Happiness isn’t Important

1981. I was born.

I’m part of a generation, who saw too much.

When I began my teenage years [1994], no one had heard of the internet; by the time I finished my teens [2000], internet had become as common as americans smoking hash in rishikesh.

Turn of the millennium wasn’t merely symbolic, it was revolutionary as pre-marital coitus. A word that took birth in the dainty, cold-as-Miss Havisham, Finland, became the word that was engraved on a plastic device we all started carrying in our pockets & purses.

Nokia.

For seven back-to-back years, Nokia was the word of the year alongside Mum & Eminem.

In 2007, a fruit was reborn in an alternative avatar.

Apple that calls.

A month ago {12 Sept ’17}, it gave birth to its first ever twins -  iPlague 8 & X

Since 1994, we, humans, have progressed at the speed of light on cocaine. We no longer burn our precious time standing in queues to pay bills or buy flowers; we shop online & order in; we wish our friends online on their special days & laugh with them on video calls; we photograph our food & faces - place filters on them & wait for the likes.

We get married to a thin, shiny, rectangular box at age 7. We carry this box with us everywhere. When we forget it home or it dies, we feel we’ve lost our good-looking child till we are re-united with or re-charge the box.

This box is the magic wand that brings the world into our palms. It let’s us become beautiful with spellbinding filters. It lets us be whoever we want to be. It lets us send break-up/divorce messages to persons we’ve been in a relationship/married with for years. It lets us tell them we’ve found their replacement without seeing & feeling their broken eyes & heart.

In my almost twenty years of seeing people use phones & technology, one thing has stood out. It has made every person feel special. It has made every person believe that finding Happiness is the ultimate goal of life. People who’ve become parents or famous since 1994 have pressed on the importance of Happiness to their children or followers. The more affluent people become, more the emphasis on happiness.

My parents [including dad] never told me anything - zilch. They didn’t give me any wisdom. They didn’t tell me I was Hindu; they didn’t tell me to believe in God or not; to eat or not eat beef; they didn’t tell me what field I should pursue for career; they didn’t tell me how to live life; they didn’t tell me who & when to kiss; who & when to date; when to fall in love; when to marry. My parents [excluding dad] ensured I got my daily meals, went to school, college, and stayed alive. Actually, come to think of it, cross out the staying alive part. They didn’t even call to check if I was alive when a student - Huan Yun Xiang - went berserk on 21 Oct 2002 in my college [Monash University], & killed two & injured five. For the record, I was sleeping like a baby in my on-campus room when Xiang was creating mayhem but what kinda parents don’t call - they had the ‘box’ in their pockets, didn't they. But, I digress.

I also don’t recall my parents ever using the word: happiness. As this word never got engraved in my soul while growing up in a changing world, I, without realisation, was free to figure out what is it that I wanted to chase in life without passing it through the litmus test of guaranteeing me happiness. 

In the second year of college, while in a tram going to Melbourne University with my friend Rohan & Rohan’s friend, I found out that Rohan was fairly certain where he was headed in career & personal life. Rohan’s friend was dead certain where he was headed. Their clarity scared me. I, who didn’t have a girlfriend & was pursuing Accountancy, a subject I really liked, realized I not only didn’t want to become an accountant, I didn’t have the faintest clue what I wanted to be or if I even wanted to be something at all. I liked everything maths; I just didn’t want to do it for a career for life. This uncertainty about where life was headed didn’t bother me beyond 10 minutes as I was 19. I was young & world, as they say, was in front of me. Gradually, as the years moved, I sub-consciously thought about life - career & personal. But, even when I think of it now, I never used the word - happiness. I thought, at times, about my purpose of being born & if I will ever fall in love with someone who will fall in love with me. 

At age 23, I fell in love in Melbourne. At 24, I was slated to marry her in Toronto. At 25, I was in Ahmedabad living in a PG & eating free gujarati lunches & dinners at one of my close friends’ girlfriend’s place each day. During the times I wasn’t a parasite, & my PG mates [all engineering students] were at college or dreaming of getting laid, I started writing on paper & a 7.75 kilo laptop that I had carried with me from Australia. Side note: I still have that laptop.

When I was in love, I was as happy as a monkey in a banana tree plantation. And when my wedding fell through, I was as unhappy as a bee who can’t find a flower. I now know that both those feelings weren’t a result of planning, charisma, intelligence or money [or their opposite] - they weren’t of my making. 

They were destiny.

Happiness or the opposite of it is not in our control. Destiny is this crushing monster/angel, in front of whom we’re dust particles. Constructing plans to be eternally happy is as futile as trying to withstand Hurricane Katrina was an oversized mattress.

11.5 years later, I know had I gotten married under the mesmerising Niagara Falls in March 2016, I’d have been happy. I also know the destiny that wrecked my happiness gave something in return that I, a dreamless wanderer till 25, couldn’t have even imagined feeling. The grotesque amalgamation of love & heartbreak destroyed me without a shred of mercy. After the holocaust it was either sink to the ground or rise to the sky.

People say circumstances bring out the best in us. I’ve come to learn - circumstances simply show us who we really are.

Even at age 19, part of me knew I wanted to be a writer. The reason I wasn’t aware of it consciously because my soul wasn’t ready. I was yet to:

be punched in a street at 2.30am by an old housemate, stand up for a friend [like Ben Stokes did] & punch someone twice my size; fall in love with a magical girl, find out that I will never see her again when my heart believed that was impossible, get so drunk to keep hitting on a hot swedish lesbian friend the whole night; become sports-brothers with my pakistani college buddy, walk out of our house in the middle of the night after a fight with my best friend & never come back, run out of money while living in a country that has winters when the world has summers; be adam-teased by three hot girls at 2am, sit next to a possum as both of us nibble on greasy french fries, see the first girl I asked to marry me smile & cry in joy, lose in arm-wrestling to a girl, get my face splattered with glitter by a female friend at a christmas party, almost die with two of my friends in a spine-chilling car accident, play the most cruel prank on a friend that almost gave him a heart attack; be found out having a shower with ‘her’ & declared - the shower duo - by the lascivious Farrer college newsletter. 

At 19, I was far away from a becoming a writer. I was like a letter whose paper was yet to be made.

Eleven & a half years of writing - 2.5 books, 100 articles [you’re reading the 100th article], 1000 quotes, short plays & series later, I want to write till I get kicked outta Earth. I don’t write to be happy & when I write I don’t feel happy, I feel an emotion that makes my soul rise & my physical form disconnects from the real world. I’ve never done crystal meth, but people who’ve seem to understand what the hell I’m talking about.

Through my writing, I’ve endeavoured & will continue to show the mirror to everyone, including myself. My writing isn’t a reflection of who I’m, it’s a reflection of everything my soul has felt. I write for the same reason we breathe, to live. But writing takes me to another level, it makes me come alive.

Spending life with my shower partner would have sureshot brought me eternal happiness. But, destiny, which sent us on different paths, took away that sureshot happiness & instead gave me a purpose. And as someone who’s been in the throes of both unbeatable happiness & purpose, I will choose purpose every moment of the year. Why. Because unlike happiness, purpose is infinite & selfless.

Happiness, like everything in life, is fleeting. And happiness doesn’t have a soul; it can be bought with a wad of thousand dollars - that's what iPlague X sells for & it sure makes people happy.

As humans, we have infinite imagination. We, spending years & at times entire life in pursuit of something that will leave us like youth & beauty, is selling ourselves spectacularly short. Instead of deciding what you want to be, wait & let it hit your heart when its ready. Instead of wandering the world looking for someone awesome to fall in love with, let that human come to you & meet you half-way. I met my mom at birth, Rose at college, Sanket in a PG, Parul at a workplace - the thread that ties them all is that my body was never looking for them, my soul was moving me towards them to show me that love is everything it’s made out to be.