What Makes Me Happy

From long walks on the beach and a good book to the sound of their children’s laughter and hanging out with friends, people from across fields share what happiness means to them

- BANDEEP SINGH

ROHAN VERMA CEO & Executive Director, MapmyIndia

“Happiness for me is a state of equanimity and contentment with one’s situation. What makes me happy is a relaxed state of mind—which happens when I am with my family, spending time with them. Or when I am looking at a blue sky or am on a beach, watching and listening to the waves or just walking, when I am having a relaxed evening with friends or colleagues. I think we as humans naturally yearn and seek happiness—that is our state of equilibrium. Our happiness gets disturbed when our mind gets stressed and hence being happy requires doing things needed to relax one’s mind. And it is the seemingly small things which usually make us most relaxed and happy”

SHASHI THAROOR Congress Lok Sabha MP, Author

“ The greatest happiness, in my experience, comes from bringing positivity into the lives of others. As an MP, I am confronted daily by the problems of my constituents, many of which have weighed them down to the point of despair—a mother needing help for a sick child, a parent seeking to get her paramilitary son transferred to a post nearer home…a bereaved widow who has lost her family’s only breadwinner and needs employment for her son, a scholar knocking vainly on the doors of the bureaucracy to get her fellowship funds released. Whatever I can do for them that brings a smile to their faces gives me more satisfaction and happiness than seeing my book climbing up the bestseller charts or India winning a cricket Test match!”

MARTAND KHOSLA Architect and Artist