Earlier this week I was in Delhi to launch Gajra Kottary’s book Broken Melodies about a girl growing up in a broken family, and going through trying times with nothing much to help her but hope and faith in life. I agreed to be associated with the event as I felt the characters were well portrayed and novel itself had a cinematic quality
about it. It was a book which has some light relief and also many sombre tones. It is a classic case of the glass being half empty or half full, depending on what you wish to see. While some in the audience felt that tragedy is more real, not just in literature but also in life, others did not share this belief.
The reason why I am referring to this event and discussion is because I have strong views on the subject. I have seen too many lives get twisted, in the belief that tragedy is real and everything else in life is unreal, to remain a bystander in such a discussion. It is unfortunate that many young and talented people I knew, or heard about, have gone down the tube trying to self-flagellate themselves to feel the reality which, they felt, was missing in their lives. Some have done it by cutting away from their comfortable backgrounds, others by embracing Bacchus and yet others by taking substances that give them a sense of altered reality.
All this is sad, and ironic, because there is no great virtue or truth to be discovered in plumbing sadness. Sadness, or shades of depression, makes us feel smaller. It reduces us, makes us shrink physically within ourselves. Every one of you will realise the point I am making when you remember each time you did shed a tear in the theatre or cinema hall, having seen a tragic moment, how you wiped a tear silently. You did not declaim your feelings to the world as sadness is a very private matter. It is uncommon to be publicly sad.
In contrast, do you ever remember yourself, or anyone else, laughing silently, or even trying to suppress it? Never. That is because laughter is loud, infectious and expansive. You never need to hide it. And in contrast to sadness, laughter is uplifting and gives you a feel-good sense at the end of it.
Every self-coaching programme, and I am not speaking of just laughter clubs which have mushroomed around the world, recommends humour. And, as even medical science now says, laughter is the best medicine. It is said that children laugh over three hundred times a day. But when we become adults, we feel the need to be serious, and so we laugh just about twenty times daily. No wonder we all look and feel constipated!
So perish the thought that you have to be sad to understand life. Life is something to feel good about and so live it with hope and courage. There are millions of people who have genuine reasons to be sad about. Be glad you are not one of them.
The writer is a renowned film and theatre actor