When’s the first time I felt jealous? This question brings up lots of good, bad, and funny memories. But who would I have become if not for that jealousy? I don’t have a definite answer to this question. Anyway, let’s pick up the first one I can remember.

It was a very long time ago. I was born and brought up in a rural village. If I am correct, I was in the second or third standard. The school was so close to my home that I could walk there in a few minutes. At least it took me a few minutes at that time. It was run by the government. A few dozen students studied there.

I was a very competitive child. Even today it follows me wherever I go. But I think and hope that I have it under control these days. I have left the rest to the people around me to let me know when I am not.

My mom used to work there as a temporary teaching assistant in the PTA (Parent Teacher Association). Actually, there was no such association, but that’s what they were called at that time.

The school was just a single big building covered with a red tiled roof. The first three and the remaining two standards were separated by wooden boards. I used to always top the class, and that was my thing. Except that one time I didn’t.

I was so angry and disappointed at myself that I started fighting with my mom just because she worked there. I ran outside the class and hid behind the door and started crying. I think that’s the first time I felt jealousy. Honestly, I don’t remember anything else other than that crying.

After that it happened a lot of times. Sometimes I cried, and other times I just fueled myself with that jealousy to work harder.

I remember another such event very well. I just joined the sixth grade in a government higher secondary school in a neighbouring village. This was a big school for me compared with my elementary school. It had a total of around eight to nine hundred students. I had to ride a bicycle for four kilometers to get there.

My half-yearly exams had just finished. One of my cousins was a senior at that school. She told me that I was not going to be the topper of the class. I came straight home to my mom and started crying. She tried consoling me, but I felt bad until my cousin told me that she was just teasing. Then the exam results came. I was the top of the class after all. So there was no problem until I finished my twelfth standard.

After that, I got into one of the best colleges in the country. But the same fire fueled by my jealousy started burning me. Now I had a lot more jealousy than I could handle. I was a government school Tamil-medium student who had to attend fully English-based classes. Students were from all over the country, so English was the primary way of communication. Other than the language, there were a lot of other things to compare.

It created an inferiority complex. I couldn’t handle it anymore. The guy who used to be the topper of the class is now an average student here with nothing to be proud of himself. I spent more time worrying about this than focusing on my studies. But even when I tried hard, it took me nowhere. It took a lot of time to come out of the mindset.

Coming out doesn’t mean I don’t get jealous anymore. Even today I get jealous of people. But sometimes I ask myself what difficulties other people had to put up with to achieve their success. I said to myself that I only knew the success stories, not the thousand failures behind it. It helped me sometimes, but not always. Because there were people who had privileges just because of their background.

Then I asked myself, is this life even fair to everyone? The answer is no, not at all. Everyone knows this answer, but accepting this fact is not an easy thing. So I did the following: each time I get jealous of someone’s unfair advantages, I remind myself that each of our lives depends on a lot of random events. Those are totally out of our control.

Steve Jobs once said that all the dots will connect backwards, so do whatever you want to do in this life with your best efforts. I can’t fully apprehend whether we are travelling in a predefined path or a fully random one.

So I don’t expect life to be fair. I just shifted my attention from jealousy to the next best thing I could do to make my life and the lives of people around me better. It seems to work well for now. So I intend to follow this until I find a better solution.