A few days back while paying a visit to the Kolkata Book Fair, I stumbled upon an interesting statistics. Visiting just the first 5-6 stalls made me take particular notice of the fact that a certain genre of books are flooding the stalls, a genre which has been more inconspicuous in the yesteryears. In fact, it has been making inroads for the past few years, but now suddenly it seems to have gained some real momentum. I'm talking about the genre of books aiming to bring the readers to "real" "happiness"/"satisfaction" in their lives. The books on "true happiness", to become "successful", to become universally appreciated, to find the "truth" of life, and so on.
So, all that naturally lead to the most obvious question - are people really that much unhappy about their present states? Is that possible or at all imaginable? I mean, if those books are so much on display, they must be selling. If the void these books aim to fill really exists, then the world must indeed be a very sordid place to live in - with people being totally unhappy, being frustrated about their career, and not having a clue as to what is happening around and why - including their own roles!! Now, that's a disconcerting thought!!
Otherwise, the authors (and/or publishers) must be imagining all these! Or trying to sell this idea. Now, how pitiful can that be - a 'sadist' author trying to sell you his solution to a path of eternal happiness? Beats me!! Tickles me too!!
And now that I have touched upon this subject - its not limited to books at book-fair - its making round everywhere. For example those mail forwards I'm sure everyone receives (outnumbered only by spams) which are always telling you how to be happy and all that! Ok, agreed that they felt pretty nice when I first started receiving them ... but receiving mails on how be happy, how to make friends, what is, and what is not, for 3-4 years constantly (and also repeatedly - many repeats), kind of beats the happiness out of me. And I find things getting quiet original in their perspectives. For instance, I have seen the notion of friendship getting reduced to all sorts of things in those "value of friend" mails - crutches to lean upon, tissue papers (no - they didn't say it was to clean your a** - it was for wiping your tears, but I guess the former was implied as well... after all, your friends often clean up your mess, don't they?) and so on.
Anyways, these books/emails, etc cater to a very small fraction of the population of my own country at least. So we are still hale and hearty I suppose. I will assume that safely. Anyways, sorrowful or not - the world is always interesting and funny place to live in. Besides, these satisfactions and lessons these books proclaim to offer, are actually everywhere, all around us - ours for the taking whenever we want it! So why bother!
