Little Things That Make Me Happy

Life is actually very silly and random. Random things happen to you. You do random things. Then you sit and deal with the consequences. You laugh, you cry, you obsess and repeat. In the midst of all this abject silliness, it is very easy to take life a little too seriously.

This is where this list comes in. This list is an objective attempt to remind myself that being happy isn’t really all that hard. Happiness isn’t this elusive, coveted thing you have to scale mountains and swim through oceans to achieve. It can be found in the silliest and most meaningless of things, and that right there is why it is so incredibly precious.

1. Waking up to the smell of hot Sambar: My mother makes the best Sambar I’ve ever had. It has all the right spices, the tanginess of fresh tomatoes, juicy drumsticks, fresh okra and diced onions. The spicy aroma would waft out of the kitchen, right through the hall, into my bedroom every Monday morning, enthusiastically luring me out of bed on a day people tend to dislike. When had with fluffy, steaming idlis, it was enough to make my enough to make my entire day great.

2. Dipping an inverted mug into a bucket full of water, and tilting it to create giant bubbles: Oh this used to be my absolute favourite thing about taking a bath. I’d stay in the longest while, loving the ‘gloop’ sound the bubbles made as they rushed to the surface. I’d try dipping the mug at different depths and tilting it at different angles, to see the difference in the bubbles that came out.

3. The warm hug of ‘Godda Bikki’: Some days, my mom would be in a particularly loving mood, and would venture to make one of the most delicious comfort foods ever invented. The ‘Godda bikki’ is a glorious, fluffy, sweet pancake, made of jaggery and pumpkins. The contrast of the soft dough and the crunchy pumpkins would make for great texture, and when eaten warm, was no less than a hug, especially on a cold winter’s evening.

4. Hearing my mother’s voice on the Phone: This one is particularly cheesy, but the longer I spent away from home, the more it meant to me. I could be having the worst day ever, and I just had to call her and hear her voice, (irrespective of whether her voice was saying angry words :P) to feel much calmer and happier.

5. Creating a perfectly round, paper thin Dosa: This may be the south Indian equivalent of a round chapatti, but there is an incredible sense of accomplishment that comes with neatly getting a beautifully round, crisp dosa off a pan that truly boosts your self-esteem.

6. Watching the Evening sky blend into the night: I love how when dusk falls, the birds chirp on their way back to their nests, the day cools and the bright blue sky transitions through several shades in a short span before finally turning black. It feels magical and I for one, have always been a sucker for magic (cue Harry Potter theme song).

7. Cooking as my mother watches: This is one of my favourite things to do, to watch the absolute horror on her face as I fumble about making rookie mistakes. Once I turned the oven on, while it still had glass bottles stacked atop it and she turned an adorable tomato red before proceeding to rush and turn it off. Another time, I attempted to make a potato pancake, and she stood there with her hand on her head, as I dumped my latest invention into the bin.

8. Listening to ridiculous things my friends say: Most of my friends are absolutely insane, and can embark on long rants about the most absurd things. From the funniest theories that actually make a lot of sense to extremely painful attempts at humour, these bits of my life I just wouldn’t trade for the world.

9. Stumbling across any of the following in the vegetable market -Breadfruit, Plantain flower, Plantain stem, Kerala Bananas, grapefruit: There are more, but I don’t know the English names for those. All these are exotic Kerala (maybe South Indian) vegetables and fruits that are very hard to come by in Delhi, and spotting one of these is like finding gold. I’d jump at the chance to buy them and take them home in anticipation of absolutely delicious lunches for the next few days.

 

10. Fighting with my brother (until it goes wrong): My brother and I don’t have a lot of shared interests, but fighting with each other is something we absolutely enjoy. Arguing back and forth with impeccable logic until one of us backs into a corner is awesome. Logic only goes so far though, it ends with one of us physically shoving the other off the bed, or engaging in armed combat.

11. Speaking in Konkani in Delhi: The fact that hardly anyone in Delhi understood Konkani, and even the select few who did didn’t speak our dialect, meant my family and I had our own secret language. Speaking in Konkani when we wanted to share a private moment or a particularly offensive joke, or just bamboozle people around us for laughs, was really fun.

12. Being Penta-lingual: I love languages, especially their quirks. Each language is so different and reflective of the culture it has stemmed from. Malayalam loops around and twists your tongue in weird ways, while Konkani is softer, more feminine and just flows. I love the ability to just use a word from a different language when I forget one, and the ability to continuously switch between them and still make sense.

13. Remembering that we’re all just a bunch of brains with chemicals flowing through them: This might be more of a coping mechanism than something that makes me happy, but it does calm me all the same. When human beings or their actions disturb me, I like to think of them and myself as large grey mushy tissues controlled by chemicals, walking around in a mortal frame. They have very little real control of their actions or feelings as do I, and then it is easier to not judge them or myself.