Happiness Ka Ek Rule-Guest Post

So what have I learnt over the years? I have been told that Happiness is an Aberration, as in sorry for the brief lull in transmission, normal programming will resume soon. I was also exposed to the phir hum khush hoaayengey (And then We will be Happy and How can We be Happy? ) school of thought which is basically the anti-thesis of We Will Overcome declaring as it does that Life is an Endless game of snake and ladders and one can only be Happy in Heaven. There is also some stuff about endless rivers of wine and a full on“ may tully hogayee” program but that will come later

What have I done in the pursuit of happiness? This has ranged from the very Organized (As a teenager I would collect clippings of “happy things” –shades of Amelie. Knowing as you all do about how obsessive compulsive I am and the disease to “control” things, you will not be surprised to discover that I filed this shoe box collection in categories of “newspaper clippings about political boo boos”, “cartoons”, and “random funny stuff” . These were later graded leaving the really funny A Grade stuff for really depressing days and the relatively mediocre for an ordinary day …Im pretty sure my mother threw all that out when I moved on to uni and the world will never know my own version of chicken soup for the soul),

to the Imaginative (for a whole month I watched a Govinda starrer every evening, I was inspired by a woman who laughed her way through cartoons and cured her cancer. Don’t know about my chronic cold and air of gloom and doom but it sure cured my video rental guy’s blues who skipped happily all the way to the bank)

and the down right Silly (when disappointed by a particular election result I swore off reading op/eds and watching news programmes for a while).

My mother by the way has always been a firm believer of walking away your woes. I will tell her about a colleague who is bi-polar and struggling with meeting work deadlines and she will say nonsense, she needs loads of fresh air, get her out and about. I will tell her about a mysterious mole and she will query me about the last time I was out of the house in recent days. If it was not a question of her being a twinkle in her dad’s eye during the particular period I would have questioned her regarding advising Gandhi and his Salt Walk to Freedom.

And one fine day I discovered what our grand mothers were trying to tell us all along as they recited tales about the parrot which held the life of the djinn. Such a biiiggg giant and the puny prince could slay him by twisting the neck of the parrot (yikes!!). Quick phone call- to- our- local- RSPCA moment aside what our grand mothers were telling us were to search within us for our strength, our happiness rather than depending on The Relationship, That Handbag or This Job to do the task for us. Guys and girls will come and go, the child prodigy you hoped to raise will continue to stick his finger up his nose and ask Whattdatt? and our political leaders will continue to mess things up royally. But you dear reader can continue to be Defiantly Happy if you have learnt to be comfortable in your own company (a trait my dear partner-in-crime has taught me…to be an Indian with a Pakistani wife and an Australian son, a lesser soul would have renewed his life insurance policy twice over)