31.10.2025

A: Halloween comes once again.

S: Every day and night the dead haunt us. What is special about this day?

A: You are haunted. You always speak for everyone. When, in fact, you are different from everyone else. Do you ever feel happiness in your life?

S: I feel happy sometimes. I felt happy yesterday. You know that, naturally, I have a positive disposition. All my friends tell me that I have a positive energy. Unhappiness has been forced upon me. And I only feel the unhappiness most keenly in the night time and in the morning when it is hard to rise.

A: Yes, it is indeed remarkable that despite the amount that you complain, you never actually seem to be that low. Then we have your words in the night, a shocking contrast. Like Jekyll and Hyde. But to the question. How does a jaded and cynical, pessimistic person like you even feel any ounce of happiness?

S: There are people that make you happy. Everything comes from other people. They can make you happy. And then they can hurt you and make you sad.

A: Why talk about sadness?

S: Because that is what gives happiness meaning. Death and sadness, intolerable suffering, this is what gives happiness its meaning. In the old paintings, happiness was depicted as a child playing with a bubble. Happiness is a bubble. It is fragile and delicate. It is a shining orb of light which will only exist for a moment in this hard world. Look carefully at the surface of the bubble of happiness. It shines with light. It has all of the colours within its iridescence. It is beauty. The roundness of the bubble shows its perfection.

A: You can have the bubble forever.

S: The bubble has its enemies. What they should have shown in the old paintings is that the child has to protect his bubble from the world and the others. They are watching it jealously, hoping to prick at it and end its brief soujourn through the world.

A: So that is how you approach happiness? With fear?

S: Not fear. Caution. A warrior does not know fear. Do you know what the hero, my hero, Sunny Deol, the Punjabi Tiger says in the film ‘Jaat’? They ask this warrior who he is. He says that he is one that knows the value of life, but still puts his life in danger. What is most precious is what we risk in this life. That is the warrior culture. The bubble is precious. It is the most precious thing in the world. And we have to protect it. But we also put it at risk. In India, they believe in the evil eye. The eye of envy. It is real. Suffering in this world is created by people. But without risk, there is no meaning. And who am I? The biggest risk taker. The Tiger is known for his daring. Find someone braver. It is impossible. Because Tiger dares his whole heart on the people that he cares about and the things that he loves. Knowing the pain. Find someone else like that in this wretched universe.

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.’