RAILROADS AND HAPPINESS

By Vani P Nair -


I think I was watching the trailer for the second season of this romantic anthology series called"Modern Love". As usual I was not paying attention to most of what was being said. My focus was on catching a glimpse of Kit Harrington. And then I heard one of the characters say something like, " We can only be as happy as we allow ourselves to be", and it got me thinking for a while. I, in fact even texted it to someone I know, who is yet to acknowledge that text. (Its been two days.....I know.... but I am used to being ignored like that.....sigh!.....) 

The word "happiness brings" to my mind a series of interviews that were aired in Kappa TV, hosted by Dhanya Varma, called "Happiness Project". Though it was indeed all about happiness, I loved how she interviewed the people without ever letting a feeling of redundancy to creep in. Unlike several other interviewers I have come across, she never pried into their personal lives or dug up scandals from the past to increase the TRP. The interviewees were given the control of the steering. They spoke about what they wanted to speak and that was that. But, towards the end of every interview, she would inevitably ask every one of them one mandatory question: "What is happiness according to you?".

I imagined asking myself that question. What makes me happy? Some days it is simply impossible to feel anything, let alone happiness. But then I was taken back to that train journey on a sultry summer evening. The coach was more or less empty. I was going to my dad's place with my cousin sister. Both of us were sitting facing each other by the window seat. The coolness of the night air was just beginning to make its presence felt. Darkness was fast descending upon the horizon. I was staring ahead with an empty mind. I kept looking ahead and the train began to slow down to make way for another train that was in more of a hurry than us to reach some far off destination. By then it was almost dark. World had begun transforming to silhouettes. Out of the blue, my wandering eyes fell upon an abandoned log of wood lying aimlessly across an old unused rail track. It was partially covered in ivy. A mere sight of that and suddenly my mind was overwhelmed with a sense of happiness. Like Wordsworth said, I was indeed experiencing a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". 

Smilingly, I turned to my cousin sister who was completely oblivious to the emotional volcano slowly erupting inside me. I caught her attention with my wide grin. She looked at me enquiringly. I pointed to the wooden log at her and told her how that piece of wood lying randomly on the tracks was filling me with an unusual sense of happiness. She gave me curious look, followed by a weird smile. I saw her bringing down her backpack from the upper berth and rummaging in its side pockets to find something. She brought out her phone and started tapping away on the broken touch screen with an unusual urgency. I kept looking at her. Her attention was focused on the screen for an uncomfortable amount of time before she turned it towards me. I strained to read the text, but with no success. She then chose to read it aloud to me. She had written something like this: " Sometimes a wooden log lying across the railway tracks is all it takes to make my day, to make me happy". It was from about a year ago. I looked at her with the same emotion that we have shared many other times before. 

It was not the first time that we had shared the same thoughts in our lives.

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