Schadenfreude- is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
The feeling of happiness when you see someone you envy ,fall in life and get all bruised up.
Kind of like when the teachers favorite student gets the least marks.
How has this come about?
Of Course we can’t tell where our emotions stem from.(Technically the amygdala ,but you get my drift…)
Is this part of our competitive psyche?
Or are we all just sadists at some deep unexplored level?
I know from experience that this emotion causes a ton of guilt and mixed feelings.
So this goes back 5 years,when I was a school girl,still in pigtails focussed on being the best,unaware of the competition out there(at least not to the extent of it).
Intellectual Olympiad was conducted in many of the premier schools in the state and I had decided to go for “Leadership and Presentation Skills”.
If I remember correctly the event was postponed due to a Telangana bandh and unfortunately this competition lay on the same day that was the second round for NSO.(National Science Olympiad)
I was excited about NSO but I had’nt prepared a speech for the Intellectual Olympiad competition not to mention my slight stage fear ,so needless to say ,I broke out my sweetest most charming smile and tried to convince my mother to skip it altogether,but fortunately she didn’t budge.
She told me to suck it up and to deal with it.(You know how Indian mothers can be 😉 )
Unprepared,I rushed to the center with one pigtail and sneakers,which was considered a blatant disregard for my school dress code.
I went on stage shivering,blanking out on my speech,so I spoke from my heart,telling them what I really thought leadership meant,that transparency was crucial for people to trust their leaders.
The first question I was asked is why I was dressed so shabbily and did my school allow for one pigtail and sneakers.
So again I tried to charm them,tried to convince them that the dress code did not apply to older students and on Sundays,(7 th standard),obviously they did not believe me (no transparency there),so I went back to my seat dejected.
The next student to go up was Syed Murtuza Hashmi.
He was a formidable opponent,having his speech perfect right down to where he would move on stage and 
his actions,quoting one personality after another.Yes he was kind of animated in his actions,that coupled with his short stature reminded me of tiny Hitler,
making me feel like the good King George VI ,who had severe speech impediments.
[watching a clip of Hitler speaking]
Lilibet: What’s he saying?
King George VI: I don’t know but… he seems to be saying it rather well.
I was in awe of him,sure he was going to win.
The second round dejected as I was,I wanted to get it over with,so I rushed to the front of the line to finish the extempore,while the others stood behind me thinking that they would have more time to prepare.
The judges noticed this and asked me why I stood in front.
I said I wanted to go first,so they told us to go on stage in the reverse order of the queue ,elongating my torture.
So I picked up a chit nervous as I was saw that my topic was “The Autobiography Of A Toy Car”.
“Seriously?”,was what I thought,because others were asked questions like “What would you as a leader do to help the environment?”,or other serious questions that I had good answers to.(I used to think about these issues a lot then).
So when I got this topic,I was sorely disappointed and saw my chances of winning plummeting further.
I went on stage put a smile on my face and tried to rip off, “Toy Story” ,as much as I could trying hard to bring out the emotional component in it,trying to manipulate the judges feelings.(Yes,I am that unscrupulous)
Later my mom told me that she had the chance to speak to his mother (Syed’s),and apparently his brother had won this competition twice,winning this the third time would be a “Hattrick!” for their family.
So assured was my mom of my impending failure that she asked me if I wanted to leave before the award distribution,but being the optimist that I am,I decided I would face it all with my head held high.
Three finalist were called on stage and I was shocked to be one of them.
They then declared the first prize,the announcer was stumbling and stuttering over the name,I had tuned out,”What was the point?It certainly wasn’t going to be me.”
Then I heard a garbled version of my name,I looked up and people were staring at me,so I confirmed,”Praharshita???”,and she nodded.
But enough about me,Syed got the second prize,and I couldn’t get down from cloud nine.
5 years later ,(present day) he is at Osmania Medical College and his success had featured in the local newspapers countless number of times.He certainly was very talented.
The green monster on my back just seemed to put on more and more weight ,bringing me down.
My mom telling me about it definitely did not help the situation,nor did it help when my sister teased me about his success.
Then yesterday I saw him on television,sitting across the Amitabh Bachchan on the sets of KBC,contestant number 1000.(Rusty knife to my heart).So I sat with bated breath hugging a pillow through the pain.
His mother sitting in the audience,still completely confident of her son, along with his father.
To my surprise he couldn’t answer very simple questions using up his lifelines pretty fast and lost out with an amount of 10k.
At this juncture I got well acquainted (on first name basis if you will) with “Schadenfreude”.
My happiness stemmed from someones failure,from the look of disappointment on his face.
I felt evil.
“Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.”
So, how was it an evolutionary tool?
Its a humongous part of competitiveness ,the deep desire to one -up your competition came with the deeper desire to see them stumble and fall.
Humans are flawed,so am I ?
Does that change my jubilation at his failure?
Maybe not….
But I definitely need to remind myself that his failure is not a part of my achievement,talented as he was, it was in his own way just as I am in my own.
Comparisons drawn would be pointless .
So my advise to anyone feeling schadenfreude,the German’s were right, and there is no denying it.
Take a step back and re-evaluate the situation,but don’t regret this feeling because I am sure that later down the line it will be proved that this emotion lead to a lot of important moments in history….(I vehemently hope so….)
