International Day of Happiness —Are you Happy?/Kamalika Bhattacharya

International  Day of Happiness —Are you Happy?

Kamalika Bhattacharya 

International Day of Happiness—

what a strange celebration!

The air is filled with slogans,

smiles printed on posters,

hashtags floating like balloons

that never touch the ground.

And I—

I stood by the roadside,

asking every passerby,

“Are you happy?”

They paused.

Some smiled politely,

some frowned in confusion,

some walked away—

as if I had asked

the most unreasonable question on earth.

What a crazy question indeed.

Tell me—

is the soldier’s mother happy,

who folds her son’s uniform

and inhales the fading scent of him?

Or his pregnant wife,

who presses her palm to her womb

and whispers stories

to a child who will never know

his father’s voice?

In a city at war—

where one bomb

turns streets into ashes,

and names into echoes lost in smoke,

tell me—how do people speak of happiness there?

The siren screams—

and people run into bunkers,

children bury their faces

in the trembling arms of their mothers,

breathing in air heavy with fear.

Tell me—

does this siren comfort them

like the ringing of a church bell?

like the temple bells calling for peace?

like the azaan rising softly from a mosque?

No—

this sound carries no prayer,

no peace, no promise—

only a warning,

only the nearness of death.

And in that darkness,

happiness does not exist—

only the quiet hope

of surviving the next breath.

Is happiness found

in a house where a chair remains empty

after a road accident

snatched away a son

mid-sentence, mid-life, mid-dream?

Can a family smile again

when their daughter’s laughter

was silenced

by cruelty too dark to name?

What about those mothers—

whose daughters never came back

from a place meant to be safe,

a school that turned into silence?

Tell me—

are the parents of that young boy happy,

who crossed oceans chasing dreams,

only to return as a memory

wrapped in a coffin?

Is that father happy

who counts coins in trembling hands,

unable to afford

his daughter’s medicine,

her breath growing thinner

with every passing day?

Is happiness possible

for the mother

who skips her own meals

so her children can eat,

yet still hears their stomachs cry

in the quiet of the night?

And what of that parent—

who signs a paper,

giving permission

to let go

of a brain-dead son?

Tell me—

which part of that moment

is happiness?

And the patient—

lying beneath machines,

beeping like borrowed time—

where does happiness hide

in that sterile room?

Saints say,

happiness is an inner thing,

a quiet light

unaffected by storms.

But how?

How do I become so detached,

so untouched,

so inwardly complete,

when the world outside

is breaking in pieces?

How do I close my eyes

and search within,

when I carry

so many lives inside me?

I am not just myself—

I am every grieving mother,

every shattered father,

every unfinished dream,

every silent scream.

Their pain travels through me,

settles in my bones,

echoes in my breath.

So tell me—

how can I be selfish enough

to call myself happy

while the world burns quietly

behind smiling faces?

No—

I cannot detach.

Because I do not live in this world—

I carry the world within me.

And perhaps,

until we learn

to hold each other’s sorrows

as gently as our own joys,

this question—

“Are you happy?”

will always remain

the most complicated one.

🍂