Happy

 I was asked a deep and profound question recently. What do I do for happiness?

How does one answer that? One has spent an entire lifetime avoiding uncomfortable tasks, situations, but not exactly doing happy things either. 

But more than that question, what bothers me today is what do I do? From morning to evening? Entire 15-16 hours in the day and 365 days in the year? How much of the unlimited internet browsing can one bear? 

We have all heard the story of life of a man being only 20 years and then he begged the life-span of a monkey, a donkey, a parrot etc and made it into a large span of 100 years. But why did he have to do that?

See we are born. We grow up. Then we do all that 'phoolo, phalo'. Produce offspring and raise them. Then our duty on this earth is done. It is time to leave the planet. Say tata bye bye. 

I am not saying there aren't great men and women who contribute to the society  well into their late 90s and beyond. But what about the common folk like you and me. What do we do after certain age? Wait for 'uperwalla' to lift us?

Ok, ok. Enough of philosophy. Let me go back to the original question. Things to do for happiness. 

I know that this blogging makes me kind of happy - may be a little bit content. I feel happy-ish when I do my Sanskrit translation work or a small piece of code. But when I am really upset, I listen to music and sing along. That makes me un-unhappy. 

For example, I was watching in twitter, the song 'abhi na javo chodkar' being sung by all the great singers of yesteryear and contemporary. And I was really ecstatic and elated. Which is a feeling you can never expect from a social media app like twitter. 

Did the music make me happy or the genuine smiles on the faces? 

A smile - When you see some one smile - not a fake smile, but a genuine smile, you feel happy. Why does smile make you happy. Smile from anyone? 

I am trying to picture here smile of some of the worst offenders like Hitler or contemporary Hitlerish leaders. I think even their smiles will make us happy.

In a social gathering a lady was telling a young girl - ' your smile is so beautiful. I smile and I look like this'. She imitated her sad looking smile. I told her "Her name means smile". Her name was 'Muskaan'. 

There are other names which mean smile - Smita, Tarasha, Anura - according to internet. 

It appears smile is contagious and when we watch others smile, we tend to smile ourselves. And smiling relaxes us and takes away our anxiety and tension. And we become happy. Who knew - all these years, I could have saved a smiling face as my wallpaper.