There are people who carry happiness like a gland. It secretes without their consent — drop by drop, a clear fluid of laughter that spreads into the air. You can feel it enter your own bloodstream before you even realise you’ve inhaled it.
One such person comes to clean the house. She arrives every morning with the same quick laugh, a sound that ricochets off the walls like light from an open door. Sometimes she laughs while she’s in pain. Sometimes when she’s confused. Her laughter is not a decision; it’s an event, a reflex of the soul.
I often think she must have a small happiness tumour lodged somewhere in her frontal lobe — benign, self-radiating, incurable. And what a lucky tumour to have. If it were to be excised, the world around her would dim.
Because when she laughs, I — Mr Morose — feel a little less morose. Her automatic joy is my antidepressant. It works better than serotonin or sunlight. I depend on it, though she will never know.
And so, any threat to her laughter — a family quarrel, a late payment, a hidden grief — feels like a threat to me. If that drop of happiness ever falls and shatters, the silence will echo in my head for days.
There are people who radiate sadness like fog, and those who radiate joy like the hum of a power line. The trick of survival, perhaps, is to stand close to the right current.
Part II
Yesterday she came in a little slower than usual. Her shoulders drooped, her eyes looked like two half-drained batteries. The mop trailed behind her as if it too were tired of this world.
“Hey Bhagwan,” she said, wiping her forehead with the end of her dupatta, “le ja mujhe saath mein.”
I looked up from my newspaper and said, “Beer peele, khush ho jayegi.”
“Naaah!” she said, shaking her head so hard that her earrings danced. “Beer se kuch nahi hota.”
I tried again. “But haven’t you seen Mahipal after one bottle? He turns into Hercules! Ready to take on the world!”
She laughed — that old, automatic laugh that wakes up the furniture. “Haan, tab to wo sab kar leta hai. Par jab beer nahi hoti, to ek balti paani bhi nahi utha pata.”
We both burst out laughing. The laughter had that strange metallic ring that comes only when the heart is too tired for softness.
Then she grew quiet for a moment. “Hum log kehte hain na, bahut bura hua kisi ke marne se… par phir bhi kehte hain yeh to hona hi tha. Bhagwan ki marzi.”
She looked at me steadily. “Apni jaan dena to bahut mushkil hai, saab.”
I nodded. “Bilkul.”
That was all. The conversation ended there, like a small bird that had flown in through the window and found its way out again.
And then she gave a brilliant smile — the kind that fills the air like incense — and got back to her work.
The work was repetitive, the kind that would bore gods and men alike.
But she did it happily.
The happy tumour was working again.