Many of my friends, for the longest time I know, have paid me (indirectly in conversation with someone else, like my wife or mum or dad or other friends) what they thought is a compliment: ‘If I had a tenth the energy/resourcefulness/daring/intellect/foresight/wit/willpower of Kedar….sigh!’, leaving the next part, ‘…I’d have been so much more successful/rich/happy/healthy/better human/spouse/parent/employer/entrepreneur etc.’, without realising that it isn’t really a compliment, and is in fact quite the opposite, because it presumes that someone with a tenth of what I have could very easily have been a superman, while poor old, unsuccessful me, who has it all (according to their self-confessed reading of whatever it is they saw in me), am such a total & dismal loss and a disappointing failure in every endeavour I may have dabbled in, that one can only rue the wastage of such gifts on someone so unworthy, while I, clearly more deserving than he, could have leveraged to great effect, even a tenth of those very skills/aptitude.
Sigh! With friends like these…Gajab beizzati hai!
Which brings me to an interesting game I thought of: What is the wittiest and juiciest backhanded compliment someone has ever paid you?
