By Pradeep A. Shah | Chartered Accountant
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Namaskaar
It was a winter morning. My car stopped at a traffic signal below the Kemp’s Corner flyover. I look out of the
window and see 3 poor kids on the pavement. I would put their ages at 7, 5 and
2. The older one was clapping and singing, the middle one was playing ‘music’ on
a tin drum with a stick and the tiny toddler was dancing. A thought crossed my
mind. Happiness dwells (even) on the sidewalks of our city.
Have we not experienced happiness when we offer our seat in a
bus or a train to an elderly person or a lady ? We are in fact exchanging our
comfort for happiness. We do this very naturally. If comfort and happiness were
synonymous we would never do that.
Sometimes giving up comforts yields happiness.
Thinking of happiness took me back to my younger days, when
hiking was my passion. My friend San-jay and I were on a hike to Matheran. Just
outside Neral town, a trek branches off from the pathway to Matheran. It is a
short cut, but it means a steeper climb. After the initial steep climb, the trek
winds through a hamlet, which I call “the village of the barking dogs” as
invariably one is greeted by a chorus of barking dogs. Then the trek starts
climbing up again. Sanjay stopped there for a smoke and spoke something which I
will always remember. He said “On every hike a time comes when I curse myself
for coming on the hike, suffering all this pains and discomfort, these aching
muscles and blisters on the feet, while I could well have been in Bombay,
enjoying a movie in an air-conditioned theatre, or sipping coffee in a cool
place. Yet as soon as I reach the top, all the aches and pains are forgotten. I
am happy to have achieved something and surprisingly am looking forward to the
next hike !”
It made me understand that comfort and happiness do not
necessarily go together.
If comfort was happiness, we would not have had Buddha,
Mahavir and Mahatma Gandhi; we would not have saints like Mirabai, Surdas and
Tulsidas; we would not have people like Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa or
Vivekanand. Great
souls have sacrificed
comforts to attain true happiness.
During our freedom movement, many of our freedom fighters
faced lathi charges, tear gas and even bullets — they sacrificed comfort. Bhagat
Singh happily went to the gallows with a song on his lips. This should not leave
room for any doubt that
comfort and happiness are different.
The other day I was watching “Awakening with Brahmakumari” on
TV. Brahmakumari Shivani was explaining the difference between comfort and
happiness. As she explained, acquisition of a Mercedes car will give you comfort
of a smooth ride, but cannot ensure ‘happiness’. Apart from an elated feeling
for a few days, happiness of possessing the Mercedes will not endure — it will
be become another ‘possession’ — for example, when you are rushing in your
Mercedes to the hospital to see a dear friend who has met with a serious
accident, there is no happiness in the ‘Mercedes’ ride. Things bring comfort but
not happiness.
I learnt that comfort comes from outside, while happiness
comes from within.
One recounts the great classic ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ by
Charles Dickens, a story of the times of the French Revolution. Charles Darney
is awaiting execution at the hands of revolutionaries in the infamous Bastille
Prison. Sydney Carton, a friend of Charles, but a goodfor-nothing person (who
looks exactly like Charles Darney) visits the prison to see Charles, renders
Charles unconscious, lets him be taken out, and takes his place. When Sidney
Carton is lead to the guillotine to be beheaded, his famous words are “It is a
far far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far far better
rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” He dies happily in place of Charles
Darney. There are times when even death brings happiness.
In heart of our hearts, we understand that comforts do not
necessarily bring happiness. Yet we blindly pursue ‘comfort’ sacrificing
‘happiness’. In pursuit of wealth, we ruin our health, neglect our families,
have no time for our parents or children, let alone for the poor and the
downtrodden. Too late we realise that the ladder of success we were climbing was
put up against the wrong wall. Let us learn to pursue ‘happiness’ even
whilst sacrificing ‘comforts’ to ‘Live happily’.
