The purpose of joy

Joy can be found in the widest expanses of nature and smallest of rooms, in the grandest of gestures and simplest of pleasures. This Parsi New Year, remember to choose joy always.

“Do you know what makes me really happy?” my seven-year-old daughter asked me one day as we were sitting on the bed chatting about random stuff. “Candy!” I replied instantly. “No,” she said, adding equally quickly, “I love candy, but there is something else that makes me really happy.” She wanted me to guess further. “French fries?” I decided to go down the list of items she yearns for, not realizing I was way off track. “It’s not a food item,” she gave me a clue. “It’s something I like doing,” she steered me. “Playing with Lego?” I dove down the activity route. “I love Lego, you’re right,” she affirmed like a school principal, “but I’m looking for another answer,” she waited with anticipation.

“Swimming?”

“No.”

“Hide and seek?”

“No.”

“Playing on the iPad?”

“No… oh, one sec,” she course corrected. “I love the iPad, but I use it mostly to get ideas for arts and crafts. That’s not the answer I’m looking for,” she started rolling her eyes a little, probably realizing how little her father knows her.

“What do I do every day?” she gave me a hint. “Go to school,” I said matter-of-factly, “and I know you love going to school,” I added, because she’s the only child in my awareness who expresses a desire to go to school even when she’s unwell. “But that’s a mundane thing to make you really happy,” I cautioned, “that I would be really disappointed if that was going to be your answer after so much drama!” “No, no,” she insisted. “So you like coming back from school in the bus and playing with all your friends?” I gave it one final shot. But it wasn’t to be.

“See, dadda,” she enthusiastically gesticulated, ready to reveal the source of her inner joy. “When I come back from school, I put my bag down and sit on the couch. Sometimes, when it rains in school, water goes into my shoes and my socks become sticky and my feet are moist. And I keep curling my toes in my socks to dry my feet because we’re not allowed to remove our shoes in school,” she demonstrated. “So,” she continued, with a prolonged emphasis on the ‘o’ after the ‘s’, “when I come home, I sit under the fan and remove my dampy shoes, and then my soggy socks, and open my toes wide to let the air enter my feet,” she said with a big grin on her face, her eyes half-closed as she re-lived that moment. “It’s the best sensation in the world! It makes me so happy to feel the air go in and out of my toes as I wiggle them,” she said with profound excitement, peering into the gaps between her tiny stubby toes. This child was all heart. “The more we live by our intellect,” Tolstoy noted, “the less we understand the meaning of life.” I was struck with bewilderment that my daughter had expressed such a simple yet intricate gesture of joy.

The conversation made me immediately recall my days as a neurosurgery resident where I worked 18–20 hours every day wearing cramped trousers. Don’t ask why, but working in comfortable scrubs became fashionable in India only after COVID; until then, we wore formal pants to work all day. I routinely and laboriously used to return to my 100 sq. ft hostel room after midnight. I still pleasingly reminisce about sitting on the bed to remove my pants and get into a pair of breezy boxers for the 4 hours of sleep that we barely survived on. For me, that daily singular moment of freedom gave me the most amount of inner joy, a bliss that is vividly ingrained in my hippocampus. I also remember being deeply scarred on occasion by the phone call I used to get to go back to work moments after being refreshed by those airy boxers. Like Eleanor Roosevelt said, “With freedom comes responsibility.”

Nature, I believe is the greatest provider of joy. To make the most of the delightful weather, a bunch of us took our kids for a monsoon hike to Garbett Plateau, which was at a 2-hour drive to its base village, Diksal, close to Matheran. Ten children aged 7-17 with an equal number of childlike adults packed ourselves into cars at 6 AM, leaving behind the greyness of Mumbai only to be quickly ensconced by its verdant outskirts. After a streetside breakfast of samosas, vada pao, and chai, we began our ascent. We walked the perimeter of a placid lake that had dunes of malachite erupting from it. We waded through tiny streams that became huge waterfalls in the distance. “We’ll have to remove our shoes,” my daughter said, as we contemplated the knee-deep river we needed to cross. “Let them get wet,” I urged, and we held hands balancing ourselves precariously over the bedrock against the swift stream that toppled a few of us completely over.

I was wonderstruck at how relentless the little kids were in climbing the steep slopes amidst frequent bursts of cold pouring rain, which they licked off their lips to quench their thirst. The adults meandered in front and behind them. After a 3-hour gruelling climb, we surfaced on the vast expanse of the chromatic plateau, where an ethereal combination of steamy Maggi and spicy makai butta greeted us. We gorged on it to warm our insides as frosty clouds kept bursting above us.

After an hour’s relaxation, we sauntered our way down, some of us covering long distances simply by slipping down them on our bums, causing the rest of us to smile. “Pain is the rent we pay for being human,” notes Richard Rohr, “but suffering is usually optional.” With aching bodies, bruised buttocks, and soaking shoes, we returned to the base village. The locals were kind enough to allow us to dry up and change in their homes before we got into our cars to head home.

My daughter and I sat on a bench. Removed our shoes. Pulled off our socks. Spread our toes wide and allowed for the wind to blow air into the gaps of our toes. We felt the water evaporate off our feet with big smiles on our faces and even bigger ones in our hearts.

This is what gave us joy. What brings you joy? This New Year, if you can figure out the simple things that make you really happy, it will be a year to look forward to, a year worth living. No matter what, look for the joy. Choose joy always.