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You’ll be happy if you know it

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A conscious endeavour to foster happiness can help you make a habit out of it. I had seen a photograph of my friend’s daughter. She was right in the midst of greenery, kneeling down and lively in the lap of nature. Her wonder-filled eyes and infectious smile seized my second. Unknowingly, I experienced the happiness that the instant eternalised in itself. I felt it. I wished if only I could hold on to that happiness or engage with it as effortlessly as the child did. The absurdist author, Albert Camus, wrote, "You will never be happy if you...search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." But we are incorrigible. Each of us is in pursuit of happiness. Few realise, it is but a function of our will. Some claim to have found it in their own bitter-sweet ways. The other day, I heard my daughter singing full-throated, the insanely-popular Pharrell Williams song, 'Happy'. She was rehearsing her Zumb
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My strands of American Childhood

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I was born and brought up in central Calcutta, schooled in central Calcutta, but then grew up to become the core Bengali who had an American childhood! W e Bengalis know the characteristics etched in someone from central Calcutta. Her strings are pulled from both ends. She owns the traits of the more settled in old North Calcutta while desirous for the contemporary South Kolkata (Eastern Kolkata wasn't so prominent then.) We still lived in our hundred-year-old rented homes with 20-inch deep walls and cut-glass floors. But, we went to the top schools in the city. We religiously fed the street dogs, cats, and cows but reluctantly swapped our indoor plants for lack of water. Though I have been a Central Calcuttan all my childhood, I was never pulled by either of these strings. I held on to an American fiber that tugged me on and off! My mom's best neighborhood pal was an American lady! Well, I know you could expect someone of British descent at that location and era
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The Note on a LampPost

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I read about humanity and wanted to share it with you T oday, walking by the road, I saw a white note in a plastic bag. It was hanging from the lamppost. I went by the lamppost and read the words. It said, "I have lost a 50 dollar bill around somewhere here. If you find it, please can you return it to me." And then below it was an address. I went to that address and found a very old and feeble lady resting on the front porch. Hearing my rustle, she called out, "who is there?" I quickly went forward and told her I came to return her 50-dollar bill that I found by the lamppost. She instantly burst into tears and said that at least twenty other people had come to give her back the money and even so when she hadn't written the note on the lamppost. I insisted that she keep the $50 bill from me. She genuinely thanked me and brought me a glass of water from inside. When I was about to leave, she, in turn, requested that I tear up the note on the lamppo
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