‘How can I find happiness in life?’
This is the most fundamental question. The prayer of the priest and the sin of the sinner are both just different ways these people see to reach happiness. The soldier spills his blood in battle, as love for his dominion, above all else, is his way to happiness. While the traitor deceives, as what he earns from this, is his way. The greedy hoard for happiness while the generous give away for happiness. So, we all want the same thing but clearly there is little consensus on the approach.
The Happy Fruit Adventures is the story of two individuals who take different paths through the ‘Jungle of Life’ in their quest for the ‘Fruits of Happiness'. One heeds to the words of an old mentor named ‘Master Experience’ and sticks to a straight, well-known path, while the other takes all forms of bylanes and shortcuts. One makes friends with the giants Struggle and Sacrifice, while the other befriends the ladies Pleasure and Distraction. But the way forward is not easy; they have to cross the River Education and the Ravine Occupation among other things. And all along, an evil outcast with his forces is trying to destroy everything. Can even one of them get to the fruits amidst such challenges?
This allegorical paradigm seems like a great way to explore the question of happiness. Who doesn’t love stories? And when it is an adventurous journey through a dense jungle, with beasts and men of all kinds, things only get better. People of all ages can read it. And it makes this topic accessible even to those who really don’t care for spending hours pondering over terse, philosophical questions.
‘What if life were a jungle and happiness a fruit hidden within it?’ This question is the seed from which this book is born. But when it first came, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, I had no idea it would go that far. It was just a simple question that I liked to turn around in my head. A mental toy to play with in my idle time. And like an infant twists and pulls and chews on her doll, I stretched this analogy with more questions. What other things does this jungle hold? Maybe courage would be a commander who leads way into battle. Experience could be this old man who gives counsel. Knowledge is easy, it can only be a lotus, we’ve heard about it so much. But what about hope? What about envy? What about pessimism?
The answers came, at times immediately and at times days later. When six months had passed, enough pieces of this grand jigsaw had fallen in place to put before me a fascinating landscape. There was also an interesting plot of some characters exploring it. I thought about writing it down, but decided not to. I still didn’t know who would and who wouldn’t find the elusive fruits of happiness. A great adventure had begun but I had no idea how it would end.
So, I continued playing with it. More pieces got added. From simple ones like tending to a garden to serious ones like a surprise attack planned by a clever army. It made the whole picture more and more intriguing to look at. But in the end who, if any, would find happiness? I still didn’t know.
About a year passed. And one day, it happened. Just as mysteriously as the question had come, the answer too arrived, unexpected and unannounced. When the final missing piece fell in place, the whole picture suddenly looked different. But only now it was perfect!
And I was thrilled. I now had a story. Not just one that is worth telling for me but also one that is worth hearing for everyone. The moment when that last piece came was brief like the blink of an eyelid, the changing of a TV channel, a swipe on a mobile screen, a single heartbeat, yet, in that brief moment, I turned from thinker to author. At least, that is the way I like to see it.
So, why did I write this book? Absurd as it may sound, the best answer I can give is this; the idea asked me to write it! It was as if this whole story that had formed in my head was this tall, mean, high school english-teacher, who raised her eyeglasses, pointed a ruler at… Oops, let me not go down that path again! I have to stop turning everything before me into people. There’s enough of this in my book, let us leave it there. Let me just say here that I was compelled to write from then on. But executing this unusual idea wasn’t easy. If I didn’t do it cleanly enough, it could look lame. So, I went about this process with lots of care and diligence and it took another year for the ‘Jungle of Life’ to crawl down from my mind and turn into a doc file on my hard disk.
When I finished, I had the contentment that I had done my best, given it my all. This was the greatest endeavour of my life by far! And yet, this was unlike any other story I had read. Would it really work?
To answer this question, I decided not to put it out into the world all at once, but circulated it within a closed group of eight friends. And I have awesome friends. Do I hear your friends don’t read all your whatsapp messages? Well, when I send my friends an email with a seventy-thousand-word-long-document they download this attachment and read it all! Now how about that?
And it didn’t end with this. They gave me loads of feedback which made a lot of sense. It lead to lots of discussions and debate. And taking stock of all this and incorporating it into one doc wasn’t easy either. This process of reviewing and improving the book, took more than an year, more time than what it took me to write it the first time. But I see this as time well spent. Because I feel it has made the book a good deal better for you, the reader.
The next question now was to find a publisher. This took time too, it is not easy for a new author to be accepted. But patience again paid off when the good folks at Readomania liked my book and we struck a deal.
It was smooth sailing from then on. The adept yet friendly editors have primed and polished the work with great care. Subiksha Rangarajan an accomplished musician, who is also a visual artist, through her illustrations, has brought to life, several elements of the ‘Jungle of Life'. Sourish Mitra digested the lengthy paras of input I gave about how my cover should and should not be and created the perfect one on his first attempt. It is so mystical and tasteful, I really cannot ask for more.
The best part of this journey, one that began as an inocuos question in my head and is now a book we can all hold in our hands, is all the great people I got to work with. It has truly been a labour of love for all. And now we are ready to involve the next set of people, the most important ones, the ones for whom it was all about, and it is you the readers.
It is my belief that this will be a memorable and enjoyable story that will also help you make progress in your most fundamental quest, the one for happiness. Please read it and let me know what difference it makes to you.
‘The Happy Fruit Adventures’ goes on pre-order from 7 May 2019. You can get it from this other place that is named after a jungle.
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