"Schadenfreude"?!!

 

"Schadenfreude" - a "foreign" word but one that most of us can understand as something that we (that's I as well as you) have felt at some point or the other. It is a German word now accepted in the English language too and, very simply, means "joy/satisfaction/pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune"....

Remember the time when that guy on the motorcycle who zipped and cut across your path was pulled over by the traffic cops?

You smiled? Schadenfreude!!

Your neighbour's son (that snooty, arrogant no-good kid?) got admission into that swanky new college and suddenly, one day, the college was found to be unregistered - you remember telling that neighbour to first check out the courses (though, come to think of it, you really never did!) - Schadenfreude!!!

That "kitty party" where Mrs. Mehta kept talking and talking and talking about the diamond necklace that her husband had gifted her while all the time asking you "And, Mrs. Joshi, doesn't YOUR husband ever buy diamonds for you? Silk sarees? Oh how BORING" - and, you hear from Shantabai that the Income Tax department had raided the Mehta's only yesterday??  

 

Concern writ large on your face, you listen, wide eyed, open mouthed, saying "Oh??!! Is that so?" as you speak on the phone to Mrs. Mehta as Shantabai looks on, "No! How can they!! They're ALL corrupt!! Really?!!" you speak while inside your heart you were singing such wonderful happy songs (Heera Heera Heera Heera...?) - Schadenfreude.

All of us, at some point or the other, have felt this, no? We're humans, after all, with our essential decency still intact but with that ever-so-once-in-a-while human failing... 

But tell me -  would you actually LIKE to go and watch people suffer? would you actually be willing to PAY, spend money AS WELL AS YOUR (ok, we're in India, so may be "not so precious") TIME (amazing how we seem to put so little a value on that commodity, "time") to go and see people (and I'm using that word in a massive, humongous plural sense - not one person, not 2 or 3 people but a much, much larger population) suffer?

Sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of our rooms, plonked securely on our behinds, watching the news on television - lets say an earthquake in Sikkim? Or, the tsunami in Fukushima? Or, take you pick - there are any number of such "hot-spots" around the world as God plays his "leela" or as the Buddha smiles...

I can picture the more sensitised among us, the next day or the next week perhaps, responding to the newspapers and writing out a cheque for the disaster affected people (and a bit of Sec. 80 G Income Tax relief won't harm, either, no?)

But, seriously....... Can you picture yourself logging on to "makemytrip.com" or "cleartrip.com" or even the humble "irctc.com" to book tickets to go on a jaunt to visit these areas? I doubt if we're that ghoulish by temperament and I'm sure most of you would agree too.

So, given that, where does this man get his "kicks"? The man, in question, being the Tourism Minister of Orissa - Prafulla Samal - who has reportedly stated that the floods in Orissa are an opportunity to promote tourism. He said people would like to see how flood-affected areas look so districts reeling under the floods should use this opportunity to promote tourism.

Go figure! Figure, too, WHY we continue to have a "leadership deficit"......