21.08.2025
‘For once, why don’t you write about something happy?’ Alfonso looked at me kindly. At heart, he was soft. Despite the sneering, the taunting and the criticism. He had a heart of pure gold and he looked after me. He would spend time with me and always give me advice because he cared about me.
‘Is it only what is happy that is beautiful?’ I asked him.
‘For your persistent reader, why don’t you try and give them joy instead of the pain?’
‘Do you want a moment of sheer joy? I have always been the lover of music. And one time, my father went abroad to work. He asked me what I wanted from there when he came back several months later. More than anything else, I wanted my own personal music player. He brought me the top model – at the time it was a Sony. It was black with gold writing on it and shaped like a little box. It played my Hindi film cassettes and, even better, it had a radio inside. That was happiness. Because music is happiness and family is happiness.’
‘You got what you wanted. Is that what you think happiness is?’
‘Is it not? What else could it be?
‘Things that are unwanted can be happiness. You have told me often enough in life that your life has not gone exactly to plan.’
‘Do you want another moment? A good book.’
‘But were the thoughts of another happiness, or were your own thoughts about the book happpiness? It is harder to arrive at a supposition.’
‘What does it matter what causes the joy?’
‘Because you want to replicate the result.’
‘Happiness was a relationship.’
‘Of course. Get another one.’ Alfonso smiled at me. ‘See, it is not so difficult to have happiness. Just good company, a good book or good music.’
‘In the moment, I am happy. In a film. In a book. In a play. Acting. Singing. Dancing. Making art. Talking to people’. I frowned. ‘It is when I go home and sit in my empty room and then lie in my empty bed…’
Alfonso frowned back at me. He shook his head. ‘We are talking about happiness. We are not talking about sadness or loneliness or emptiness.’
‘Happiness cannot exist without sadness, loneliness or emptiness. You would not feel it. Only the loser knows that it is to win.’
‘Do you think that only you are sad? Do you think that these people here enjoy lying in their beds at night all alone?’
‘Yes. Otherwise they would have someone.’
‘Life is not as simple as you make it.’
‘All it is is hanging out with someone that you like. That is not difficult.’
‘Says who? Perhaps it is the most difficult thing in the world.’
‘Alfonso,’ I said. ‘It is time for the lonely night. Let us sleep. Sleep might not be happiness but it is at least a break from this tired life.’
diary of a lone man 