By now the tired sun had lost its shine in the red horizons of the west. A mild chilly dusk had taken over the ‘city beautiful’ which was garlanded with series and grids of lights, announcing the arrival of the festive season. And I was inside an electronic appliance’s showroom to buy now a day’s (current) families’ latest crush – A Flat LCD TV.
I was almost lost in the crowd when one of the salesmen accosted me to understand my requirement. He then escorted me and made me walk across the series of running TVs, much like a minister who walks to receive the guard of honour from the cadets on 26th January. I checked the prices and the available features of almost all the models – the ones which I knew wouldn’t be affordable for me even in the next 5 years, the ones which were either too small or nonsensical enough to replace my current model and finally, the two which suited my need and budget. One was dearer by a thousand bucks than the other. I therefore, spent the next fifteen minutes bargaining with the salesman, whether he could give me the dearer one at the cheaper one’s rate. But other than the dinner set (the default gift) and his repeated utterance of ‘Sorry Sir’, the salesman had nothing to offer me.
In an unhappiness to spend the extra 1000 rupees to fulfill my happiness of procuring a better TV set, I stepped out of the showroom to call up my family members for their views. But before I could do so, I saw a bunch of kids strangling with each other to occupy the narrow sitting space on the railings of the staircase outside. Their faces and bodies were smeared with dirt all over. Half naked in their torn rags, they belonged to the class, which in the night, sleeps on footpath and in the morning, beg alms. Surprisingly, they all were giggling, showing their few teeth and more gaps. I wondered and turned back only to find that all the giant and small TV sets were now treating those kids’ with the Cartoon Network channel. Amused, I resumed my gaze back at those poor kids, dirty kids, yet happy kids. They were enjoying in unison. All of a sudden I felt a pinch in my heart. On one side, inside the showroom, were more not so happy people like me, who were ambivalent of whether taking back home ‘only happiness’ with a good TV set or ‘more happiness’ with a better TV set, and on the other side, were these kids who were cherishing happiness in whatever form they were receiving it. Seeing them encash their share of happiness in this way touched me and taught me that in the rat race of accumulating more happiness, we all are ultimately letting ourselves drift into the zones of unhappiness. And apparently, I realized that being happy is no rocket science and it’s a myth that most of the time we can buy happiness. But yes, we need to scale our horizons right and adapt to them.
Happy at this learning, I thanked the salesman who tunes the Cartoon Network channel everyday for his little guests. I didn’t call my family members and bought the cheaper TV set, thereby saving 800 bucks. The differential amount of200 got spent in buying chocolates for those kids. After a long time, that evening, sitting amongst those wonderful kids, I watched ‘The Simpsons’.
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