Say 'No' to Stay Happy

Life is never easy and mostly this is because there are too many choices to make. For every decision you take there are a thousand that 'could have been' or 'would have been' or 'if only'.

Personally, I have always faced a problem has been saying 'No'. I have always been scared of making someone unhappy by saying no when they want me to say, 'Yes'.

It had made my life thoroughly complicated and difficult for many years. The idea that I will hurt someone by saying 'No' always ended up by me being miserable for a long time for saying, 'Yes'.

The heart always knows what is right and the wise always go with their heart. I finally learnt to say 'No' from my young niece. When she was just learning to communicate at around the age two years, she would very clearly let us know if she did not want something. She'd simply say, 'no' and stick to her decision. Whether it was on food, time to be put to sleep, who she would want to be carried around by - for every decision, she'd look at what is on display and give her emphatic decision.

I learnt from her. By closely following her whims, I realized that she was exercising her right to choice without any outward influence. It did not matter whose heart she was breaking by saying no. What mattered was whether she was comfortable with the final decision - I observed that she always was. Once she decided, she stuck to the decision and stayed happy. She actually is a happy human being who is able to light up a dark day with her laughter.

Most of us are like her when while growing up. But, adulthood and society takes care of us soon and we become slaves to what is supposedly 'expected behavior.'

But, each time we say 'yes' to something that we wanted to say 'no' to, we kill a bit of ourselves by putting our happiness on hold.

Since Dussehra just passed us by, another story struck me and made me believe that what I learnt from the baby in the last couple of years was absolutely correct. It is the story of Ratnakar bandit who later became the great sage, Valmiki.

Ratnakar confessed to a monk he had captured that he became a dreaded criminal and highway robber to feed his family. The monk very calmly asked him to go back to his family and ask them if they were ready to take his sins on their heads because he was 'killing and looting innocents to feed them'.

Ratnakar without hesitating for a moment said, "of course they do. They are my mother, father, wife and children. They have always known what I do and how I bring home food. They are partners in my life of crime because they are benefiting from it."

The monk who was tied-up to a huge tree and had the fierce Ratnakar staring at him in the eye with a scimitar ready to behead him said, "Nothing is involuntary in the universe. Go and ask your family and if they say that they are ready to take your sins on their heads, I will be happy to die by your hands."

Ratnakar somehow could not say, 'No'. Perhaps this was his biggest character flaw as he was soon to realize.

He went back to his family in the jungle and asked each one of them separately and then, together but, everyone unanimously refused to take on his sins including his mother and beloved children. They all said, 'it was your duty to take care of us and you did it the way you decided to. We never influenced or asked you to take on a life of crime and murder to feed us. It was your decision to do so and therefore, the sins that you have incurred are also yours.'

No amount of begging or crying would change their minds. Finally, the truth hit the dreaded bandit that we are alone are responsible for taking our own decisions and therefore to suffer or reap the rewards of the Karma we make from them.

He thought he was making his family happy but, in taking care of their happiness he refused to take a road that might have been less paying thinking it would make his family happy. Probably they were too but, Ratnakar himself was not. He was miserable and constantly afraid of death that he meted out to others all the time. Probably it was his inability to overcome his fear of death that made him listen to the monk who had nothing to lose.

In saying 'Yes' to a path of crime, Ratnakar had permanently written-off his choice to be free of the ghosts of his own making. He was successful but, not happy.

He went back to the monk, let him off and took up a vow to cleanse his sins by praying on an ant hill for many years.

How that worked out and how he became the revered saint Valmiki, the author of Ramayana is another story and perhaps his reward for accumulating good Karma post renunciation of the material world.

That day however, was an eye-opener for Ratnakar because, he realized the hard way like most of us that we alone have to suffer our choices. No one will take up the responsibility of our mistakes or bad choices even if we have taken it to make them happy.

What matters is to listen to your heart and follow what your gut tells you.

Choose wisely to live happily because we are the protagonists of our stories and each story deserves a happy ending.

#5 Dear Me: Where I Question Life, Thank Virginia Woolf and Comfort Vincent Van Gogh

Dear Life,

I remember images. They stay with me. I have never been able to remember things for example, where I kept my glasses before hitting the bed or where I put down the book I was reading last. But, I can recall suddenly vivid images of places, moments, people... and they may not be great bookmarks in my life. Yet, I remember them clearly,

So, a few days back, I had this flash from the past. I remembered one afternoon in college. There was sunlight streaming through the windows. I saw myself sitting in a feminist haze of golden yellow that made everything around me opaque. I was sitting somewhere in the middle of a class full of students - I knew they were there though I never saw them in my flash of memory. But, I saw our petite and beautiful professor quoting Virginia Woolf to explain 'Stream of Consciousness':

“Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”

I was really impressed by the quote. To me with my perpetually hazy and myopic vision it may have hit a bullseye on my young and impressionable self. Who knows? Perhaps that is the reason why I suddenly remembered that day.

This quasi-opaque luminous halo has been chasing me around like a mist for a very long time. Some call me a dreamer, others perhaps worse. But, that has not changed a single thing for me.

Thanks to Ms Woolf, I always knew subconsciously that life would not be a straight and narrow path. She had indeed promised that life would be an adventure and I saw myself riding the rough waves and winning. It pleased my young self a lot.

It's therefore not strange that I remember that day and those non-descriptive yellow walls of the lecture theatre with such clarity.

In the years since, I've had my slips and victories and falls but, have pushed ahead and enjoyed the ride all through.

Dear life, today I suddenly wanted to thank Ms Woolf for that quote. Maybe she can read this post in her afterlife or maybe it will be conveyed to her by the universe in general. I have hope that after today, she will know.

Life is definitely unplannable. It cannot be put into neat little compartments to be opened at will or left to be incubated for the right time to hatch. Hell! I can't even hatch a plot by plotting it when I write a story! It just happens and so does life.

The other day I chanced upon an information so astounding that I was blown away. It seems that the Impressionist movement was spearheaded by artists who were actually myopic. The great French masters like Monet, Renoir and Degas, suffered from shortsightedness and thus drew from their - you got it right - impressions. Had they planned it, it could not have worked any better.

For once I was so glad to be a myopic since childhood. No wonder ma says I cannot smell danger even when it is staring me in the eye. I only see the deep green haze of jealousy, the red of anger and myriad other colours that all look so vivid to me.

I love colours. They fascinate me. That make me happy hence, I ignore all other signals that wish to emit. No wonder I trip and fall so often, but, I hardly take my fall badly. It's all good. It's all experience.

However, I sometimes worry about Vincent Van Gogh. His was the most beautiful mind that saw colours and patterns in everything around him. Yet it took a couple of generations to figure it out.

I wish I could also find him somewhere and tell him not to despair. I see his despair in his art - even in his most celebrated works. The decaying flowers, the scavenger crows circling ripe and harvested fields, the barrenness of the vistas, the gnarling of the branches, the claustrophobia that I can smell from his painting of his bedroom. I just want to shake his hands once and quote Ms Woolf to him.

I just want him to be happy. Wherever he is. Because despite his towering talent, he did not have my indomitable spirit thanks to Ms Woolfe's quote.

And here is what I worry about, dear life, that despite the spirit, there is a vital flaw in my thinking. It is self-criticism. I am always criticising the last thing I have created. I can never be happy with the end result of anything I have finished working on. I hate it when someone says they have read or seen my writing. I believe they are all making it up to make me happy.

I wonder at times if it is a big flaw or a small one. I wish someone could answer the question honestly.

I am my fiercest critic. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Should I not be proud and self-promotional in my attitude?

As an artist, I cannot be untrue to myself. My inner artist has very lofty tastes. It refuses to settle for anything less. It insists that I look at myself and rediscover, recreate and rework everything I make from food to hanging up a print on the wall.

It keeps searching for that elusive state called perfection that is practically impossible to achieve. Or is it? Because, it keeps telling me that it is possible.

I await your answer.

Get back to me soon.

Love,

Shoma

I Hold my Key to Happiness

There are days when everything feels dull. Even rain fails to raise your spirit and mile long traffic jams make resistance futile even for the most resilient among us.

By afternoon you are angst-ridden, irritated and wondering, why did you even get out of the bed in the morning? 

Often, such questions defy answers - especially if it is a Monday like today! 

So, I try going existential and ask myself questions like, 'Can a whole life be lived in a single Monday? Or Can one evening of your life be the most important and most exciting of your life?

The answer I feel is, yes.

These moments that pass us by at breakneck speed are ours to either fill with happiness and laughter so that they become framed in our memories as happy events.

Why else would I hold on to a memory from age three, where my ma after dressing me in a yellow T shirt with a couple of dancing foxes embossed on it and dousing me in baby talc, gives me a hug calling me "shonamoni"?

Or when at age 5 I had to clean up all the toys after my toddling sister who declared very grandly, "I know how to play, but not how to clean up." I was not angry. Mildly irritated but, immensely tickled by her attitude. She had just learnt to speak.

   

I keep getting these flashes from far away summer vacations when we had stolen sweets from my grandmom's larder and hidden them in the coal cellar. We were of course caught red handed eating the exposed sweets and told, 'now you have eaten what all the cockroaches and bacteria has already tasted..." We thought, we were going to die!

I also remember how someone from Delhi upon looking at the Juhu sea for the first time from the double Decker bus in Bombay exclaimed, "Look. I never knew there was a desert in Bombay!"

I had looked around wondering, "did anyone else in here hear what was just said?"

Life is nothing but memories. I firmly believe that they should be happy rather than sad.

I have always taken a mental broom and cleaned out bad memories from my mind. It is easy, just clean up and throw inside a mental strong box and lock it up.

Keep the key safe. Ensure that only you should be able to open it and  no one else.

And coming back to Mondays, I have a similar strong box of happy moments where I have lived an entire short life. I just open the box and let it rain happy memories when stuck in a jam, facing a hard-to-please client or almost dozing off in a boring meeting or something much worse. Happy memories and happy times make you feel life's easy.

Also, when you look up in a bad situation and smile at another miserable soul, you make that person happy as well.

I try making happy memories in even the worst of times. I keep one eye out for that silver lining that most of us miss because we are busy being miserable. You never know when you'll need to open this treasure chest and cheer yourself up because nothing seems to be going your way at all. So, keep this key handy.

It is easy to do. Just smile and look around and everything will change around you. You are free to look away from the reasons that are causing you heartburn, ignore them even. After all, it is your life. You need to call the shots not anyone else.