The following is an article I first came across in TIME's AIMCAT 0918 (June 22) question paper. A quick Google search led me to an article titled "Ode to the Rainbow’s End" / "The pains of happiness.." in an old Indiatimes blog of someone named Clitoria. However, though the articles might appear similar at first glance, there are significant differences. I loved both versions, and what follows is actually an amalgamation of the two versions.
I apologize to the original author for so blatantly plagiarizing his/her work, and more importantly, for (possibly) altering such a beautiful work. I have no idea who the original author is. I think Clitoria, whoever he/she is, got the article from somewhere else, and modified it to his/her liking. I think TIME edited from another source too. If any random or not-so-random passerby here knows about the original source, please enlighten me through your comments. Perhaps it's more because of the various experiences in my life over the past one year than any special liking for what I perceive as a profound sorrow pervading the article, but I really loved this article, and I would love to know the original source.
There are days when sorrow is like a physical ache. Under your skin, it is a soiled washcloth the surgeon left inside before sewing you up. In your bloodstream, it's a murky grey fluid, an effluent without an outlet. Inside your ribcage, it is the deadweight of despair. Even neon seems dim, music grates. People are talking to you, but all you want is for them to go. Their concerns are trite, banal, pointless, compared to the grief that you cannot share with anyone. There are such griefs, and they are the most terrible.
At this precise point of time, happiness seems a myth, a chimera, a bedtime story for children, a poor urban legend. When were you happy last? Yesterday? The day before? Yes, you can remember those times, those moments, but you can’t believe it was you. It was another person, yes. It was another world. Here, now, this moment, you can never again be happy.
You make a list. You start small: mundane happinesses, commonplace joys, random unplanned delights in a world where happiness was allowed. Lying about in a meadow in the winter sun. The caress of river breeze on your face. Getting wet in the rain after seven years. Cuddling up with someone you love under the quilt.
But the memories of happiness can hurt too. Can you ever go back to those moments and experience them again, now, with the knowledge of what comes after? Will the sky ever be as azure as it was on that winter day ten years ago? The quilt may be the same, but you could be alone.
Happiness happens. But the patterns of its arrival are random, and its departures are staggeringly unexpected. It knows no reason and follows no apparent logic. Causality can be established, but you know that introspection and analysis often spoil it. It can be a warm light, it can be cool blue. Anticipation can be it, so can afterglow. Bliss is doing nothing at all, but it can also be working at feverish pace. But most of all, right now, for you, happiness appears elementally cursed, like a stillborn.
A sleeping child, a warm puppy, a mother's lap. Two rainbows in the same sky and animals hiding in clouds. The first snowfall, the last love of your life. Ducklings waddling down to the pond, the sighting of dolphins.
People find happiness. All the time. You know that. As they sight their brother pushing his luggage trolley out of the arrival terminal. As they cheer India's victory at the Eden Gardens and in front of TV screens in shop windows. You have even met people who have been happy for sustained periods - for months, for years. People full of life, happy with their jobs, happy with their relationships, their existence silver clouds with no dark linings. These are people who have fitted perfectly into the lives they have been handed by destiny, circumstance, environment. People who have built their own lives with a clear idea of their selves, consciously and systematically reduced the variables in their existence, shrugged away doubt and found their places in the world. Those places could be an existential Taj Mahal, or a sleeping bag for the mind. Size does not matter. You have known people who have struck gold financially and been happy. And people who have given away what they had and attained happiness. Acquisition has been joy, so also renunciation.
You know people who have been given a happy life, at least for some time, by a Dale Carnegie book, by a Chicken Soup book, by any of the thousands of books that spew out of the presses every year, promising the Big H in smooth steps. You haven't read any of them, nor will you ever, but if even a small number of people have felt that a book has delivered on its promise, you are OK with that. If people find cheer in staying up all night in a crowd listening to devotional songs, you have no problem with that. Religion has never held any lure for you, but you recognize the right of others to worship in their search for truth and meaning, solace and peace.
P G Wodehouse and The Pickwick Papers. M S Subbulakshmi singing Suprabhatam in the morning. Vintage Kishore Kumar on the car stereo at 100 kmph on the highway. Amélie from France. The Lion King from Hollywood, and Munnabhai MBBS from Mumbai.
But why do you need to be happy? Why do you crave for it, if the only thing you know for sure about happiness is the inevitability of betrayal? Happiness won't last, it will leave, without even the courtesy of a wave of goodbye. Did not one of your professors once tell you that creativity is directly proportional to the amount of tragedy you hold in your heart? What sort of pictures could a Vincent van Gogh with his soul at peace have painted? Could Gregor Samsa have woken up one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself metamorphosed into a gigantic insect, if Franz Kafka was a happily married bureaucrat? What is the big deal about happiness? From your limited knowledge of the world's major religions, you have a sense that most messiahs have spoken about peace of mind, rather than happiness. You could be wrong, but that's the notion you have.
In fact, aren’t you supposed to rise above happiness and sorrow, and attain a state of overwhelming calm? These ideas are things of beauty, you can recognize that, but like all great art, they are pointless. They seem to be about story-telling, with no story to tell. The sound of one hand clapping, you know, will always be too faint for you to hear.
To be with people you love. A night out with long-lost friends. To know that you can trust her and that she can trust you. To be alone and comfortable.
To be alone and comfortable. Finally, isn't that what you are looking for? Once you asked a book-lover friend, what do people do who don't read? You still remember his answer. Reading is a solitary activity, he had told you, and very few people enjoy solitude, and content in seclusion. Reading is silence, and very few people enjoy being in silence. That’s why so many millions search themselves, looking for a core that could define them. But what if it's all a cosmic joke? What if there is no core, what if its all about just two mirrors facing each other, with the reflections stretching to infinity?
I apologize to the original author for so blatantly plagiarizing his/her work, and more importantly, for (possibly) altering such a beautiful work. I have no idea who the original author is. I think Clitoria, whoever he/she is, got the article from somewhere else, and modified it to his/her liking. I think TIME edited from another source too. If any random or not-so-random passerby here knows about the original source, please enlighten me through your comments. Perhaps it's more because of the various experiences in my life over the past one year than any special liking for what I perceive as a profound sorrow pervading the article, but I really loved this article, and I would love to know the original source.
There are days when sorrow is like a physical ache. Under your skin, it is a soiled washcloth the surgeon left inside before sewing you up. In your bloodstream, it's a murky grey fluid, an effluent without an outlet. Inside your ribcage, it is the deadweight of despair. Even neon seems dim, music grates. People are talking to you, but all you want is for them to go. Their concerns are trite, banal, pointless, compared to the grief that you cannot share with anyone. There are such griefs, and they are the most terrible.
At this precise point of time, happiness seems a myth, a chimera, a bedtime story for children, a poor urban legend. When were you happy last? Yesterday? The day before? Yes, you can remember those times, those moments, but you can’t believe it was you. It was another person, yes. It was another world. Here, now, this moment, you can never again be happy.
You make a list. You start small: mundane happinesses, commonplace joys, random unplanned delights in a world where happiness was allowed. Lying about in a meadow in the winter sun. The caress of river breeze on your face. Getting wet in the rain after seven years. Cuddling up with someone you love under the quilt.
But the memories of happiness can hurt too. Can you ever go back to those moments and experience them again, now, with the knowledge of what comes after? Will the sky ever be as azure as it was on that winter day ten years ago? The quilt may be the same, but you could be alone.
Happiness happens. But the patterns of its arrival are random, and its departures are staggeringly unexpected. It knows no reason and follows no apparent logic. Causality can be established, but you know that introspection and analysis often spoil it. It can be a warm light, it can be cool blue. Anticipation can be it, so can afterglow. Bliss is doing nothing at all, but it can also be working at feverish pace. But most of all, right now, for you, happiness appears elementally cursed, like a stillborn.
A sleeping child, a warm puppy, a mother's lap. Two rainbows in the same sky and animals hiding in clouds. The first snowfall, the last love of your life. Ducklings waddling down to the pond, the sighting of dolphins.
People find happiness. All the time. You know that. As they sight their brother pushing his luggage trolley out of the arrival terminal. As they cheer India's victory at the Eden Gardens and in front of TV screens in shop windows. You have even met people who have been happy for sustained periods - for months, for years. People full of life, happy with their jobs, happy with their relationships, their existence silver clouds with no dark linings. These are people who have fitted perfectly into the lives they have been handed by destiny, circumstance, environment. People who have built their own lives with a clear idea of their selves, consciously and systematically reduced the variables in their existence, shrugged away doubt and found their places in the world. Those places could be an existential Taj Mahal, or a sleeping bag for the mind. Size does not matter. You have known people who have struck gold financially and been happy. And people who have given away what they had and attained happiness. Acquisition has been joy, so also renunciation.
You know people who have been given a happy life, at least for some time, by a Dale Carnegie book, by a Chicken Soup book, by any of the thousands of books that spew out of the presses every year, promising the Big H in smooth steps. You haven't read any of them, nor will you ever, but if even a small number of people have felt that a book has delivered on its promise, you are OK with that. If people find cheer in staying up all night in a crowd listening to devotional songs, you have no problem with that. Religion has never held any lure for you, but you recognize the right of others to worship in their search for truth and meaning, solace and peace.
P G Wodehouse and The Pickwick Papers. M S Subbulakshmi singing Suprabhatam in the morning. Vintage Kishore Kumar on the car stereo at 100 kmph on the highway. Amélie from France. The Lion King from Hollywood, and Munnabhai MBBS from Mumbai.
But why do you need to be happy? Why do you crave for it, if the only thing you know for sure about happiness is the inevitability of betrayal? Happiness won't last, it will leave, without even the courtesy of a wave of goodbye. Did not one of your professors once tell you that creativity is directly proportional to the amount of tragedy you hold in your heart? What sort of pictures could a Vincent van Gogh with his soul at peace have painted? Could Gregor Samsa have woken up one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself metamorphosed into a gigantic insect, if Franz Kafka was a happily married bureaucrat? What is the big deal about happiness? From your limited knowledge of the world's major religions, you have a sense that most messiahs have spoken about peace of mind, rather than happiness. You could be wrong, but that's the notion you have.
In fact, aren’t you supposed to rise above happiness and sorrow, and attain a state of overwhelming calm? These ideas are things of beauty, you can recognize that, but like all great art, they are pointless. They seem to be about story-telling, with no story to tell. The sound of one hand clapping, you know, will always be too faint for you to hear.
To be with people you love. A night out with long-lost friends. To know that you can trust her and that she can trust you. To be alone and comfortable.
To be alone and comfortable. Finally, isn't that what you are looking for? Once you asked a book-lover friend, what do people do who don't read? You still remember his answer. Reading is a solitary activity, he had told you, and very few people enjoy solitude, and content in seclusion. Reading is silence, and very few people enjoy being in silence. That’s why so many millions search themselves, looking for a core that could define them. But what if it's all a cosmic joke? What if there is no core, what if its all about just two mirrors facing each other, with the reflections stretching to infinity?
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