Inspirational

“Happiness is a Conscious Choice”

June 28, 2015

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

– Elisabeth Kubler – Ross

There is a popular story about a Mexican fisherman that many readers might have come across. The story goes something like this. It was noon. An American businessman was standing on the pier of a small Mexican fishing village.  The fishing boats from the village had all left to the outer sea before dawn. Those boats were not expected to return for hours.  As he stood there looking out into the sea, he saw just one boat headed back to the coast. The boat came to the pier and docked. It was a small boat with just one fisherman in it.  Inside the boat was the day’s catch of several large yellow fin tunas. The American asked the fisherman, “How long did it take you to catch them?”  “Only a a couple of hours”, answered the Mexican. The American was curious. The day was still young. The other fishermen were all still out there filling there boats. Why only this one fisherman chose to return so early? So he asked the fisherman, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and caught more?”  “I have caught enough for the day”, the Mexican replied. The American was puzzled. He asked, “What do you do with the rest of your time?” The fisherman said: “I sleep late, fish a little, spend time playing with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, quietly sit in the balcony sipping tea and listening to the music of the sea winds and the rumbling of the rolling waves with Maria by my side, stroll into the village each evening where I drink a little wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed at the illiterate fisherman. He said, “I have a Harvard MBA. And I would like you to know that you have no idea what you are missing.  You should spend more time fishing and catch more. With the higher earnings from your bigger catch, you would buy a larger boat.  You would hire additional hands, take the boat out into deeper seas and return with huge catches. Your income would rise several times and you would buy more boats. In a while you would have a large fleet of fishing vessels. You would eventually set up your own seafood processing plant and establish a distribution chain. You would control the product, processing and distribution. As your business expands you would leave this small village and move to Mexico City, then to Lose Angeles and finally to New York City. You would be a big businessman.”The poor fisherman asked. “But senor, how long will this all take?”  

“15-20 years“, replied the American business expert.

But what then, senor?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO – an Initial Public Offering – and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would then be a millionaire.”

“Millionaire, senor?  Then what?”

The American said slowly, “Then you would retire. Move to a small village on the seashore where you would sleep late, enjoy a leisurely day in the company of your children, play with your grandchildren, take a siesta with your wife, Maria; quietly sit in the balcony sipping tea and listening to the singing of the sea winds and the rumbling of the rolling waves with Maria by your side, stroll to the village in the evenings where you would drink a little wine and play guitar with your amigos…”

“Well…When I can do all these now, why wait for 15-20 years senor?” asked the illiterate fisherman.  

The point is that happiness does not have to wait until we all become billionaires. And do not believe the fable that billionaires are happier than any of us run of the mill people.  It appears an inherent human frailty that the more we have the more we seek. We know that the richer people are, the more discontent they turn.  In any case, most of us would not be billionaires. Would that mean that we are destined to an unhappy life? The truth is that wealth could make people more miserable than poverty. The same way most of us would be beset with problems all through our lives. We would all face wants, diseases, defeats, losses, injustice, accidents, ageing, loneliness and death in our lives at one time or the other. The problems of life are like a hydra headed monster. We cut off one and two would appear its place. Thus, a problem free life is a stupid mirage. At any given point in our lives, most of us are trying to tackle multiple problems. So if we would live waiting for a life free of all the troubles and tribulations to be happy, we would all die without ever tasting happiness. The reality again is that if we have to find happiness, we have to find it amidst all the agonies and upsets of life.  In other words, happiness is a conscious choice. And that was one of the important lessons I learnt from my association with AV*.

AV had started his career as a soldier in the Indian Army. After his discharge from military as a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), he received reemployment as a civilian in a factory establishment under the Ministry of Defence. His posting was to Pune. It was in the late 1970s and I happened to be stationed at Pune. I did not know AV.  AV was coming to Pune for the first time. And it was arranged through a mutual friend that he would stay with me for a couple of weeks by which time he would arrange another place to stay and move out.  I was a bachelor then occupying a two-room residential unit.  I learnt that AV was coming alone. His family was in Kerala. Although I preferred to be alone, I had no serious apprehensions about taking him as my roommate for a short while.   

On the day AV was to arrive, I went to office leaving the room key with my neighbour.  The two rooms that I had occupied lay one behind the other with a door connecting both. On my return that evening, I found the front door ajar.  I stepped in. Not finding anyone in the front room, I glanced into the back room and almost let out a cry of horror. The room that was more or less bare when I left that morning was stacked virtually to the celling with cardboard boxes of varying sizes and shapes. It was beyond my wildest imagination that a person living alone would choose to lug around so much of baggage. I regained my composure and called out ‘Sir…’. I sensed a sudden movement from behind the massive wall of luggage.  With the agility of a leopard bounding out of a dense thicket, AV appeared, shouting a loud and jovial ‘HELLO’ with an uproarious laughter to boot.   

I noticed that AV was a man of medium height, build and complexion. He was over 50 years of age although his wizen face had made him look older. He was wearing a dhoti and full-sleeved banian. One thing that immediately hit me was the striking nimbleness and energy of his movements. He stepped forward with his body erect and chest thrust forward in the style of a soldier standing in attention. He took my hand and shook it firmly – rather too firmly that I thought that my bones were  cracking under his vice like grip.  We exchanged some perfunctory pleasantries.  AV had already spread out his foldable bed behind the carton hill. He was obviously tired and sacked out early. I was using the front room. I finished my evening chores, picked up a book and settled down in a chair to read.  

Some twenty uneventful minutes passed. Then some strange noises started issuing from behind the luggage wall. The noise soon rose to a crescendo. It was no rocket science to realize that the source of the racket was the snoring of my roommate. I have heard people snoring (and my wife often complains of my own snoring which I would never admit).  But I thought the noises that emerged from AV that night would find a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for its primordial crudity. I got up and went into the back room. AV lay spread-eagled on his back, sleeping like a log and snorting like a freight train. My neighbours never seemed to have noticed my quiet and lonely existence among them. But now my roommate was apparently waking up the whole neighbourhood. My first thought was to wake him up. But he was so deeply slumbering that I did not have the heart to do so.  In any case, at best it would have only provided a temporary respite.  I quietly walked out of the room and closed the connecting door tight.  I tried to continue reading.  But it was impossible to focus. I switched off the lights and got into bed. 

I could not sleep for a long while. I have no idea when exactly I drifted into sleep. I woke up with a start to the noise of some wild screaming. It was still dark. I switched on my bedside lamp and glanced at my watch. The time was 4.30 a.m.  The noise came from the back room. I noticed that there was light inside. I got down from my bed, pushed the connecting door open and negotiated the luggage hill.  I found AV standing there with his eyes closed and hands lifted up. He was hollering like mad. I realized that he was praising the Creator for a new dawn. I had been told that he was a pious Christian. But I never expected him to be so blindly devout to be such a public nuisance. 

I knew that his devotional exercise was kicking the neighbourhood out of its blissful predawn slumber. I firmly tapped AV on his shoulder.  The singing (if one could term the exercise so) suddenly broke off.  He opened his eyes and stared at me. I was seething with rage. But I could not ignore the fact that he was someone more or less my father’s age. So, with all the calm and sweetness I could muster, which was not much considering that I was boiling over with irritation, I told him that he was not living in Kerala in an independent home with neighbours far away or accustomed to such pre-dawn rackets. There were people sleeping beyond the walls on all sides. Several of them might have returned after their night shifts. I simply could not allow him to be so liberally pious.  Without uttering a word in response, AV sat down on his bed and picked up his frayed and weatherworn Bible. I felt bad.  I went back to bed, but was too agitated to sleep. Some strange noises continued to emerge out of the backroom. I would later discover that he was doing his early morning physical and breathing exercises.  I did not mind it.

By six o’ clock that morning, AV was ready to go to his office.  His office functioned from 0800 hrs. to 1600 hrs. It was his first day and did not wish to be late. (I would know in due course that he was a stickler for timings and would never go late or leave early). Somewhere amid the luggage heap was an old and rickety bicycle.  He pulled it out and started dusting it with a rag. By seven o’ clock, he left for his office some three kilometres away. There was hardly any communication between us that morning.  I was much annoyed and fuming after the incidents of the previous night.  He understood my foul mood and kept his mouth mostly shut.  

When I returned from my work that evening, I found AV seated in a chair in the front room reading his newspaper (The Hindu).  As I stepped into the room, he got up and welcomed me with the accompaniment of what appeared to be his natural noise and hilarity. I noticed that the place had undergone a sea change.  Newspapers, periodicals and books that lay strewn around had been neatly folded and stacked. The luggage mountain in his room had been rearranged against the wall.  Overall, the place looked spic and span. But I was still not quite comfortable with his continuance as my roommate. So, I told later that evening that he should quickly find another accommodation and move out.  AV just kept a studied silence. And before he went to bed that day, I warned him sternly against his pre-dawn hollering.  

Days went by. Each day I returned from office hoping to hear that AV was shifting to another place. But it simply did not happen. For the first few days, we hardly spoke with each other except for some rigid and routine queries and comments. But AV had cool ways to tackle situations of tensions and animosities. So after a week or so, I started turning warmer towards AV. The breaking of ice led to less formal and more enjoyable conversation. We started to get to know each other. And much of what I learnt about AV was unbelievable considering the mirthful life he seemed to live. 

AV hailed from a place in Central Travancore, Kerala. He had joined the Indian Army after finishing his school education and had served in the frontline during India’s border wars. His wife (whom I would never meet) was a State government servant at Kerala.  He told me that his wife was very fair and pretty. Unfortunately, she was suffering from a serious mental illness. She was mostly normal in her demeanour and continued attending her office.  But her behaviour remained extremely unpredictable. During the periods of relapses, she would run amok, smash things up and even turn dangerously violent hurting herself and others. He told me how at least on a few occasions he lost his temper grappling with her.  “Then I suddenly remembered that her ferocity was only a manifestation of her illness and calmed myself down”, he said. She was on drugs and had to visit the hospitals, often to receive electric shocks.   

The couple had two children – a son and a daughter. The son was around my age and could have been a great support to the family considering its sad plight. But he was another cause of serious worries for his father.  He was an alcoholic and a reckless rebel. He was enrolled in the best school in the area. But he had bungled his education. He had neither any job nor any interest or inclination to work.  He would take away whatever he would find in the house to lavish it on alcohol. (That probably explained the luggage hill AV carried with him). His daughter was married to a soldier.  

I wondered how safe it was for AV to leave his wife and son together while he worked outside Kerala. He told me that it was perhaps better that way. For mysterious reasons, his wife seemed to be relatively less vicious towards her son. Besides, if AV remained at home, his son might turn more wanton and unruly. Since the mother-son tie seemed to be much less threatening and his son tended to be somewhat considerate towards his mother in his father’s absence, it was better that he was away.   

I was deeply moved to hear about the pitiful situation of AV.  I wondered how he could still appear a bundle of boundless energy and joy. I regretted that I had bracketed him as some hardened faith nut without caring to understand the circumstances that made him cling so desperately on to the divine. I remembered the Biblical dictum, “Judge not”. After listening to the disquieting agonies of his life, I turned more lenient towards his quirks and flaws.  Truly, “There isn’t anyone you could not love, once you have heard their story”, (Sister May Lou Knownacki).

AV had a knack of making friends with anyone he came across. For instance, I have often found him chatting, joking and laughing aloud and always enjoying the company of street vendors. Every day on his way back from office, he would spend much time in the company of such people. I learnt that he was lending money to some of those poor vendors. I knew that in many cases his goodness was being exploited and that he was being taken for a ride.  But he never complained. Almost every day he returned from office with an assortment of fruits. I received a share of whatever he brought.  I noticed that the plantains he brought were mostly twins – two plantains fused together as one.  I once asked him about it. He told me that most people did not buy it because of some superstitions surrounding it. But he would buy it in order to help his fruit vendor friends.  And they always kept such plantains aside for AV.

AV had no university education. But I noticed that he had been reading the ‘Hindu’ newspaper and was subscribing to the ‘Reader’s Digest’ magazine.  (In fact, he introduced me to the magazine and I have been subscribing to it now for some thirty-five odd years).  I also eventually moved from ‘The Indian Express’ to ‘The Hindu’ after we separated. But I did not imagine him reading much outside newspapers, journals and of course, Christian literature. I was then a member of the British Council Library.  I could borrow four books at a time. Every fortnight I visited the library and picked up four books – always the heaviest volumes. (Looking back now, I assume I was attempting more to impress than to read). I also had a collection of books of my own. I have often seen AV leafing through these books. Even then, I did not consider him a serious reader of English writing. Then one day I found him reading a bulky hardbound volume. The book was ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – by Edward Gibbon’.  The book is a renowned classic considered by many as one of the one hundred greatest books in history. As originally published, it had come in six volumes.  The one that AV was reading that day was the first volume of a three-volume version of it. I learned that he got that book from one of the clergy trainees in a nearby Christian Seminary. I knew that it was not an easy book for the general reader.  (To be honest, I have not been able to read beyond a hundred pages of that book’s abridged version I have in my home library).  In due course, I would know that he had fair idea about renowned English writers and their works.

I noticed that, unlike me, AV was very systematic in his approach to reading.  He always kept a notebook and a dictionary whenever he settled down to read.  He would write down any significant information, attractive sentences, usages and turn of phrases into the notebook. He would never be satisfied with the contextual sense of unfamiliar words.  Instead, he would refer the dictionary and note down the word and its meaning. I knew that he would use it somewhere shortly thereafter. That was one way he enriched his word power. And he indeed had an excellent command over the English language. Gradually, he understood my own reading tastes and whenever he came across something he thought would interest me, he would read it out for my benefit and we would discuss it.

Although AV was supposed to find another accommodation and move out, he continued as my roommate until he left Pune. As the date of his retirement on superannuation approached, he was in two minds – whether to find another job as an ex-service man and continue at Pune or to go home to the midst of his domestic miseries. We discussed it many times and finally he opted to return to Kerala. By that time, we had almost a father-son relationship. We were together for around four years.  

I was sad to see him go away. I suddenly felt lonely, although by nature, I relish solitude. For a while after his departure, I often returned from work almost expecting to find him reading his news paper.  A couple of years later, I too left Pune on transfer to Kerala. My first posting in Kerala was to a place close to his home. He occasionally visited me at my office. Life went on. I got married and had a child. After a while, I moved out of Kerala and was in and out of my home state several times.  All these while, AV maintained once in a while contact with me. And one significant form of that contact was a Christmas greeting card he would invariably send every Christmas to my home address in Kerala.

AV was a person with great faith in the intercessory powers of dead saints. (Incidentally I do not believe in any ‘holy people’, dead or alive).  He regularly paid visits to the tombs of such ‘holy’ personalities.  The tomb of one such person, a bishop, was in a church close to my home.  So, whenever I was in Kerala, he would visit me at my home on his way back home from the tomb.  He had been fighting a court battle in a case connected with his pension and I had been helping him with the correspondence on it. So whenever we met, we also discussed the status of the case. (The case went up to the Hon Supreme Court of India, which dismissed his pleas paying no thoughts for the plight of a pensioner who had put his life on the line fighting for his country. He petitioned the President and Prime Minister of India. They routinely forwarded it for action to the very authorities who were denying him justice. He had spent much of his savings in the court battles. But he (also I) knew he was right and refused to give up. The truth was on his side. But truth does not always triumph.)

Although AV was more than eighty-five years old when he visited us last, he looked sprightly and exceptionally agile.  He told me that he still used his bicycle to cover short distances and travelled long distances by public transport.  His wife had died. His son was married although it did not have any redeeming impact on his vile habits.  AV had arranged a job for him in the Middle East through some agents. But after a short period, he died there leaving his wife and child to the care of AV. I never asked AV how his son died.

A few months after his last visit to our home, I came to know that he had met with an accident. He had fallen down and fractured his leg while attempting to catch a bus. I went to see him along with my wife.  He was living in his home with his daughter-in-law and his grandchild.  He had trouble using his legs. There were injuries at many places in his body. Yet he came out of the house to receive us. His energy, enthusiasm and hilarity did not seem to have waned a bit. I noticed that he continued to read the Hindu and the Readers Digest. We spent an hour discussing life, politics, spirituality etc., besides his pension case. He had re-approached the Hon. High Court.  But the outlook was not very promising. We shook hands and took leave of him.  The firmness of his grip was still intact.

A few more years went by. I became engrossed in my work and the many troubles and court battles it threw up.  But we continued to receive his greeting cards every Christmas. The cards he chose might look dull, ordinary and cheap on the outside. But the message inside would always be touching and thought provoking. He would scrawl his lengthy signature underneath the message. Wherever I happened to be, every December his Christmas greetings would arrive at my home. We would be uneasy if his card was delayed. But the card had always arrived eventually.  

In the year 2013, we did not receive his Christmas card. We waited in the hope that it was merely a case of postal delays. Christmas and New Year came and went. But there was no card. I had a nagging fear in my heart.  My wife suggested that I phone him to find out.  I did not. I told her that the card was, perhaps, lost in transit.  I hoped I was right and believed that we would see his card the next December.  Next December came and went.  And there was no card.  I still refused to pick up the phone and dial his home. (He had no mobile phone). He was the only person I personally knew in his family. And I simply could not think of standing the terror of someone else answering my call and confirming my worst fears… I was not even sure whether that landline was still active…

Perhaps, I would live to the next December and a few more Decembers thereafter looking forward for the delivery of his card. The card might never arrive.  But, I would continue to believe its non-arrival as a simple case of Postal carelessness.  And then a December would come when I would not be here to wait for his card…

*Name suppressed to protect privacy

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