chapter 1

It’s been five days now since I have locked myself in this deplorable room and still I haven’t received any slightest arousal of sorrow. Contrary to what most people think I found out that unhappiness is not easily attainable. Maybe it is more unreachable than happiness .People generally are not gloomy ,neither do they get gloomy easily unless they are accosted by desolation ,destitute or death . I am not talking about transient caprice of blue feelings caused by things like break up with spouse , rising inflation , or humiliation received at work. Such sorrow is too impure and fragile. I am talking about a long lasting melancholy which stays with you like relentless seasons of snow. The kind of sorrow that starts from your eyes and slowly plagues your entire body and everything surrounding it till all you can feel , hear or see is a divine numbness.

I have never been sad in my life .And it is neither a lie nor I am bragging about my eternal beatitude. I want you too take my statement as a cold fact without inferring anything from it. And if you are already thinking about how I got so fortunate or maybe is it ever remotely possible for someone to live such a life then here is my response. Yes , it is possible to go through life without sorrow and I am bewildered at your bewilderment in believing it and precisely for your benefit I will repeat my statement again. I have never been sad in my life .

On the contrary, my life have been very joyful throughout with small islands of pain which were too short lived to leave any scars. My father is a zamindaar in our village owning huge arable land and all the farmers working on them. We grow mostly cotton cause it fetches good money in the market. In spite of the authority and esteem he enjoys , he has managed to remain a spiritual person and faithful to his wife all these years. He is kind with the farmers and affectionate towards his family. I have a large family with 4 brothers and 2 sisters and all of them being older than me are happily married. So you see, there is no nook in my story. No eccentricities or perversions in my family to delight your spiteful senses. No crypt in my heart where lies any ghost of my past. I had a clean uninventive life and this fact is beginning to bother me now.

It all started few days ago when I got a sudden impulse to be sad. Was it my gradually growing boredom with serenity or curiosity for gloom, I don’t know but this desire filled me like an overpowering lust. Maybe it was my fear that I may go through life without ever experiencing gloom. And what does one know about himself if he has never been in pain.

It was Monday I guess cause everyone in my office was in their best cloths. I was accosted by one of my colleagues at the coffee machine. He was paler than usual and he stood there like a zombie for a while stirring his coffee obliviously. He greeted me with a mild smile and then again fell in his slumber with eyes staring emptily at the wall and beyond. I left him there in his trance to get back to work. I never asked him the reason for his behavior but I knew it was sorrow. I saw it in his eyes and since then I am craving for this feeling like a obsessed lover.

Why everyone I see in this world is in pain ? Heartbroken lovers, depressed alcoholics, lonesome souls, people bereaved by past and daunted by future.

I never felt the need for midnight drunkenness or lonely slumber. I have lead a peaceful life of simple routines. I wake up before the sun , go for a long walk ,and after office go to bed straight after I have had my dinner. There is no peephole through which sorrow could have slithered in. I could have gone on living this way if there weren’t miserable creatures around me to allure me with their pain. What I needed was a little chaos in my life , a little pain or gloom to spice up things. Happiness have blinded me to the wonders this world was capable of showing me.

I decided to do a simple experiment. I would lock myself in my room and think of the gloomiest things of my life. I won’t come out my room until I am really sad. Yes that will be a good idea. I felt elated with the novelty of my plan and returned to work happy that I will be unhappy soon.