“So what does happiness mean to you?”, she asked me. Her face showed interest like none I had seen. She really wanted to know, which is a welcome break from the usual pseudo-isms, what I thought of happiness.
I had seen profoundness coming. 8.30 pm walks on the empty beaches can do that. It was unbelievable. We (Priyanka and I) started walking from my place at Juhu and came across the craziest noise pollution. Walked on as she fiddled with her phone and I with my thoughts. Something was on her mind or so I felt but only to realize it was a message conversation she was having with her friend bout some party they were to go for that night. Anyway, the sweet thing was she kept biting her tongue as she looked outside the small world of her own called the cell phone. Incessant apologies followed. Then we took that detour to the left of the main road that lead to the almost uninhabited shoreline. It stretched from infinity to infinity. The moon was small but bright, the stars almost looked like LED lamps… yes you read it right, we saw starS (the capital for stress) in Mumbai. I love the sound of the sea. It’s so peaceful. It’s quite a paradox/irony/funny thing (call it what you may). The sea itself is restless, the waves are mad and hence they create the world’s most soothing sounds. That is what started us both off on the insightful interview session. Happiness was the topic at hand. Can it be quantified? Can one say when one is the happiest? Can one know if this is as happy as it gets? The questions and thoughts flowed and so did wind. And so did time. We stood there for what looked like an era but it was really not more than 45 odd minutes. She kept defining happiness and I kept soliciting my idea of not conceptualizing or binding any such abstract feeling as happiness. Reasons, 1. It is abstract. 2. It is a feeling. 3. It is relative. I always feel happiness, sadness, anger, pleasure, satisfaction, attraction, prejudice; all these things are what we’ve trained our minds to think what they are. I was telling Priyanka, how a job that pays well is clubbed as satisfaction right now, then it might be clubbed under routine but happy, then maybe mundane and unhappy, then piss off and at that time the family that you dread having right now (getting married etc.) is actually your saving grace and that’s what you start clubbing under happy. It’s all relative. Shifting sands. The silence on the beach was broken only once in a while by a plane that would zoom by. I looked up at one of them, that was flying quite low and so did Priyanka. Suddenly her one hand caught my shoulder and the other pointed a finger at the plane that had crossed the bright moon. “Nature is dying while man takes no heed of how beautiful it is to be amidst it” she said. Went on to add, “God, these quiet walks can really make one think tangentially. I haven’t been like this for weeks now maybe. Work work work…” And quite on cue, her cell phone rings. “Oops! Boss calling…” she said and took the call. I figured it would take her a while so I picked her up by the arm and guided her through the traffic, got her into an auto, and already started off. By the time she hung up, she had no recollection of what happened back there. When did we get up, get out, got where we were…. Nothing. All I had to do was smile at her and she understood that it was this very instance that we had been talking about all evening. 45 minutes, just that much to break away into a world not yours and 45 seconds to bring you right back into it. You can’t stay too long where you know you don’t belong.
I had seen profoundness coming. 8.30 pm walks on the empty beaches can do that. It was unbelievable. We (Priyanka and I) started walking from my place at Juhu and came across the craziest noise pollution. Walked on as she fiddled with her phone and I with my thoughts. Something was on her mind or so I felt but only to realize it was a message conversation she was having with her friend bout some party they were to go for that night. Anyway, the sweet thing was she kept biting her tongue as she looked outside the small world of her own called the cell phone. Incessant apologies followed. Then we took that detour to the left of the main road that lead to the almost uninhabited shoreline. It stretched from infinity to infinity. The moon was small but bright, the stars almost looked like LED lamps… yes you read it right, we saw starS (the capital for stress) in Mumbai. I love the sound of the sea. It’s so peaceful. It’s quite a paradox/irony/funny thing (call it what you may). The sea itself is restless, the waves are mad and hence they create the world’s most soothing sounds. That is what started us both off on the insightful interview session. Happiness was the topic at hand. Can it be quantified? Can one say when one is the happiest? Can one know if this is as happy as it gets? The questions and thoughts flowed and so did wind. And so did time. We stood there for what looked like an era but it was really not more than 45 odd minutes. She kept defining happiness and I kept soliciting my idea of not conceptualizing or binding any such abstract feeling as happiness. Reasons, 1. It is abstract. 2. It is a feeling. 3. It is relative. I always feel happiness, sadness, anger, pleasure, satisfaction, attraction, prejudice; all these things are what we’ve trained our minds to think what they are. I was telling Priyanka, how a job that pays well is clubbed as satisfaction right now, then it might be clubbed under routine but happy, then maybe mundane and unhappy, then piss off and at that time the family that you dread having right now (getting married etc.) is actually your saving grace and that’s what you start clubbing under happy. It’s all relative. Shifting sands. The silence on the beach was broken only once in a while by a plane that would zoom by. I looked up at one of them, that was flying quite low and so did Priyanka. Suddenly her one hand caught my shoulder and the other pointed a finger at the plane that had crossed the bright moon. “Nature is dying while man takes no heed of how beautiful it is to be amidst it” she said. Went on to add, “God, these quiet walks can really make one think tangentially. I haven’t been like this for weeks now maybe. Work work work…” And quite on cue, her cell phone rings. “Oops! Boss calling…” she said and took the call. I figured it would take her a while so I picked her up by the arm and guided her through the traffic, got her into an auto, and already started off. By the time she hung up, she had no recollection of what happened back there. When did we get up, get out, got where we were…. Nothing. All I had to do was smile at her and she understood that it was this very instance that we had been talking about all evening. 45 minutes, just that much to break away into a world not yours and 45 seconds to bring you right back into it. You can’t stay too long where you know you don’t belong.
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