It was a typical Monday morning - you know, you-miss-a-minute-in-the-morning-and-you-keep-looking-for-it-throughout-the-day thingie? Anyways, so you wrestled your way through the ever running out time, and reached the bus stop. Oh the dreary day ahead! It does something to your psyche when you wake up thinking, "I'll compensate my sleep when I get back", it makes you yearn for that moment of sweet slumber! Anyways, carrying on... we were at the bus stop. When you wait for a bus at 8 in the morning, half drowsy, half dreary, whats the one thing that strikes as a stark contrast? The Bill Boards! Those smiling faces of a family of four, who are so exhilaratingly happy because of the toothpaste they use! And while you look at them with a dispassionate gaze, you wonder if happiness is to be found in small things, be it a toothpaste! You obviously don't buy their logic of happiness emanating from that pinkish paste, but still... everything has a philosophic import to it, only if you will! And while you hold that thought, your bus rattles down the road towards you. You board it, by the grace of the Divine powers you get a seat, next to the window at that (oh my, the day will after all won't be that bad)! And as you grace that divine endowment by the window, another bill board runs past, this time its the students who are ever so happy studying in an institution you know has obviously gone to dogs! I mean, I could concede the toothpaste for once, but whoever was reading away in the library of a darned institution, with another contended smile? You feel indignant the way these solicitors challenge your intellectualism ... you think I am not buying all that crap! 
And oh, crap rings a bell ... maybe these people know no one's buying it, and yet, as people dedicated to a lost cause they attend to their duties as gravely as grave could get, they smile and advertise total crap, as if there's nothing of an higher importance! And just there, philosophy slides in with its white flowing robes brushing gently on the floor... and you realize, aren't we all like those people in the bill boards? We do things we'd rather not, but just because they have to be done... we all have our lost causes and we keep fighting for them nonetheless! We flash the most superficial of smiles and upload those pictures on Facebook. People like our superficiality and even comment how beautifully glossed we could get! That in turn makes us believe that if our superficiality could be so convincing for others, maybe its not that superficial after all! And we find the flickering hope maybe life after all is not that  drab! Who knows, the key to happiness could actually be the strawberry flavoured tooth paste!
But then, whatever happened to the genuine joy that rushed like a tingle through every nerve before it burst out loud as a deep resounding laughter? Where could one regain that feeling of absolute bliss, untainted by any conscious efforts to prolong it or to detain it? Are we always to smile with a knowledge that we are duping others, but most of all, ourselves? has life reduced so much in stature that the only way to happiness remains the Florine floss? Are we condemned to these constipated smiles, for life?
Oh no, the hope springs just when the last inch of ground is about to run out, and it says ~ "You mortals are the supreme beings, for you charter the course of your lives on your own judgement! You are invested with the ultimate agency, trusted on you by the Divinity! Happiness is to be sought, it isn't the chanced-upon pot of gold! it is fought for, it is worked up towards - only then is it worth the cherishing, worth the rejoicing!". To fight odds and to even them out, is the happiness. To work and feel the thirst, makes water taste sweet! the tingle felt is through sensations aroused by conscious efforts! Happiness results from continuous effort against depressing odds!


You heave a sigh... and as you do, you smile back at yet another bill board, which now advertises, a husband and wife so totally at peace, because they used condoms the last night! Talk of , God of Small things ( I mean the couple and not the condoms)!

And here the bus journey ends, you look at the time and wow, you are 10 mins early, yes, the day would be nice, after all! 


On hindsight you decide to carry headphones the next day to avoid this early-in-the-day dose of heavy thinking! :D


Have a good day ahead!