by Suresh Subrahmanyan
“Happiness is a warm gun.”
John Lennon from The Beatles’ White Album.
John Lennon’s song title is cryptic and open to confused and even salacious, interpretation. Seeing as he himself was the tragic victim of an assassin’s bullet, one can only ruefully reflect on the irony of that line, not to mention the saucy double entendre. Perhaps he knew something we didn’t. Rock stars never had to explain themselves.
How does one even begin to describe the process of experiencing happiness? Moments of sheer joy that could last a couple of seconds, a few minutes and, on extremely rare occasions, a few hours. Time stands still. We relish these precious moments all the more because of their infrequency. If you were happy all the time, you may not recognise it for the gift that has been bestowed. You take it for granted, and the next thing you know, your whole world comes crashing down. By definition, moments of joy and fun are rare and we learn to make the most of them, for there’s always something not so funny lurking around the corner in a dark alleyway, to biff you in the solar plexus. And bring you back to terra firma with a juddering halt.
Having fun and being happy are relative terms. They trigger different things for different people. Having given the matter deep consideration, I felt the best way to express what these commonplace concepts meant to me would be by tracing my thoughts back over the decades and sharing those fleeting moments of pure, unadulterated pleasure experienced on diverse occasions. Describing them involves a careful sifting process that truly captures an emotional state one wants to be perennially locked into. For as the man said, ‘Into each life a little rain must fall’. We cherish the good bits, because we go through a great deal of dreary passages in our lives. My selection of such moments is random, and in no chronological order. I present them as they occur to me.
Sporting sparklers. Being a cricket and tennis buff, I have been witness to so many brilliant feats of skill and valour that I have lost count. However if I were to pick two moments to figure in this list, the first would be a Test match at the Eden Gardens, Calcutta in 1969, India playing Australia. On a cold, grey and damp morning India lost two quick wickets without a run on the board and a little man, bare-headed, barely five 5’ 3” tall strode in and caressed two boundaries past cover point off Australia’s fastest bowler. The batsman was Test series debutant Gundappa Viswanath, a pint-sized wizard, who had the nearly 90,000 screaming fans in seventh heaven. I was one of them, disbelievingly watching genius at play.
A couple of years earlier, again in Calcutta at the fabled South Club lawns, India took on Brazil in a Davis Cup pre-Challenge Round encounter. The fifth and deciding rubber between the delightfully dextrous Ramanathan Krishnan and Brazil’s Tomas Koch, with Krishnan virtually down and out and the match being carried over to the fourth day owing to bad light. Krishnan wins from a hopeless situation, his gentle, geometric backhands deceptively lethal, leaving his opponent flat footed and awestruck, the crowds going berserk.
Joy unbounded.
Music mania. In the early ‘60s, fed largely on a diet of Elvis Presley, Pat Boone and Cliff Richard, The Beatles took us by storm. When I first heard ‘I want to hold your hand’ and ‘She loves you (yeah, yeah, yeah)’, my friends and I went bonkers because we had never heard anything like this. Forget the girls going bananas, I was hooked on to them for their incredible harmonies and vocalising. The mop tops from Liverpool composed far more sophisticated music later on, but that early raw, uninhibited and joyous singing left an indelible impression.
On the other side of the musical spectrum, I come from a family of traditional Carnatic music aficionados. Vinyl records featuring the great artists from years gone by were a perennial feature in our home. After a fashion, I was also sent to music classes to study this great art form. I was hardly surprised, therefore to learn, many years later, that a nephew of mine had also taken to Carnatic music, like a duck to water. What did catch me unawares was that he was performing on stage and making a mark. Then in 1998, I actually heard him at the venerable Music Academy Madras. He essayed an explosive alaapana in raga Kambhoji which had the packed audience on their feet, and veteran scribes scurrying for superlatives. “Monarchic majesty of Kambhoji”, screamed The Hindu. A gnarled octogenarian Academy watcher timed it the longest “claps” he had ever heard in the institution’s history. The young musician was 2015 Sangita Kalanidhi awardee, Sanjay Subrahmanyan.
Hair-standing-on-end stuff.
Weaned on Wodehouse. Like the all-pervasive strains of Carnatic music, the bookshelves in our home would always have a clutch of hard bound editions of the best and brightest from the master of farce, the inimitable but constantly imitated, P.G. Wodehouse. I would read his books over and over again. And still do. It is one thing to watch comedy on film and fall about the aisles at the antics of Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy or, for that matter, Groucho Marx. But to evoke uncontrollable, side splitting, almost embarrassingly loud laughter from the printed page, was a feat only Wodehouse managed. In the words of British comic Stephen Fry, “If he had given us nothing but the Blandings Castle sagas, he would have been hailed as the Master.” When you add to that the Jeeves-Wooster, Psmith and Ukridge tales, you are left open mouthed in gawping admiration. Here is just one solitary sampling from his nearly 100 novels.
“Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.”
Peerless!
Travel tinglings. Having travelled extensively to some of the most beautiful spots in the world, my wife and I have had our fill of museums, monuments, art galleries, unparalleled scenic delights, concerts, plays….the list is endless. But if I had to pick one magic moment, and she concurs with me, it would have to be one brilliant afternoon, out in the open in a village called Fuschl just outside Salzburg. Under a clear, blue sky we sat on a park bench nibbling away at our sandwiches and sipping cider, ringed by majestic hills and valleys, dotted with grazing sheep and cows, their bells tinkling musically. A bucolic paradise. The rest was silence. We could have been part of a Constable landscape. No sense of time, only a dreamy languor. We may have been sitting there for 30 minutes, or 3 hours. I have no idea. Echoing Irish troubadour Van Morrison’s words, “Feeling wondrous and lit up inside. Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?”
Transcendental.
Palate pandering. Some eat to live, others live to eat. Most of us love to eat. Question is, are you a gourmet or a gourmand? If the former, then you have a taste for the finer things in life – a wine snob. The sort of person who will relish every morsel, who will instantly detect if the dish has too much salt. Or too little. What you eat day in and day out is routine, be they cornflakes and eggs, idli and sambar or, rice and rotis. Which particular dish or item has given me that instant feeling of nirvana, that indescribable je ne sais quoi, that turns your palate into an explosive carnival of colours?
At the famed confectioner Flury’s in Calcutta, the pineapple pudding cake was to die for. Bits of pineapple, layered with cream and a sponge as soft as cotton candy – with a cherry on top. It just melted in your mouth, and Ashraf the waiter was already by my side with the second slice, knowing I couldn’t stop with one!
Still in Calcutta, the kaati rolls at Nizam’s take the cake, if you’ll pardon the mixed culinary metaphor. Fresh off the tavas, the bade miyas slaved away all hours of the day and night, and the quality was unwavering. Your pick of fillings – chicken, egg, aloo, mutton and much more. The secret’s in the grease. We placed the take away order, the oily rolls delivered in a paper bag, off to our homes or offices as quickly as the city’s traffic jams would allow. Finally, that first big bite, followed by a big glug of ice cold Coke. Aaaaah! Did I just die and go to heaven?
Is gluttony really sinful?
Those were my happiness hot spots. Bobby McFerrin chart-toppingly urged, “Don’t worry, be happy.” The last word, however, must go to Leo Tolstoy. “If you want to be happy, be.”
Lovely recollections of precious moments of days gone by.Memory and recollection helps to savour such beautiful experiences- first in school and later on in college.
Life goes on with such beautiful moments tailored by nature to suit our maturity and wisdom.
Thanks Suresh.