The Window

She had always wondered if everyone in the world lived inside the same bubble or if it was just her. The bubble dictated by society, the copybook lifestyle that was deemed socially desirable. People around her seemed to be having so much fun! Was it all a charade? Were all of them also dying slowly inside everytime they breathed? Was a copybook life the only way to be happy? If it was, then why wasn't she happy inspite of having done everything the socially desirable way? First, her parents explained to her the dictates of society and she followed. Later these dictates became so ingrained in her that she followed them instinctively even after her parents had long since stopped controlling her life decisions. A coveted job, an eligible husband, beautiful children-she had them all! Then why did she not remember even being happy? 

Her mother used to tell her when she was a child- "The most you can hope for is to not be terribly sad, Asma. Happiness exists only in theory, as a concept. But it is elusive at best and non-existent at worst. No one is ever happy, my child. They are just fooled into believing that they are happy. But it's all a trap. For the things that make one happy are always beyond the boundaries that society sets for every individual. No one can be allowed to be extremely happy, my child, for that will disturb the balance of the universe. People when they are happy will be content in life. And being content is the enemy of mankind, for discontentment is what propels people in a continuous search for happiness. Discontentment is what keeps people going." 

Was this an accurate description of the ways of the world? Did the discontentment that killed her everyday also propel her in life? Or was this how people thought when they had never known better in life? Had her mother not known better in life? Or had she known it for so brief a span and the heartbreak over the loss of it was so great that she would have rather not known it at all? Was this her  mother's way of protecting her from the terrible heartache that is the other side of happiness? But was happiness always conditional? Terrible heartache happened in any case, with our without happiness. Asma laughed hysterically. She was a poster child for terrible heartache without any memories of happiness. What was even worse was the fact that she couldn't pinpoint a single thing that was wrong in her life- she had everything that society values! Then why was she always so unhappy, dammit! Why were these thoughts her only companion when everyday she stood infront of the window in her bedroom in the half an hour of free time she got between coming back from working and dinner? Should she have taken chances in life? Maybe, atleast once, should she have gone beyond the boundaries that society had set for her even before she knew what boundaries meant? Should she have taken chances when the consequences of her impulsiveness were only hers to deal with? Was this just midlife crisis? That's what her mother had told her, hadn't she? But then wasn't a mid life crisis by definition something that happened in mid life? In that case, how did she not remember being happy even in her youth?

'Mom! Can we please have dinner? I'm starving!", Asma's fourteen year old daughter yelled. Snapping out of her reverie, Asma stepped away from the window and walked back to the life that she had built for herself. Another day had come to an end.