BENGALURU: Do you remember the old Onida TV advertisement that came with the tag, ‘Owner’s Pride. Neighbour’s Envy’, and a smooth-headed, horned person as the devil? That tagline was an instant hit. Even now, when Onida TVs are nowhere near the bestsellers they used to be, that tagline continues to crop up here and there from time to time.
Granted that it may not be the staple of standup comedy or competitions in college festivals, but anyone over the age of 30 probably still knows the line and what it means. For a while, the line would constantly pop up in the context of a relationship. If you had a partner, you would prop them up at a party with one hand around their waist and another holding up your Old Monk and ThumsUp, or whatever was your drink, smirk at the crowd and declare, “Neighbours Envy, Owner’s Pride!” expecting a gentle round of laughter and kudos.
The idea that we own our partner apart, the notion that we envy it when someone has a partner is deeply rooted. It may not even be that the partner is envied because this person is really awesome and people had been queuing up for a chance to date and had wanted a shot at a relationship themselves. Nor is it necessary that one envies the person because they somehow landed a really desirable person, someone one would have thought is out of your league, so to say. Envy is often about being in a relationship itself. Even if one is already in a relationship, we might still envy another person’s relationship for being fresher, prettier, newer or whatever else.
Are we just genetically coded to be envious? Is it behaviour that helps us to search for and make relationships that are in an ever-increasing spiral of envy-based growth and development? Can a case of Neighbour’s Envy make us that much more proud of the relationship we have, treasure it, nurture it and protect it? Or, will it cause an ever-tightening spiral of control and dominance that eventually breaks people down, if not the relationship itself?
Often, it even appears as if a person’s desirability quotient suddenly shoots up once they have found and established a relationship. Others who may have earlier rejected invitations to date, or shut down flirty overtures, might now initiate it themselves. Whether it is from wanting to check out what makes this person click, or from a place of fear that they might have missed out on something special, or from wanting to prove to themselves they knew the relationship was hollow –motives can be many, but the reality is that envy often exists.
When Onida used the tagline, they didn’t want us to go and steal the neighbour’s TV. They wanted us to buy an Onida TV of our own. In relationships too, the envy need not be about making somebody else’s relationship ours, but using the envy to be ok with, even proud of, the relationships we have in our lives.