What happiness means to me!

Seemingly prosperous, India’s silicon city Bangalore has the highest number of suicides and cases of depression in India. Engineers working as coders are nothing but white-collar coolies busy as hell.

Double income coolie families have all the luxuries but rangolis are missing in front of their houses. They have airconditioned bedrooms with all the modern gadgets but they are full of stress and have restless sleep. While they all have laptops, they don’t have children playing in their laps. Their children are being taken care of in the city’s crèches.

Just look at homeless people sleeping in the open and observe how peaceful they are. Take a walk in any slum around six in the morning. The surroundings may be unhygienic but every house has a rangoli. Their livelihood may be uncertain but their contentment is far greater than that of our engineer coolies.

While we have created Xerox copies of engineers, we have lost the artist, the master carpenter, the sculptor and the painter. Child labour is generally frowned upon but child labour in the form of preparing for various tests for admission to educational institutes is encouraged. The number of students appearing in admission tests like GMAT keeps multiplying.

Individuality, aggression and competition have become virtues while co-creation and co-existence are becoming taboos. And our moral fabric is being audited through the western lens. Our happiness index is measured by the frames which have no relevance to us and we miss the whole point of being happy. True happiness is not in multiplexes and pubs but in grandma’s stories.

Can we reintroduce humility, sharing and caring in our people? Can we bring originality back in our lives? Can yoga be revived? Can we reinvent our happiness DNA and get back in touch with our innate talents and create economic self-sufficiency?

That will mean happiness to me.

S. Deenadayalan is an HR professional doing pioneering work in the field of high-performance work systems.