Expectations. Aspirations. Envy. Mish-mash

    Last week there was an article written by Chetan Bhagat in TOI about what he calls as “Ash-envy”. He, in his simple English, pointed out, as a society, how much we envy Aishwarya Rai’s achievements. She is one of a few recognizable Indian faces across the globe. Yet, for us, she still acts with a “plastic face”. She can’t emote. She can’t express. Basically, we (all genders included!) conclude that she can’t act. Ok, I'm not saying that she is the best actor and all that. But, do you know that still she has no dates for some directors who approach her because she is busy all year round? Isn’t it our male chauvinistic society that places Shahrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan over Ash when, actually, she is the biggest superstar among them? I was again surprised to see how much people were slamming Chetan Bhagat for that article. Many pointed out that it’s about himself, the standard was high school level and many other high-handed opinions. Whatever simple idea he pointed out, surprisingly, the same just played in front of me, from many unexpected quarters. I felt a bit disappointed too.

    India’s Saina Nehwal achieved some rare feats in past few days (She won three tournaments in three weeks!) and she is currently ranked No.3 in the world. As an other article pointed out, many used this occasion to slam Sania Mirza. The author was spot on. How many of us have compared Tennis to Badminton? For many it was just the gorgeous-media-hyped-married-to-Pakistani Sania vs. focused-soft-spoken-Saina. If one compares these two sports, he/she can clearly identify why a tennis player is more prone to injuries than a badminton player. A Rank 31 in Tennis is also as worthy as a Rank 3 in Badminton in a country like India, where the sports culture is either rare or absent. I still don’t get how people can say that Sania didn’t do anything great for Tennis in this country. They say she was distracted, she couldn’t live up to the hype etc etc. Why do we discuss about her personal life? And, did she claim that she is going to be the best? If I remember, once she told that a rank in Top 10 is her priority, but the continuous injuries pulled her rankings down as she missed many tours. Similar things have happened to many other international women Tennis players of current generation too. But we don’t miss any chance that comes in our way.

    Ok. I am talking mainly in sports context. The same stuff got repeated when prominent teams lost in the initial rounds of the World Cup Football 2010. The same thing happened when Roger Federer crashed out of the Wimbledon yesterday. People even say that they are happy to see Federer losing. Why? But nobody thinks about the fact that at his opponent’s age (four years younger) no one could match Federer’s game. Next year, he’ll be past 30 and that simply means, for a tennis player, he has become old, really old. When Vishwanathan Anand won the world championship, we chided our Cricket team which lost some important games in the T20 world cup. The trends in all these examples worry me a lot.

    We expect everyone to be the best. The similar aspirations we apply to the people around and on ourselves. Everyone wants to see extra ordinary. Everyone wants to see the rich. Everyone wants to see the accomplished. Even in a 100 m Olympic dash, we are concerned about the fastest man on the earth, but the ones who get silver and bronze are the second and third fastest men, who finished the race within milliseconds from the first man. And that’s no less a great achievement.  But do you know them? No. So, is it only the aspirations and envy playing out here? I don't know. May be yes, and may be there are other factors too.

    Another aspect. We feed our expectations based on what we want to achieve rather than what one is capable of achieving. So the aspirations grow and reach a level where even spectacular achievements don’t get the glory because they are not extra ordinary. So, for a really huge majority, the aspirations and the actuals have huge gap between them and we are in turn producing a less contended society in this process. My point is simple. It’s not extra ordinary or uncommon to be an ordinary person. It’s just that more and more people are falling into this trap of being extra-ordinary or aspiring to be extra-ordinary. Many a time, the ordinary make this world more interesting and lively than the extra ordinary. No one will know about it. But they are a contended lot and they will do what they continue to do and make this world a better place to live in and on.  

Sorry for such an unstructured post. I didn't want to edit it. It's as raw as I was thinking. Please bear with it.