Pursuit of HappYness

It was a blatant, screeching unrelenting noise and I had to stop it immediately. It was ruining the incessant peace…
Then I realized it was just my mobile alarm reminding me that it’s 4.55 AM and its time to get up. I curse my mobile, press the snooze button hard and go back to sleep. The extra 5 min is something that I relish a lot…
In those 5 min, I wonder who in their sane mind would get up this early in the morning for a jog when the alternative is to sleep on your cozy bed with the fan running at full blast…its always the same thoughts, being one of those loony types I normally pick the former choice…

But my mobile never gives up and exactly after 5 min, it starts screaming again…I know I can switch it off and go back to sleep, but that action even though seems the most logical thing to do at that point of time would make me regret, for the rest of the day. So I get up from my bed against all my wishes and say a tearful goodbye to my ever inviting bed…
I wear my running shorts and shoes and head towards the regular park where all the insane people get up this early in the morning to come for a “walk in the park”..:)

But somehow things were different today…It was dark and there were no streetlights…Normally there will be a few vehicles moving around but today there were none…I enter the park and to my surprise there was not a single soul around…I check my watch to reconfirm whether it was really morning…it was inscrutable.

Though nonplussed, I start jogging as if nothing is amiss…After a couple of rounds, things get scarier…There is pin drop silence and my watch is showing 5.30 AM…Usually by now there would have been so much of a crowd that it would have been like driving on congested Bangalore roads…

It was bizarre and things were getting crazier every minute and I was contemplating on returning home…But then at the corner of my eye I could descry a human profile walking a few meters behind me…it was very relieving to see some human at last. From the looks of it I could see that it was a female, whom I was seeing for the first time…I continued jogging, with a sign of relief that I wasn’t alone…Even though she was walking and I was jogging, she was gaining ground and in a matter of few seconds she was right beside me…She looked jaunty, had an extremely beautiful face and her smile was electrifying…She looked right through my eyes and cold shivers ran through my body…The radiant smile forced me to smile back…She looked extremely fit and there was some kind of calmness around her…

I was taken by surprise when she said “HI, good morning”…it is not everyday that strangers wish you…She introduced herself as a goddess…I couldn’t control my laughter, here is a beautiful lady who has gone fully nuts and totally insane…I just wished her back…If she can claim to be a goddess then I am “Jesus”!!! I start running, to escape from her but she leisurely took few steps to come right behind me…Somehow it wasn’t my day and things were getting weirder…

I knew it would be a futile effort to run away…So I asked her what she wanted…She smiled back saying “its not a question of what she needed but what I wanted”…She said she would grant me any wish and that I just had to ask for it…Even though it was really hard to believe what I heard, she had that sweet genuine smile on her face that made it difficult for me to ignore her…Again how does it matter I can just ask and by merely asking I am not going to loose anything…

The next 10 min was spent in explaining all the things that I wanted from life…I went to such an extent that, the order in which they should happen was also specified…she seemed surprised after listening to my monologue…“Is that all?” was all she asked and then I said “No…there is one more thing. I want to be always HAPPY”…She smiled and said…“Now, That’s a tall order. I would have fulfilled all the other wishes in a zippy, but what you asked in the end supersedes everything else. It is a herculean task even for me to make anyone happy…a person can have everything but still may not be happy and so being happy is solely upon you and I can’t do anything about it…”

Now that made sense, roseate that I was I knew I can be happy either way…But I would prefer being happy with all my wishes fulfilled rather than being happy without them…:) I didn’t have to tell anything, she realized what was running in my mind…That smile said it all…

She started saying something, when I heard a huge screeching sound behind me ruining the crucial moment…I just didn’t want this moment to go away, but I knew what was happening and I just signed…“Oh, No…Not again”!!!