Every Sha-La-La-La

I stumbled upon happiness some years ago on the shelves of the British Council library. The elusive, indefinable feeling of pure joy came to me in the form of Cruel Madness, an innocuous, slim book by travel writer-novelist Colin Thubron. It’s certainly not the best I’ve read, nor inspiring enough to give my life a whole new direction. It just made me happy. Cruel Madness is a story of lost love and lingering longing filtered through memory, nostalgia and dementia. For the romantic in me, it became a favourite reverie. Each page unfolded like a visual, I read the book as though I was seeing a film, one the dormant filmmaker in me would someday have wanted to put a signature on.

And then I lost the book. I could never find it again in the library, couldn’t trace it in any of the Delhi bookshops and found it perpetually out of stock in the ever-reliable amazon.com. The happiness of having read it remained, only I couldn’t grasp the feeling in my hands nor revisit it at will. Then, just a few weeks back, I tripped on it again when I least expected it, in the wonderfully low-key Lotus House Books in suburban Bandra. Within minutes I was floating anew in bliss and ecstasy, I felt even happier than when I first discovered it. And I am fantasising about writing the screenplay of my dream film, again.

What can it be about a mere book that can bring so much more exhilaration than upgrading your car or getting a 100 per cent jump in your salary? What is it about seeing a film, watching a play or hearing a song that can generate more pleasure than winning crores in lotto? Can’t say. Happiness, after all, is not something you can put a finger on. You can’t go chasing it, it could well alight on you when you’d least expect it and totally elude you when you want it the most. Why, what makes you happy today could well leave you sad tomorrow. Or the song and movie that made you cry once is today your favourite.

I sought answers in others’—and my own—experiences of happiness, all in the realm of arts and culture, entertainment and literature. According to Sayoni Basu, commissioning editor, Penguin, the very reason books exist is to make people happy. "A good book creates an alternative reality into which you can flow and come out feeling satisfied. It lingers and you can talk about it for years or discuss the characters as though they were living people," she says. Conversely, a bad book is the one where you can spot the flaws in the alternative reality. "But it still allows you the satisfaction of feeling superior and quoting the really bad lines," she says.

Film buff and critic Abhijit Ghosh-Dastidar would say the same for cinema. That it is sheer delight to escape reality and enter other lives, experiences and characters in the darkness of a cinema hall. That it’s even more of a joy if that experience manages to resonate in some way in your own life. That there is no high as the shared experience of viewing a movie, which has prompted such celebrations of cinema as Guiseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso or Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers.

Much the same seems to hold true for music too. So, composer Ehsaan claims that the happiest songs are those that touch a chord within you. "You literally forget everything and float into the world of the song," he says. For Delhi-based actor-director Vivek Mansukhani, theatre offers an even greater joy courtesy its immediacy. "It’s live, performed by living, breathing people. You can almost feel them on stage. The journey, the catharsis is something actors and spectators undergo together," he says. Broadway and Westend musicals are what give him immense joy.

A book, a movie, a song, a play, the ones that make you truly happy are those that light you up from within. They’re also the markers of precious memories, a reason why it’s always a pleasure to hoard them. "They become an important part of your life, you associate your life experiences with them," says Ehsaan. Be it Hawa Mahal or Inspector Eagle on Vividh Bharati, Chitrahaar on the giant, B/W Telerad TV. You could have bought happiness with that vhs of Krzystof Kielsowski’s A Short Film About Love or on finally getting to see Mona Lisa smile in the Louvre.

A. Edward Newton once said that "happiness is to be very busy with the unimportant". That unimportant thing could be a hobby, a passion, a diversion, something you could pursue with as much devotion as your career or vocation. Dastidar is the chief postmaster-general of the northeastern circle. But every year this government official keeps his date with the movies by taking a break from work to attend the International Film Festival of India. He’s been doing so since 1980, wherever he may be posted. This year, he travelled all the way from Shillong to Panjim (not as long a trip as the one he made from Srinagar to Thiruvananthapuram), all to live the sheer joy of watching five movies a day, from Bhutan to Bosnia.

So, he’s here in Goa this year, flicking the innumerable pages of the brochures to decide on which films to watch and which to avoid, whether or not to have that meal if it comes in the way of viewing Claude Chabrol’s 50th film. "Pure cinema makes me happy." Period.