Envy

We know it. We try hard to rise above it. It still finds us. But what if, it’s not all that bad? In which I confront the gnawing feeling of jealousy — and ask "par aap ko chahiye kya?"

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I spent the last two weeks swimming in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. Much like the last time I read it. I inhaled the four novels obsessively. I read whenever I could, however many pages I could cram. And when I wasn’t reading, I kept looking at the world around me through the eyes of Lenu and Lila. If you haven’t read the novels, here’s some quick context: the Neapolitan quartet, is above all, a story of a lifetime of friendship between two girls in Naples, Italy.

It’s a deep, complex, pulsating, angry, frustrating friendship. The kind of friendship you know intimately if you have ever loved someone who you also hate in equal measure. It’s also a story about class, politics, writing, love; all with a sprinkle of Marquezian magic realism. The first time I read the novels, I was spellbound by how Ferrante constructs a world that feels so real, rich, and familiar.

The second time I read the novels, I was reminded of how ultimately this is a story of two friends who are deeply envious of each other.

Envy. That gnawing, eroding feeling at the pit of your stomach that seemingly comes out of nowhere and peels away all the pretensions you might have had at being a “good person.” When you’re envious of someone, you just are. Logic doesn’t work, gratitude feels like a weak concept, and the world, feels, magnificently unfair.

In Ferrante’s world, Lenu has spent her life feeling diminished by the envy she feels for Lila. At every step — through school, through adolescence, through her career as a successful writer — Lenu feels like she has a “perfect” life on paper. But somehow, she is always, always, second to the radiance of Lila.

This particular feeling of being diminished is the core of how envy works. It doesn’t matter how spectacular your life maybe, there always will come along something or someone that will make you feel a stab of “I want that, not this.” In that sense then, envy is a fairly relative feeling. It doesn’t exist without having an object to project your fantasy on. You’re always envious “of” something, after all.

It’s also fundamentally a corrosive feeling.

It takes to shards, your self-esteem and moral values. Suddenly, thanks to envy, you feel yourself quite capable of doing things you only would have attributed to the hair-twirling antics of Komolika. The other, more insidious thing that envy does is, it erases who you are. Often I find myself feeling slight envy at people whose lives I don’t even want — like ask yourself, do you really want to live in a van and be a nomad? But scrolling through one too many reels, suddenly, the financial and professional stability you worked for all your life starts feeling suffocating.

What happens when you start chasing after lives, goals, and milestones that are not yours is that the gnawing feeling in your stomach starts expanding until you start feeling like you don’t know what you are pretending to be anymore.

Bill Watterson, the author of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, said something in a Kenyon College commencement speech that has remained with me — “To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.” With the green-eyed monster on your back though, you won’t have a chance in hell trying to find that meaning — even if you have a kickass social media following.

Ah, the elephant in the room. The easiest manifestation of envy is, of course, via the gods of social media.

I don’t need to tell you how scrolling through Instagram reels or watching consecutive stories of people living their best lives will have you transform into a green-eyed monster faster than you can say “deinfluencing.” We might be the only generation in the history of civilisation that has a bird’s eye view of thousands of lives unfolding in a way that is designed to make us feel inadequate about ours.

But sometimes, it’s this very myopic nature of envy, that can lead to surprising friendships, as I have discovered.

A few months ago, I met someone whose life generated in me a deep sense of envy. She had everything I wanted to do, be, and look like — or so it seemed. When we met though, and got talking, I was confronted with a comical UNO reverse. Because She, the object of my envy, was actually envious of me!

Once we really got into it, we realised that our perception of each other was highly filtered by the nature of social media to only focus on “highlights.” We both had thorny things in our life that we were smart enough to crop, filter, and curate. We ended up laughing, fantasised about getting one of those Nokia phone to detox from social media, and I went back home without the gnawing feeling. Now, whenever I see her stories, I hit the heart button indiscriminately.

Because both Lenu and I loved our respective friends/object of envy, ultimately, we managed to walk away from the the green-eyed monster. This is the good kind of envy.

A feeling that pushes you to really, really examine the contours of your nature. You try and look for moments of empathy that make you go from “how is she free on a Monday, does she not have job?!” to “I am sure there’s some reason why she’s taking a break from work, let check in on her.” The journey is not always easy, but ultimately one that can lead to surprising consequences — a new friend, more gratitude, better relationships.

If there’s no empathy, there’s always motivation. Once upon a time, I am ashamed to admit, every announcement of a new book by an author or a writer would have me seeing green. Until I thought — wait, a minute. If I am not writing, on what basis am I being envious anyway? Shouldn’t the fact that there are more first-time authors seemingly blessed by the publishing powers-to-be push me to also work hard and shoot my shot? Have some “courage of your mistakes” if you’re well-intent on making them, I suppose.

All this to say — the next time envy knocks on your happy, content, “sab theek hi hai” life, don’t slam the door on its face immediately. Ask it to sit down, make some chai, ask where it came from, what it wants to be in the next five years. Just one thing to never do, one big flashing-red caveat — don’t ever, ever let it drive.

Envy makes for lousy drivers.

While writing this, I was reminded of this video where Dame Judi Dench recites this Shakespeare sonnet which really should be titled as “A Quick SOS to Envy.”

Thank you as always for reading. I would love to hear from you, so hit “Reply” to say hi. If you liked reading this, send it to that one friend whose life drives you mad with envy. If you didn’t like reading this, send it that one person who is your nemesis — you know the one I am talking about.

I’ll write again, soon.

1. Image from “Sangam” (1964) starring Raj Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar, and a most radiant Vyjanthimala. Perhaps the most common form of envy in our Hindi cinema has been the “love triangle.” Incidentally, the film is in theatres this week due to Raj Kapoor’s centennial celebrations — go watch it, whether in theatres or otherwise. But for Vyjanthimala > Raj Kapoor.