Content by comparison

AS a child, every time I complained about something I didn't have, I was shown someone else in greater need. I was told that I should lear...

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AS a child, every time I complained about something I didn’t have, I was shown someone else in greater need. I was told that I should learn to count my blessings and be happy that I was better off than many others.

Over the years, I mastered the art of being happy by comparison. Most people can never be like Ruskin Bond’s friend Pitambar, who the writer found dancing in the middle of the road one night. Pitambar said he was dancing as he was happy. When Bond sought the reason for his happiness, the answer was even simpler: "Because I am dancing on the road." Such simplistic attitudes towards happiness are rare except perhaps among drunkards and the mentally challenged. Bond doesn’t mention whether Pitambar was drunk or not. Probably he was one of those rare persons to whom joy and happiness came naturally.

So I was not really surprised by a recent newspaper report on a survey on the happiest people in the world. The survey â€“ 1999 Happiness Baro-meter â€“ undertaken by market research agency Roper Starch Worldwide found that Indians were among the happiest people. Eight Indian cities were covered and in the overall happiness ratings, Indians were next only to the Americans and were quite ahead of the French and the British.

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More Indians than Americans said they were "very happy" with the money they had. Again, the survey claimed that Indians were next only to the Americans in job satisfaction. However, Indians, who boast of family values and commitment, were behind the Americans and British when asked whether they were very happy with their relationships with family and friends. Though the percentage of Indians who said they were very happy was high enough, it was the very fact that we were far behind such "decadent" societies like the US and Britain which caught me unawares.

The same surprise element was there from this country of temples and sadhus where gods are invoked for everything from curing an ailment to getting a dotcom venture flourishing. The number of Indians who said they were "very happy" with the role of religion in their lives were at least 10 per cent lower than the Americans who said so.

Though more Indians could appreciate the money and the jobs they had, when it came relationships with family and God long considered the two strong points of our ancient culture we lagged behind others. One would have expected Indians to top the list of people who said they were "very happy" with their family and the role of religion in their life.

Then it struck me; happiness is by comparison. In a country like India, where you are su-rrounded by people who live in slu-ms or on the roads, by people who do not have a morsel to eat, I guess it is easier to be happy for just having th-ese. How else can we account for the fact that 17 per cent of the Indians surveyed said they were "very happy" with the amount of money they had, as compared to the 8 per cent who said so in the UK and France.

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Similarly, it must be the sight of hundreds of thousands of jobless graduates which prompted those surveyed to say they were very happy with their jobs. It surely must be easier to appreciate the little you have when you see less fortunate people all around. By the same yardstick, it is natural that Indians take their relationship with family and God for granted, as almost every other person here can boast of a secure family and seems to have his own equation with God.

That must be why Americans were able to appreciate a relationship more when it was going strong or the role of religion in their lives when they had built a bridge with God. For them these were exceptions.

Discount the pitfalls of statistics, a truth still emerges. A truth guided more by the material than metaphysical. The barometer of happiness always has an eye on the neighbour. It’s all about what we have that others don’t.