The Hidden Path to Happiness...

The Hidden Path to Happiness...

It has been a little over three months since I retired from government service and barely two months since Shakti on Wheels began its journey.

In these few months, to my surprise, I have been asked one question very often. Why are you doing all this now?

Some ask with affection. Some with curiosity. Some perhaps with genuine concern or bewilderment. After a long and fulfilling career, why take on another responsibility at this stage in life? Why worry about markets, sales, permissions, logistics that too for products made by SHGs, SMEs  or village industries? Why struggle with the little uncertainties that come with trying to create opportunities for women and small entrepreneurs? Why get up at unearthly hours or run from pillar to post? Why not simply sit back and enjoy retirement? 

And then comes the more difficult question: What is it about this work that makes you happy?

I really struggle to answer that because in reality  happiness is such a nebulous word. For one person, happiness may lie in achievement. For another, in wealth. For someone else, in recognition, travel, family, solitude or simply an afternoon with nothing that needs to be done. There cannot possibly be one formula for something so deeply personal.

And perhaps I am not even searching for happiness.

I am beginning to think there is another word that matters more to me now : satisfaction.

I feel that, happiness belongs very much to the moment. For example,  a good day or a  successful event makes us happy. Appreciation makes us happy but all of these pass. The applause fades, the milestone becomes yesterday's achievement and even something we desperately wanted eventually becomes part of our ordinary lives. Haven't all of us experienced this?

Each one of us, once wanted something very badly, a position, an achievement, a house, an award, a particular milestone. We imagined reaching it would change everything. When it finally came, it brought happiness  but after a few days or months  life soon settled into its familiar rhythm .That nay also be because achievements maybe wonderful milestones, but not they certainly are not a permanent address.

Satisfaction is very different. It comes quietly when we look back at a day or perhaps a year, a decade, even a lifetime and feel that our time was spent on something that mattered to us.

There is a thought I find increasingly meaningful,  'the measure of a life is not only what we consume, but what we contribute.'

Maybe, as the years pass, the balance slowly shifts, from owning to creating, from acquiring to giving, from asking What more can I have? to asking what more can I do with what I have?

That question has begun to resonate with me after retirement.

For most of our working lives, the path is quite  defined for us. There are responsibilities, postings, deadlines, hierarchies and institutional goals. Retirement suddenly removes much of that scaffolding. For the first time in decades, the question is not, What am I required to do?

It is simply: What do I choose to do? That freedom and it's actualisation can be both exhilarating and unsettling.

My answer, at least for now, seems to have taken the form of a little vehicle called Shakti on Wheels. It is hardly a grand answer.

There are days when sales are good and days when they are disappointing. There are permissions to seek, locations to find, women to coordinate with, products to display and countless small problems including fund flow management that nobody sees. At times I worry about things that, during my years in government, might have appeared almost insignificant because there is a team to handle it. Here I am almost alone except for a few good samaritans who stand by me. 

And there have also been moments when the response from the SHG women themselves has not been quite what I had hoped for.Initially, that puzzled me. Sometimes it even made me wonder whether all this effort was worthwhile. But perhaps every woman is at a different point in her journey. Some are ready to step into a new market today; some are hesitant. Some have been disappointed too many times before. Some may not yet see the opportunity. And that is all right.

Because this journey is not only about the women I am able to reach today. Somewhere, perhaps in a far off village I have never visited, there may be a woman making something beautiful or useful with her hands, waiting for a market that has never reached her. She may hear about Shakti on Wheels months from now. Perhaps thousands of women may eventually hear that there is a platform willing to carry their products beyond the boundaries of their villages and familiar markets.

And if even some of them feel, “At last, there is somewhere I can take what I make,” then perhaps their long wait will have been worthwhile.

That possibility is reason enough for me to continue. Because behind a packet of papad or chips, a bag of rice, a handmade product or a freshly prepared modak, I see a woman hoping that somebody will buy what she has made.

A market is not merely a place of commerce for her. It is something which gives her confidence, recognition, income, independence and along with it dignity.

Maybe that is what keeps me going. Not happiness in the conventional sense. Not another achievement to add to my list. Certainly not the comfort that people normally associate with retirement. Just the satisfaction of still being useful.

I don't know where Shakti on Wheels will eventually go. I don't know how large AnirvedShakti will become, how many women it will reach, or what shape this journey will take in the years ahead. For once, perhaps I don't need to know. All my  life, I have chased destinations but at this stage, I am discovering the pleasure of simply choosing a direction. And maybe that is the hidden path to happiness.

Not waking up every morning determined to be happy. Not accumulating achievements in the hope that the next one will finally make us happy. But making choices that, years later, we can look back upon without regret.

To have created a little more than we consumed.

To have given a little more than we took.

To have used whatever experience, ability and opportunity life gave us to make someone else's road slightly easier. And perhaps somewhere, a woman I may never meet will hear that there is a market waiting for what she creates and feel that her own waiting, her own effort and her own dream were not in vain. That thought itself is enough.

And at the end of an ordinary, tiring, imperfect day, to be able to tell myself quietly: This is how I chose to spend my life today. And I am glad I did.