Certain circumstances found me, around a month ago, at a temple near my house. And as I walked hither and thither, I quite by accident, overheard a rather small chap, 'bout three feet tall, happily announcing to his uncle (so I assumed) "My summer holidays have started".
The ever so slight and nearly undetectable smile that crossed my lips was involuntary. Not an accident though. His small sentence had taken me back, back to the days of greener pastures. Of unbridled joy that scarcely needed a reason. Excitement that hardly need a stimulant. Being a kid.
"Summer holidays" would be found under "archaic usage" section of my memory, something so long gone and forgotten that it has been perhaps a year since even the thought of it entered my upper storey. This upper storey has been kept busy, continuously receiving information, continuously reproducing gained data for academic purposes, in the name of a bright future. In striving to secure education at the best and most elite of institutions. In the quest of knowledge, which eventually, all of us hope, would replicate into wealth, which in turn we all hope, would replicate into comfort and luxury and security and everything else the government so blithely claims to be providing us. Which would in turn, again we hope, replicate into happiness. A pretty wife, a spacious home, filled with laughter and joy of children and grandparents alike. Lol happiness!! 20 years on? 50 years perhaps? Still hope. In hope we all live, success is when we cease to hope and begin to experience.
But even then, success, isn't by any means proximal to happiness. I'll tell you what happiness is.
Happiness is climbing up the tree of your neighbour's mango tree simply to enjoy the view from the terrace. Happiness is completely screwing up your meal timings in the summer hoildays for you were playing outside the whole day and couldn't tell the east from the west. Or possibly you never bothered to study the sun's position. Not yet responsible enough in the eyes of your parents to sport a watch on your left wrist.
And let me not stop here, in the gay descriptions of summer holidays alone. Back then, when switch-boards were the only thing you reached for, even classes weren't monotonous.
Being gay meant only being happy, nothing in life was implied. A red-star meted out by the teacher next to thy holy name could make a day, a black dot at the same spot was the only sadness that existed. School bags didn't cause back-aches, friends didn't cause heart-aches.
Above all though, nothing failed to amaze. Nothing failed to awe. Hours and hours could be spent looking up at the fan and wondering about the mystic power that caused it to turn by the flick of a switch. Cars and trains weren't means of transportation, they were fantasy and magic. The world was still a nice place, full of nice people, only those who smiled. Only those who pampered. Those days when we knew nothing.
Innocence, that is happiness. When we know what we are truly after, only then will we know disappointment. Responsibility leads to guilt, failure leads to bitterness. Knowledge, eventually, leads to sadness. The more you know, the more you know how much you don't know.
When you don't know, you think you do. Everything is within your reach, everything is achievable. Weaknesses don't exist. There existed days, not in legends but when I was kid, when I thought I could sing and draw well. When I thought my father was the king of the world, my mother an angel. Not today.
Knowledge has let us down, shown us how bad we are.
Because, real happiness and contentment is impossible to achieve, and hence we are better of contented in ignorance of reality than dissatisfied in the perception of reality. No dream is too large, but no size is enough, when you know there exists something bigger.
Sugar sours in comparison with the juice of the cane, as do grapes beyond reach. A world where bitter is perceived as sweet, in the lack of knowledge, of existence of sugar, is the only world where everything is sweet. Where the neck aches to prevent you looking up at the grapes.
In the world of childhood. The world of happiness without success.