"If you believe that your friends are saints, you are definitely mistaken" ... is what an anonymous guy said. (If I was to tell you, I made it up.... that wouldn't be worth printing even on a one-sided waste paper in the office, but if it was a famous personality or the recently popular guy "Anonymous", you would put it on a large poster. Yes, exactly that's what you would do)
Anyway, coming to my point, If you believe that your friends are saints, you are definitely mistaken.
A few days back, as I was getting into my car a WhatsApp message flashed on my mobile in one of the groups which has been actively running along for the last 4-5 years courtesy forwards, trolls and ****. But this message wasn't a troll or normal forward. It had a message. Just before I pressed the accelerator of the car, I decided to read the message.
"An Indian named Alpha (the name isn't important) has won the big-ticket lottery worth a Million dollars", it stated. It was from my friend.
The first reaction was "Wow", for a fellow Indian. "Good for him", I typed. "I think, I should put in some efforts to make him my friend😜", I stated as a continuation of my earlier message.
I drove on to the destination and checked my mobile again. In the 15 mins of that drive, there were over 20 messages in the group, none of them being the usual forwards. Someone responded to my earlier message "You don't have to put any effort to make him your friend. It is the same Alpha who is part of this WhatsApp group". For a second, I said "Wow" once again, but this "Wow" was so different from the earlier one.
Earlier one had a positive feeling for some random fellow "Indian" winning the lottery. But now it was for someone I know and that, had a tinge of jealousy in it. It had quickly moved from "Someone random won it", to "Oh Shit, he won it?". God, you are so unfair, why couldn't I have won it. (Even though I hadn't even heard about this big ticket)
This is who I am and how I am. If you are in trouble, I will be the first one to pull you out, but if you win a lottery I would be jealous. And I know a lot of people who are like me (So I am not the lonely one), coz in no time we had our phones busy discussing our friend's good luck and how he would be spending the rest of his life. Some of us, though filled with jealousy, had started contemplating what he would do with that kind of money(Some even on excel sheets)!!
In college, when the exam results were out, I would want to know how my close friends fared, even before I knew what I had scored. When I flunk a subject, my regular explanation to my mom was "I flunked, but Reju and Subhash got only 30". I don't know if it made any difference to my results in her mind, but at least I was at peace. When I was finishing my engineering, I had decent share of backlog to complete. I think God has a way of unifying friends by keeping them together through the "difficult times". Both the names I mentioned earlier too had to clear the backlog. Sadly, for Subhash, he had to struggle with just one while we struggled with more, yet he just waited so that he graduated with us, of course with some extra time awarded 😜. There were some other friends who did all the masti with us but were studious enough to get through the exams. Honestly, I wasn't too happy about it😡. But hey, I couldn't keep everyone with me I guess. And I am sure this is the same case with the most studious ones too. Imagine the two best students in our class who were friends (I don't know them so much as I did not want to do anything with them, anyway), I think they too would have been hugging and celebrating when the results were out, but when they were alone, one of them would have definitely thought why the other had got that 5 marks extra. I still remember some "friends" in school who would wake up early in the morning to study and make sure they don't wake anyone up (just in case their best friend scored more marks) If you still believe I am crazy, so be it.
I still remember a small incident that kind of triggered long chats and animated discussions, similar to the one that started when our friend won the lottery early this week.
In my village, I was part of one of the gully cricket teams. In late teens, a lot of us have had crushes on someone (something I am generalizing again). But I realized that in my cricket team there were a bunch of people who had a crush on a girl who lived close by. And this was evident the day her marriage was fixed to someone we all knew. We did not play that day. I was sitting there with a bunch of losers (written all over their sulking face) Until then that lucky guy (the prospective groom) was always addressed as "Etta" which means big brother (in Malayalam) out of respect. But on that day, it was fun listening to all the "friends" wondering in unison. "Really him?". "Couldn't they find someone more worthy". Their problem wasn't that she was getting married (yes that too), but the bigger problem was their crush was getting married to someone who they knew well and who stayed close by.
(No, she was never part of my crush list. I fancied beauties like Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai than the local belles😜)
I love friends and I would do anything for my friends. But I am no saint. I have my share of emotions too.
And I am also happy that I am surrounded by people who share similar emotions. I called my wife and friend Subhash to break this news about my friend winning the lottery and guess what, their reaction wasn't no different from what I had. My wife even told me "You seem to be filling out so many raffle draw tickets, when will you ever win even a plastic cup".
PS: I have taken a Dubai Duty-Free ticket and the draw could be any day in the coming week. I want all of you to pray that I win it. In case I win it, I will definitely keep all of you in my prayers too. Nothing more, Nothing less. Amen 😎😎😎
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