To be happy once more!

Rajnish

HAPPINESS, they say, is a state of mind. Eternal happiness is the subject for sages, not us lesser mortals. Some say to be loved and be in love means to be happy. The Dalai Lama's view is that compassion is a prerequisite to happiness. To Mark Twain, ‘sanity’ and ‘happiness’ were an ‘impossible combination’. Gabriel Garcia Marquez believed ‘no medicine can cure what happiness cannot’. Tom Cooper’s emphasis was on money — ‘Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness was a damn fool who’d never been poor’. Bertrand Russell said something very perceptive: ‘Of all the forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps most fatal to true happiness’. I read somewhere long back, he had also said something to the effect: A normal man’s happiness depends on three things: a loving wife; a satisfying job and a good bank balance! I couldn’t agree more.

How these things affected my life! My wife is anything but loving. But I can’t imagine a life without her. I thoroughly enjoyed work, but career-wise, I couldn’t reach the top hierarchy. Regarding bank balance, over the years, while I was still in service, I drove second-hand jalopies. 

After retirement, I purchased a new car when I got lump-sum benefits. During the service period, I never bothered to reflect on whether I led a happy life, there was no time to think. 

In hindsight, I can say that some 25 years ago, when I used to return home from office in the evening, my small kids who would be playing in the adjacent small ground, would come running, jumping on me, clinging to my legs, giving me a tumultuous clamorous welcome. I can say that those were moments of abandonment, self-forgetfulness and ecstasy. Nothing of the sort did I experience before or even after that.

Sometime back I heard a beautiful ghazal. It has since been a sheer pleasure to listen to it many a time. It is written by one Khumaar, maybe it is his pen name, and is sung soulfully by Osman Mir, another name I hadn’t heard of. I can say after listening to a few of his other ghazals that he comes next only to ghazal maestro Mehdi Hassan. The opening lines are captivating: Gham ke marey jo muskuraaey hain/Aansuon ko bhee paseeney aaey hain.

What a play of words, what imagery! However, it is the first couplet which talks of happiness in a rather sombre, dejected sort of way: Kyaa balaa hai khushee, khudaa jaaney/ Hum to bus naam suntey aaey hain.

I wonder to what depth of desperation the shaayar might have gone through to be bereft of happiness in real life to pen such lines.