Happy !

                         Back in the last monsoon, on a murkily clouded morning, when I was walking down the street, dubiously, rather unconsciously observing the people and wondering how busy they were with their lives, I realized at a moment that there were noticeably more sad and tensed faces than there were the happy ones ... An enormous number of sad faces, heartrendingly, seemed of having had a serial of sleepless nights & a few seemed to have a ton of things to worry about ...

Few seemed like they were controlled by the consequences of every little thing they did & a few seemed to have woken up to an unwanted alarm for which they felt terribly tired & thread bared, as they unknowingly knew somewhere in the back of their mind, that it is set to ring the next morning too ...

There were hardly any 'happy for a reason' faces, and not even a single which seemed unconditionally happy ... 

                         Maybe because they were tired enough of what they were doing, they weren't feeling energized enough to struggle and come out of what they were undergoing .

No one, I felt, was interested at all to take charge of his/her own misery and change it into a life worth living .

Because, I guess, they weren't at all interested, something from within me started intriguing me . Something like a strong urge, but a helpless one . Helpless, because I couldn't even initiate at that very moment, what I was thinking I wanted to do, & that is I think, the paradox of our times that we've been all the way to the moon and back but we still aren't easily able to start a conversation across the road or across a public transport !

                         Drowned deep down into the thoughts, now, when I was not completely aware of what all was happening around me, it suddenly started pouring & the chain of thoughts broke . It started raining heavily in less than a minute & so I had to find a shelter at soonest . A shelter to protect my belongings from the rain, not myself, really . Very soon I found a shelter under an over-hanging roof of a primary school adjacent to the street . I was standing facing the street with my back touching an outer wall of one of the classrooms of the school . As the sounds from inside the class fell on my ears, I wished to move closer to the window the sounds were coming from and see what was going on inside . I slowly moved towards the window and peeped in through  it, taking care no one from inside notices me & I don't disturb the class . No sooner than I got the very first sight of the inside of the classroom, a sense of familiarity flew past my mind . The excitement on the faces of the children, ( contradictory to what I had seen on the faces of the people on the street a few minutes ago ), their new satchels & new uniforms, indicated that the school had just reopened after the vacations . 

                         The teacher had the students engaged in an assignment in which they were supposed to come up and write on the blackboard, what they aspire to become in their lives . I found it really enthralling and riveting & so I continued to watch what all the students wrote .

Few wrote that they aspire to become doctors, few wrote to want to become engineers, few astronauts and few scientists .

                         I wasn't astonished until a student from one of the last benches, on his turn, walked up to the blackboard  & wrote 'Happy' . I was both, shocked and overwhelmed !

Shocked, because I thought he was too young for having understood that happiness should be the most important parameter one should apply before choosing a profession . And overwhelmed, because it showed on his face that he really meant what he had written .

His expressions just conveyed that he hadn't yet given choosing a profession for himself a serious thought, but he was more than sure that whatever profession he opts to go for, he only aspires to be really happy with it !

                         Breaking the silence that had spread in the class after he had written 'Happy' on the black board, the teacher said in a bit of incredulous tone ( maybe because she too thought that his answer was way too philosophical for his age ) - "Dear, you seem to have misunderstood the assignment . What you've written on the board is incorrect ."

To which, the young boy replied, again adding to my surprise, saying - "If it is so ma'am, you seem to have misunderstood life ."

                                                                                                                         - Ajinkya Patil

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