On Happiness

(Random Oyster Mushroom pic from Pinterest)

Once one of my BSc Agriculture friends posted a pic of a beautiful oyster mushroom on his WhatsApp story with the caption "Damn (and some fire emojis)". I had replied to him "Damn. Agri bois be really turned on just by seeing some side chicks of plants ft. Mushroom". We laughed about it and then forgot it as quickly as the topic had come into existence. 

But after a few days, when I was doing something on my laptop one day, maa came into the room holding some big, fresh spinach leaves from our garden. "Aren't they beautiful?" She exclaimed. I, half immersed into my laptop, half-interestedly looked at the leaves once and replied "Yah, they look healthy." and went back to the screen. Maa disappointed by my lack of interest said "What's the matter? Aren't they good?". I looked up from the screen again.

- "Yeah they are good. Just said that."

- "Then why aren't you happy?"

- "Maa, who gets happy by seeing spinach leaves?" I asked with a laugh.

- "I do" said Maa

- "You know I have a friend who gets excited by plants as much as you do" and then I narrated the previous incident. 

- "Well good for your friend them and learn something from him. If plants don't make you happy, what does?"

Now that is a difficult question, isn't it? What makes me happy. Having spent almost 2 years indoors, doing online college, just staring at the laptop for half the day, nothing, in particular, made me happy. So I replied that. 

- "I don't know. Nothing particular makes me happy. I don't know what makes me happy."

And here I was particularly talking about happiness. Not that funny sensation when I see a funny meme or a snort when I see a comedy sketch. I was talking about The Happiness sensation. The warm feeling that lingers even when the memories that created them have gone cold. The group chatting in an open field at games period, or going out with friends at a restaurant, or having solved a difficult Math problem after 2 days of trying. That kind of happiness. After the lockdown, I, and we all, witnessed loss of employment of so many people, the bus driver who used to ferry us to school was no more in service, idk how he is making his ends meet now, then then I witnessed the death of one of my close family friend, an uncle of about 45years, dead with Covid, being the sole breadwinner of the family, no one knew what was to become of his wife and 17-year-old son; death seemed so close after that incident that I panicked inside whenever my parents had to go out of the house, even for getting groceries, but that fear subsided too, as most irrational fears do over time, but the fear of losing one or both of my parents to Covid wasn't irrational, was it? I also saw deterioration in my own self during this pandemic, my ability to handle stress and emotional range dimmed, my energy to study for tests or just study random things in general, which I loved to do, reduced, my focus period started shortening, not to mention the aid in this particular process by my constant use of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts designed specifically to promote short attention span with the 30s to 1min content. In and all, I wasn't happy, and I don't think anyone else was happy either during this pandemic. "Introverts" meme just is cool on the meme page, irl introverts need to go out in the open too.

So I replied truthfully. 

- "I don't know. Nothing particular makes me happy. I don't know what makes me happy."

Maa looked at me. Starred at me. Then said 

- "Does happiness need anything else to be present? Happiness just resides. You can just be happy on your own." (Khusi hote abar onno kichu lage naki? Khusi to emni e howa jay.)

Maa left my room to go back to the garden after that, but I pondered over her method of happiness for quite some time.

If you have ever watched art films like Pather Panchali or Piku or even any Ghibli films for that matter, you will notice the thing which holds them together, or the "magic" of these films is the portrayal of the mundane. The "magic" is seeing Apu and Durga running along an open field along with a fleeting train or seeing Piku pouting at the sight of some small school girls, remembering her lost school days. Even for good immersive books, the "magic" comes from the description of the mundane, like in Harry Potter, it is such a warm experience to visualize the mundane life of Mrs. Weasley in her crooked house, cooking magically in her cauldron or going for a simple stroll around the Diagon Alley. Simple, mundane descriptions of daily lives. Are our lives, in the mundanity of all, also as magical as we see them on the screen or read on the pages of published books?

My mother's philosophy of happiness, 'Just be happy', I thought, must have been ingrained in her from her childhood. And if you think about it, go back to 40-45 years from now, you don't have Instagram, you don't have T.V, you have a radio, but that is a luxury item, which more often than not was used by elders of the house to listen to news stations or sports commentary. You have limited means to be 'happy' as compared to now when you can just pop up a Netflix movie while simultaneously scrolling Twitter + Instagram. But though there were limited or fewer means of happiness than now, were people more unhappy back then? On the contrary, the happiness index has fallen in these recent progressive years of almost any developing/developed nation. So, how were people happy back then? Well as often our elders and my Maa in this case put it, they just were...happy...if there's no reason to be sad, then that's enough reason to be happy. 

And in light of this matra of happiness that our parents/elder generation pursue, I can somewhat understand when they say "Just don't be depressed" or "You are sad? Just don't be sad." For us, not being sad is a privilege, how can we not be sad, or at least unhappy, when we simultaneously know of communal riots in Telangana, a hurricane washing out Florida, Racial genocide happening in Palestine, Extremist groups taking over an entire country like Afghanistan, while also knowing we have homework and assignments due, job security is thinning each year, suicide rates are increasing in college students due to NEET and JEE...and much more... We simply are bombarded with too much information all day, through YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and whatnot. 

And in light of all these global news and filtered Instagram pictures, the mundane nature of our everyday life is dulled. Travelling is rarely a quiet journey now, it's now a vlog. Reading poems under the sun is dead now, snapping a Rupi Kaur poem is new lit. What good does it sound to just stand in the kitchen, seeing the water sizzle and boil before adding tea leaves to it when you can just get amazed by the auction prices of IPL 2022. Life loses color in the vibrance of other's life. And we, pressured by this vibrance, start replicating it, adding just another brick to the wall. A wall that separates our senses from our reality.

But 40-45 years ago, this wasn't the case. If someone wasn't sad, then they were happy enough to count themselves as being happy. And that I think is the generation gap between our happiness and the happiness of our elders. We pursue happiness, I do it, I want to do something, achieve something, and when it is done/achieved, I consider myself happy; whereas the route that I realized our elder generation takes is, I do something and I am either happy during the process of doing it, or I am not. If I am not happy during the process, just try to be happy, because the world is not watching or waiting for you to fail, the world is moving and so is everyone else, might as well be happy while at it. 

Not saying that there is something wrong with my method of happiness, or the method that my fellow generation follows, achievement are good and necessary, but I just wanted to tell that there is another mode to "happiness" as well, and I am sure we can learn something from it. We can just be happy to see a mushroom growing on a tree silently, and we can also be happy to have achieved our daily task list; we can be happy both at the result of our hard work and also at just existence itself; because happiness just can exist on its own. Your own existence itself can be the reason for your happiness. And to be honest, being happy, and I mean being truly happy, being happy where you can just have a smile throughout the day without any particular reason, being that kind of "happy" is a revolt at this age. To just be happy, regardless of whatever is going on in the world or one's personal life, is an act of revolution. And in revolution, sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail; somedays we get tired of being happy, and somedays we cheer someone else along with us too, but as Albert Camus had said, 'There should be no shame in choosing happiness' There should be no shame to admit that despite all the depressing shit of the world, I, you, someone, wants to be happy and trying to be so.