HAPPINESS

Story: Safieh Kabir   .   Photos: Darshan Chakma

At birth, we see a bird. I cannot tell you what colour its wing-tips are, or which way its feathers fold when the wind blows, because my bird and yours may look nothing alike. For the rest of our lives, as our minds contract or grow larger, and travel the small distances between the edges of the universes, we chase this bird; some do it with a great sense of purpose, while others run entirely unconsciously. Occasionally it perches on our wrists, and then again flies far, pausing to peck at a mango in a nearby tree, before soaring up until it is just a black speck against the sun. Then it swoops down again and plucks at our hair, the smell of its strange sweat sharp in our surprised nostrils.
You may recognise the colloquial name for these birds. 'Happiness', they're often called.  I would, if I could, sketch my bird for you, because it sits very close now, preening its feathers on the chair opposite me. But I cannot. I never could draw. Let me attempt, instead, to form an outline with words, from questions I have asked, and what I have seen and heard. Perhaps a glimpse of other people's happiness will allow you to see your own more clearly.
The first man I ask is a driver. “What makes you most happy?” I say, and he is so taken aback that he begins to laugh, the streetlights catching on the sides of his twitching moustache. I watch the back of his thinning hair, curling at his tired collar, as he continues to drive and wonder. Finally, he concludes that he is happiest on the way to a festivity, or while sitting with a group of people, chatting and laughing. Those times, his mind loses its complications and becomes content. “Mon-ta ektu fe-resh lageh, Bibi.”
The cigarette vendor smiled through straight, slightly gapped teeth when I ask him. His eyes are a little surprised, but not disconcerted. His hair, full of character somehow, and the mole on his left shoulder draws the light. He looks down at the Marlboros and Bensons and biscuits, still smiling. 'Shorbokhon-e khushi thaki, Apa” – “I am always happy.” “Always?” I ask, and he turns to the side to sell a cigarette. His smile shifts to the corner of his mouth, and his blunt, defined nose, in profile, is that of a mongrel aristocrat. He is examining, perhaps, the full truth in his mind, considering how much of it he will offer up to me. He turns back, finally, and repositions his lungi-clad legs with dignity. “Not always,” he concedes, at last. He says that he is happiest when he goes home, and his family is with him. I nod and smile back, accepting that piece of his truth.
The security guard offers me entry into the air-conditioned ATM booth to escape the sweltering summer outside. He has a balding head and a white bush of a beard, with rectangular spectacles resting shyly on his nose. When I ask him my question his smile is bashful and stained a faint red around the edges from eating paan. He doesn't understand at first. Once he does, he answers timidly from behind his smile, unsure of whether he is saying the right thing. He is happiest when he is with his little grandson. I ask what he does with him, and he tells me he talks to him – “Ki korchho, Dada?” and delights in the child's replies.
The maid's eyes were round and dark, nervous, flitting in circles around the room. Her hands are constantly fidgeting: clutching her own forearms, linking up behind her back, lifting up to cover her mouth. When they finally fall still, her feet begin to shift back and forth. She answers my question while folding a quilt. It rises above her head sometimes, and her words reach me a little muffled. “I am happiest when my parents are happy.” She says she has no one else of her own, because she never settled down, never made a family. Forty-something, now, she works to feed her parents. She blinks rapidly as she admits that she hopes to die before they do.
The rickshawalla's front teeth are crooked, and so is his right shoulder. His blue check shirt, open over a tired vest, reveals a forest of chest hair. His stubble has grown long and grey around a sharp jaw. He is unsurprised by my question, and answers it promptly. “I become most happy when I talk to people, people like you.” “Why?” I ask, sceptical. “Manush toh manush-kei bhalobashe” is his reply – “People love other people more than anything else.”
The young man selling birds has eyes narrowed from staring into the sun. Between the creases of skin, they are hard, bright and clear. He never looks at me for long, always turns to his phone, to the ground, to his birds. His teeth are large in the small smile which doesn't quite reach those eyes. His skin is bronzed and smooth, and his answer is a little careless. He is happiest when he can leave work and wander about, he says, because he likes to feel free. I resist the temptation to ask why the man who loves freedom deals with creatures in cages. I don't want to interfere with his happiness.
The girl who is a boy twists her hands and pushes at the stubborn set of her mouth to answer my question. “I'm happiest when I'm with my friends,” he says. She looks away and then looks back, before she attempts to explain. His crew-cut is consciously comfortable on his head, and his eyes are small and curtained. “With them, I feel like I belong somewhere,” she says. He turns to me, and the curtains are pulled a little open. “There was a moment which I remember so clearly, when I realised that home was where they were.” He smiles, a little embarrassed, and asks, “Is that enough?”
The ex-drug-addict's hair curls out of his purple hair-tie. With that long hair, his slightly sloppy t-shirt, bracelets and dark stubble, he looks like a stereotype of a musician, but he laughs at himself, saying “The best ones are the ones who don't try to look the part.” He has a broad nose and a wanderer's wide-set eyes, simultaneously moving and still. His hands form shapes in the air. “When I am complete,” is his answer to my question. He tells me of the moment during one of his spells in rehab when he realised that although he had no money in his pocket, no women around and no drugs at hand, he was entirely content. And that was when he understood that it's easier to be complete when you stop wanting things: a new guitar, a bigger car, a pair of trousers. Happiness is more sustainable when life is simple, when you are mosquito-bitten and making music by the light of a flashlight in Shantiniketon.
The last woman I ask, I know nothing about. I meet her near a crossroads, as we both wait to go in different directions. Her skin is mottled dark and white by vitiligo, and her head is covered tightly with a white orna. She looks at me as if she can see through me. Her answer is steady and sure. “I am happiest when I am with my mother.” She offers no other explanation but asks, instead, why I am doing this. I tell her I want to write it all down, and she nods. It seems she understands my reasons better than I do. “Manush-er sheba korte thako,” she says, before walking away.
Happiness has no walls, no shape, no mathematical equation. It is there in the air for you to smell and find. Stop a second, now, and you may feel its wings brush against you. And you'll realise how much you are alive.