The Pursuit of Happiness

Literature, cinema, art, music and all such forms of entertainment have one thing in common – they’ve created abstract concepts out of ostensibly simple-sounding words like love, friendship, hatred and many others, that’re now seemingly impossible to achieve in a normally-led life. They’ve introduced similes and metaphors that shape an average Aditya’s existence, shadowing his own individuality, moulding his experiences into a cast that is chiselled invariably by what he and his surroundings read, watch or listen to.

Take, for example, the case of an arbitrary lady, say, Lata. Lata’s in her final year of college, and on a fine Saturday morning she can’t see for herself in an air-conditioned interview room, she’s being offered her first permanent job. Lata’s going to be earning money soon enough, to be financially independent, to buy her parents a lovely anniversary gift, to occasionally splurge on a fancy three-course meal – and all that comes with an overriding sense of achievement she’s been continually stimulated to feel. She updates her Facebook status triumphantly – “XYZ and Co., it is!”, with a cheeky “feeling accomplished” emoticon added alongside for good measure. But is that long sigh she let out when exiting that room not her true feeling? Is that long-delayed, well-earned nap not what she’s most looking forward to? Pardon me for putting it mathematically, but isn’t the value of Lata’s relief much greater than the net present value of her sense of future accomplishment?

Perhaps I’ve taken young Lata’s case a little too seriously. But, for a long time, this question remained unanswered to me – when we claim to have fallen in “love”, experience a true bond of friendship or lay other claims of having realised these abstractions, were we subconsciously just achieving imitations of the same abstractions as they were in pop culture? When Lata felt accomplished, was she just trying to put herself in Aamir Khan’s place in “Papa Kehte Hain”? When the average Aditya falls in ishq-waala love, is he acting out a cinema-induced fantasy?

Ever since I'd read enough books, saw enough movies and heard enough music to realise I might’ve been guilty myself of not really expressing my own unique emotions in this manner, my consciousness of this apparent reality troubled me. Thankfully, over the last couple of years, I’ve been lucky enough to have had experiences that have let me realise the true existence of these abstractions. For years, I could never muster a camera-worthy smile. But, after a torrid last few months in Roorkee, as I returned home to a welcoming brother and relieved parents, I smiled the widest of smiles as the full force of happiness stretched my lips and pulled my cheeks up to the eyes! After a day of classes that had me gaping at how much there is to know, and a moonlight night walking the plaza we lovingly call LKP, I was truly amazed. A few months later, back on thelawns of that other great institution, with friends who’d managed to grad me through the aforementioned torrid final year in R – let’s just put it simply – I was happy. Hatred? I’d rather not have that force blinding me. And on a night that saw a phone call which could’ve gone on forever, there was love.

Friendship, you ask? Just three guys and a lady, minus the one charmer who’d stayed back home, making some boiled beans in a dirty Paris apartment, lying down to have it with some bread and the music of the masters. It often really is as simple as that.

The raw strength of these abstract concepts lies not in their glorified abstraction, but in their ability to manifest themselves uniquely in each and every one of us. After all, it's for a good reason that one famous document used the words life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the same phrase.