our personalities to incorporate city sophistication and learning the power of earning (read spending) salaries on stuff you don’t get to do or buy in Thrissur, he was still back at home and we felt missing out on life.

How naïve we tend to be? Once the metro glamour started wearing thin and rose spectacles started to come off, we started to notice smaller things. The unavailability of home cooked food, no mum to take care of you when you fell sick, working much longer hours, body starting to complain about the abuse it was being subjected to, long travels on a daily basis just to reach place of work………Despite all these things nagging me, I still managed to convince myself that I did have the best deal yet. After all who was earning more? I wasn’t sure if I was, actually, however, since I was in a metro and he in a B/C city I felt logically it had to be me. Gloom befell me, when I started thinking in terms of savings and not earnings. My superiority complex soon translated itself into the reverse.

Self realization is not all that it’s cut out to be. Perhaps my experiences and the exposures I have been lucky to have are an asset which I can’t express in any physical countable terms but somehow when I compare my lifestyle to his, I sometimes feel that I wouldn’t mind trading in those things for the simple yet wholesome life he is leading today.

I recently phoned him up to say I was in town and to check how he is doing. Quite busy these days, since he is on the organizing committee for an all Kerala cricket tournament to be held in Thrissur next month. He did share with me two personal philosophies of life –

1. He refuses to get anxious about career growth, do your work well within the office hours and leave office tensions at workplace…….. 

2. Be involved in sports, it keeps your mind and body young so much so that your attitude towards life remains young as well.

Simple philosophies and yet leads to a much happier life I think.