The H Word

For a friend, it lies in her cat. He is a bundle of energy, darting around her apartment like a speeding arrow shot from a bow. He is aptly christened Mischief.
For another friend, a traveler who regularly escapes from the city's dissonance to the solace of the hills, it lies in a steaming cup of lemon tea. Brewed with care, tea leaves bleeding amber into water, a dash of lemon, slices of ginger for zing. A dab of honey, voila, perfection!
How many times have you caught yourself thinking that people find happiness in the oddest of things? Whatever else it may or may not be, happiness is excruciatingly subjective. What makes your friend or spouse or parent dizzy with joy may leave you cold. Or plummet you into deep depression. A writer friend who recently moved to a new city is house hunting. His property agent looked befuddled when he heard his client's brief. "Find me an old, lived in house. Preferably something with moss on the walls. No gleaming marble floors and freshly painted walls, thank you very much!" For most people, living in his dream house would be the perfect recipe for unhappiness.

There are some universally accepted indices of happiness. Food, clothing and a roof over your head are counted as basic requirements for human contentment. We can safely generalize that in the absence any of these we are left hungry, cold and grumpy. If you live in an impossibly crowded Indian metro, it's a sure bet that a clear street without traffic jams will leave you jumping with joy. Sun and sand, feni and frothy Goan seas too are generally guaranteed to put most people in a cheery mood.
Happiness does have its share of predictable qualities, but unpredictability usually rules. One grumpy person may feel thrilled when she watches the first snowfall of the season. Another may rave and rant and wallow in a sea of misery as soon as the first snowflake lands lightly on her nose. Happiness, like beauty, seems to lie entirely in the eye of the beholder.
My sister who grew up in the warmth of the tropics moved to the badlands of Ann Arbor, Michigan a couple of years of ago. For all practical purposes, Michigan residents are fated to live in the Ice Age. Winter is not just a season, it's a way of life. Ice and snow line the streets almost all through the year. Proximity to the Great Lakes ensures that icy winds haunt the cityscape day and night. "In India, rain used to make me so happy," says my sister. "Now, I am ready to burst into tears when I see rain clouds because the down pour is sure to lower to the temperature," she sighs.
Rain in the tropics can make you light headed with joy. You hum a happy tune as the thunder growls. You reach for pen and paper as the sky splits wide open and scribble an ode to the magic of rain. In the freezing northern hemisphere, the very thought of rain brings a scowl to your face. You weep as it pours.

So the same trigger can make you happy or blue, depending on your surroundings. Management gurus never miss an opportunity to remind us that the secret of a successful business is location. Happiness gurus – shrinks who claim their pills can waltz away your blues, new age divinities who lecture you on the path to happiness – can take note. Suggest a change of location to those hit by the moody blues. A move to the tundra, if the person happens to live in the tropics. If she is a tundra resident, obviously, you reverse the move.
Happiness is a slippery eel, escaping definitions with ease. Just when you think you have it pinned it down with a definition, it reveals another of its facets. Pop goes your definition like a fragile bubble.
Poets, philosophers, songwriters, filmmakers, mathematicians, physicists, Sufis and saints… Haven't they all strived to define happiness across the ages? Many realised that there is no magic formula for it. They were aware that no exclusive definition can tether it. So they traced some of the paths that lead to it and shared their arduous journeys along those alleyways with us.
Existentialists, thanks to their vocal discontent about life, have earned themselves the tag of grumpy philosophers. Jean Paul Sarte, that original rebel without a cause, has written reams on the troubles of humans "born into the mud." Left to fend for ourselves in an absurd, godless world, what chance do we have at stumbling on the oasis of happiness? Sartre famously said that life made him "nauseous" (no, he wasn't talking about global warming) and that he couldn't see the point of living, battered by "existential anguish."
But Sartre wasn't ruling out the possibility of happiness. He was simply raving against the threats to harmony and happiness that life presents before us. Awareness can arm us against the enemy. Knowing what you are fighting always gives you an edge.
Albert Camus (he of The Outsider fame) too ranted against the randomness of life and its fragility. But he did confess that he, like the rest of us mortals, is part of the eternal quest for happiness. In the man's own words: "When I do happen to look for what is most fundamental in me, what I find is a taste for happiness."
The mystic poets gave us their take on happiness. In their eyes, true joy lies in the union of the soul with god. The soul travels from darkness to light, transcends all that separates it from god, finally finding bliss when it merges in all encompassing godliness.
The Romantics looked to nature for the fount of true happiness. A field of daffodils in bloom, an idlyllic pastoral setting, a nightingale's song, a gust of breeze – the hues and fragrances of nature, its spontaneous rhythms – all spelt out joy to their tribe.
Hollywood studios have evolved their own prescriptions to ensure movie goers stay happy. Apparently if preview audiences burst into tears or leave the theatre with scowls o their brows, screenplay writers are called in at once to do a rewrite. A happy ending, the staple of every successful Bollywood film, occupies center stage in the Hollywood psyche too.
Ad-men promise us that shopping brings us happiness. Buy shampoos, soaps, perfumes, watches, televisions, playstations, cars, I-pods….Shop till you become a shiny, happy person, they holler at us.

Last month, I met a monk who came down to Delhi from the foothills of the Himalayas. He was in the city to give a lecture on "cultivating happiness as a skill." Not surprisingly, the lecture hall was filled with people. Eager seekers sat draped in pashminas, expensive pearl necklaces glinted in the dim-lit room. (Money can't buy you happiness?)
The soft-spoken monk made it clear that he had no magic wand to wave. He wasn't here to offer any quick-fix solutions. He wouldn't preach any gospel of salvation to his listeners.
He made a distinction between happiness and pleasure. Pleasure like a candle consumes itself. It is totally dependent on external factors – your surroundings, the weather, the time of day, your companions, your swiss bank account (or its lack), your car, your lovers, your pets, your job. Pleasure is influenced by a million things which lie outside your ken. It is a wavering flame that changes shape with every gust of wind in your life.
Happiness, on the other hand, is a steady state of mind. No matter how many peaks of ecstasy you hit, no matter how many black holes of defeat life flings in your orbit, you stay centered. Bitterness doesn't poison your soul, defeat doesn't fill you with malice towards others. "The measure of your happiness," said the monk in a comforting, sing-song tone, "lies in your equanimity."
As I drove back home after the monk's talk, I got stuck in an everyday Dilli traffic snarl. The driver behind me honked like a beast gone berserk. I checked the impulse to scream at him. I did not ask him in the rudest possible tone if he thought I was driving a flying saucer which could take off into the skies, making way for his gigantic Scorpio.

Calm, calm, calm. I muttered. He honked away for a few minutes. Then, silence.
One step closer to happiness, I was.
The wind blew through my hair. The birds were chirping, the sun raining down mellow warmth.
I zoomed away homeward.

Light, Sound, Magic

What is it about the movies that make them so magical? I am not the first one to ask. And I won't be the last.
Maybe it's the heady mix of image and sound, light and colour, music and drama, emotion and action and intelligence, that does the trick.
Maybe it's the endless variety. So many kinds of films to choose from. A rich feast for even the most gluttonous appetite. Fiction, documentary, docu-drama mixing a bit of both. Classics. Cult films. Low brow, high art. The independent film, the pop corn movie, the blockbuster. The multiplex film, phenomenon of our times. Animation, short film, digital films.
Films have been made on every imaginable (and many unimaginable) themes. Boy meets girl. Boy meets boy. Girl meets girl. Love, hate, and the thin line in between, are all fodder for the filmmaker's imagination.
The agony of people trapped in the wrong body, most recently, Felicity Hoffman in TransAmerica. Extraterrestrials stranded on earth, ET who 'wants to go home.' Pregnant teenager with razor sharp wit, named after none other than the goddess, Juno. Many films have no qualms in training the spotlight on characters the world calls off-kilter.
Genres try to pigeonhole films. The swashbuckling Western. Brooding film noir. The musical. The road movie, the revenge drama, the coming of age film. Blast from the past – the period film. Romance, comedy, drama, action, thriller. Film as spectacle. Regaling us with exploits of Roman gladiators and larger than life mafia dons, making you 'an offer you can't refuse!'
Film as catharsis. Anger, passion, ecstasy – all our suppressed desires evoked, then purged in the cocoon of the theatre's darkness. Cries and whispers. Secrets and lies. As the frames run, 24 per second, our hearts beat in sync to their rhythm.
Tomes have been written about the magic of the movies. Film studies departments analyse it semester after academic semester. Reams of news print are spent on dissecting our evergreen love affair with cinema. Lists are compiled like an annual ritual, rating our love (in ascending or descending order?) for films which have been made through the ages. "Hundred films we love." "55 classics we love the most." "The best 100 films ever made, voted for by our readers." "Our critics pick 25 best films of the year."
Sometimes dire warnings which also serve as notices of our mortality are issued in place of lists. "1000 films to watch before you die." "If you haven't watched these, you are as good as dead!"
Lists may come and lists may go. But movies always have, and always will, continue to consume our curiosity.
Many filmmakers who are passionately in love with cinema have felt compelled to make films that lay bare the mysteries of the cinematic universe. So we have films on the rise and fall of movie makers, the loves and lives of actors, extras, singers, scriptwriters and song writers – the flesh and blood humans who inhabit the celluloid world. Films that track the cruel roads of tinsel town where survival of the fittest is the norm. Films that take a hard look at the faces behind the masks. Films that venture behind the scenes, while onscreen, the show goes on. Films about heartbreak in Hollywood. About aspiring actors, shayars and starlets, stalking the streets of Mumbai, 'ready for their close-ups.'
Kagaz Ke Phool – portraying the world of Hindi cinema at its cynical best. Who can forget the lyricism of Guru Dutt's black and white intensity? The shot of the once feted director's corpse being clinically moved out of the studio summed it all up in one take. Behind the magic lies a whole world of heartbreak. Kaifi Azmi's lyrics for the film said it best: "Dekhi zamane ki yaari/Bichde sabhi baari baari."
One of the most innovative films on movie making ever made is Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camera (1929). With this documentary, the Russian filmmaker wrote an intense love song to the power of film. One of the pioneers to use real life footage (as opposed to staged versions shot in studios), Vertov simply lets the camera soak in real life in all its horror and glory. Then he edits them to fashion meaningful segments. The film pulsates with the raw energy of life. Dancers dance, athletes swim and race, workers build roads under a blazing summer sky, cyclists pedal along the roads, birds fly…Life goes on as the camera records its flow with a lyrical fluidity. The eye of the camera can make even the most mundane moment count, Vertov declares with every shot. If anyone was in doubt about the magic of cinema, I'd recommend a viewing of Vertov's classic.
Film is a visual medium, but part of its allure for us lies in words. Dialogue mouthed by actors ring in our ears when we step out of the movie hall. Many lines have become part of our collective vocabulary.
"Here's looking at you kid" (Casablanca). The flame between Bogart and Bergman would have burnt several notches lower without the line. And left us a lot less wiser about the angst of unfulfilled love.
"I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" (Apocalypse Now). What line can convey the horror of war better than this?
"The dude abides" (The Big Lebowski). Life wouldn't be the same without the dude's philosophical pronouncement to see us through the ride.
"Show me the money" (Jerry Maguire). I bet corporate boardrooms still ring out with the cry.
"Why don't you shut your goddamn mouth and play some music?" (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Didn't McMurphy gift us with the best line to deal with a world gone crazy?
" Hum ne hamesha ek doosre ko samjha hai" (Kagaz ke Phool). That line summing up the essence of a relationship, lingers on in the air.
"Kya chahte hai aap zindagi se?" asks the poet.
"Ke pehle se behtar ho" replies the aspiring actress.
The conversation from Sudhir Mishra's lyrical Khoya Khoya Chand continues to haunt us, as we chase our dreams.
There is a character in a Woody Allen film who decides to commit suicide (as characters in Allen's films are prone to do). So the terminally depressed man walks down the street planning the finer details of his suicide. As he saunters along, he passes by a movie hall. There is a long line outside the box office, huge posters of the star cast are pasted at the entrance. The potential candidate for suicide takes a long look at the movie hall. Then he joins the line outside the box office, buys a ticket and steps into the darkness of the hall.
Next shot. Man's outside the hall, looking less morose than before. Then he speaks directly to the viewer (as characters in Allen's movies do) and tells us that "he won't be committing suicide after all."
May be it was a damn good movie. May be not.
The point is, cinema has the power to move us in ways beyond our control.
What makes its attraction so irresistible? Why does it hold us spellbound? What makes the spell it casts on our hearts and minds so potent?
May be its best left a mystery. Why look for logic in magic?
Surrender. Let the show go on.

It Never Happened

Say it rained all night yesterday. Thunder growled, the wind wentberserk. Jagged streaks of lightning split open the skies. Raindropspelted the earth without stop, streams swelled, the ocean churned,rivers overflowed. A downpour as powerful as a waterfall. A wild beast of a storm, devouring everything on its way. Stomping across smalltowns and cities. In its wake, glinting towers of chrome and steel quaked. In villages, homes turned to rubble. Thatched roofs flew in the wind. Four-poster beds and pots and pans danced in the air, the wind jerking them around like puppets on a string. Deep in the woods,ancient trees uprooted. With a deafening thud, they crashed.
But when morning comes, I declare: "It never rained."I am sound of mind and body. All my faculties are intact. I can see,hear. I am sensitive to touch. Adequate supplies of oxygen areentering my lungs. I am not stretched out on a hospital bed in a coma.My brain, both left and right lobe, works.
But I stand up, spine erect, squint into the sunshine and declare: "It never rained last night."No, I am not insane.I am in denial.Denial is a many-splendored thing. It has a stunning range of uses.During his visit to New York this October, Iranian president MahmoudAhmadinejad stood before an audience and denied the existence of gaypeople in his country. All it took was a simple statement. The president stood up, spine erect, squinted at the flashbulbs andtelevision cameras and declared: "There are no homosexuals in Iran."
When gay people (who actually exist) in Iran heard about it, they aresaid to have been "shocked but not surprised."Homosexuals in the country are used to leading a secret existence.They camouflage their gay identity out of fear. They do not demandlegal rights or protection. Iran – in spite of the president's confidence in the absence of a gay population – has severe lawsagainst homosexuality. If a homosexual relationship between twopeople is proven, their punishments include lashings and even death.The president's denial sent out many messages at one go. Message togays: stay hidden or else…message to an interfering Western press:mind you own business. Message to human rights activists: yeah, gaypeople are human. But go tell that to countries where they exist.Message to gender rights activists: we don't have gays, so where's the question of rights?
A masterstroke in the annals of denial. Felling many birds with one stone.History is teeming with instances of denial. About 80 years ago, 1.5million Armenians were wiped out in eastern Turkey. They were not annihilated by floods or volcanoes or famine. A cold, calculated orgyof man-made violence snuffed their lives out. Blinded by its frenzy ofbuilding an exclusive Turkish identity, the state decided to murderthem in cold blood. But for years after the genocide, the country drifted in the twilight zone of denial. Text books never mentioned thegenocide. It was never discussed in universities or pubic forums.Children grew up hearing the tales of valour of the state, never itsbrutality. The dead Armenians did not exist in their collective memory.
History was written by people who agreed to perpetrate the crime of denial.When a Nazi sympathizer was sentenced recently by a European court, he was asked how he had lived with himself after aiding and abetting the holocaust. Day after day, month after agonizing month, didn't theghosts of Auschwitz haunt him? How did the mirror not shatter when hesaw his reflection in it every morning? How did he not smell the bloodon his hands?The man had found the perfect alibi in denial. "I had no choice. I had to do it."Denial is a million times more lethal than a lie. It coats monstrous decisions and their macabre consequences with the gloss of inevitability."My actions were inevitable. I had no choice."Closer home… in Bombay, Gujarat. When communal riots wrecked the livesof thousands, a compromised police force responded with the same.Inertia disguised as inevitability."We had no choice. Our hands were tied."
Denial is the luxury of believing that the easiest way out is the onlychoice you have. Without the crutch of denial, you are left with thetruth that you didn't behave differently because you simply chose not to. That's a terrible confession to make. That's a terrifying ghost towake.
Denial is used to score political points. To build empires. To justify invasions.If there is a master class on Imperialism, chapter one will definitely be devoted to the power of denial.Remember how Bush and the cowboy brigade justified the war on Iraq? By denying the existence of factual evidence. Denial of the reports byweapons inspectors who went to Iraq in search of the mysteriousweapons of mass destruction. They didn't find any because they weren't any to find. But one of the most brutal wars of our time is wiping out platoons of American soldiers and an entire generation of Iraqicitizens. Day after day.Because those who were baying for blood chose to live in denial.So Baghdad burns...
Is denial invincible? Do we have weapons sharp enough to penetrate its shield? Any missile that can shatter its fortified premises? The answer, mercifully, is yes.When the stench of denial poisons the air, art tries to give us cleanair to breathe. Films, about the Armenian genocide, the killingfields of the Khymer Rouge, the silenced voices of Auschwitz, Fascismand its silencing techniques. Novels which record the screams which were ignored. Poems and paintings which navigate us through the mazeof denials, bring us closer to the truth.Symphonies which immortalize those who were wiped out. Stanzas which celebrate those who were silenced. Bombard denial with stanza and verse. Bring on the metaphor and the apt simile. Illuminate the darkness with the glow of oil and canvas.Sing, speak out , drown the silence with full throated abandon.
In this lies our only hope.