Okay Then, But Are You REALLY Happy?

And why this question is offensive?

During my Arts and Aesthetics class at JNU, we watched Chronicle of a Summer, a 1961 French documentary shot by sociologist Edgar Morin and filmmaker Jean Rouch. It’s a quintessential example of cinéma verite—a genre that, to simplify for those who might not have any interest in cinema in 2025, may feel like watching a Samdish Bhatia ground-reporting video, but with more subtitles and existential dread.

Unlike Samdish, though, the French have a sacred duty to be “serious.” In the film, they ambush strangers on the streets of Paris with a deceptively simple question: “Are you happy?”

My professor then turned to the class and asked what we thought of the film. And while I had thoughts—many messy thoughts—I didn’t voice them. I was an introverted student, and asking questions in class has its own genre of dread. Nevertheless, thanks to the internet—which itself is a retaliation of introverts—I am sharing my thoughts here in this article, which might be read by some people.

“Are you happy?” It’s a loaded question, isn’t it? The kind that can make someone cry or, at the very least, spiral into emotional chaos. It feels like the same energy as those Lifetime Achievement Award moments where people flash back through their lives—triumphs, regrets, and the melancholy of still not having lived enough.

Happiness, I’ve come to believe, is performance art. It’s the delicate illusion we craft, day by day. It’s gaslighting ourselves into thinking things might just be okay. Anxiety, on some days, feels like the conspiracy theories we create, and some necessary illusion acts as a shield to protect against the assault of some really bad thoughts. And then the last thing we need is some filmmaker—or anyone, really—shattering that fragile construction by asking, “Are you happy?”

As Soren Kierkegaard puts it, “The more one forgets oneself, the more complete is happiness.” In this way, forgetfulness becomes a kind of yogic practice for finding happiness. But then sometimes life feels like a YouTube prank video where, in the end, someone steps in to reveal, “Aapke saath ek chhota sa prank hua hai. Aap camera dekh ke yeh bol dein ki iss channel ko like, share, subscribe karein.”

Over the years, my understanding of happiness has evolved. Back in college, it was a popular notion among the crowd that rolling a joint on a mountaintop and ordering a plate of Nutella pancakes with ginger lemon honey tea was happiness.

For the urban crowd, happiness often looks like a backpack, a yoga mat, and an Instagram caption about "Happy. Unbothered. Disciplined. Glowing." The location is mostly somewhere in the mountains. The classic photo shoot of happiness is: a lone figure staring at the horizon, probably calculating the likes and comments that shot will generate.

For a while, I believed these backpacking nomads had figured it out. They had figured it out. They were the “spiritual kind,” above the people lost in urban jungles of capitalism. They smoked, traveled, talked about “peace,” and acted like they had mastered the state of ‘happiness.’ But then I stayed in enough cheap hostels and sometimes drank with those who called themselves “wanderlust” to realize something else. Many of them, after the third beer, would confess that they felt aimless, wishing they had one skill or passion to feel some fire within. If it was a man, their entire focus was often on getting laid through the spiritual performance or making others believe they had some kind of key to happiness and the ‘transcendental side’ of the world. I later realized it’s all about wanderlust, but then the word ‘wander’ is silent.

Happiness and peace often feel like parallel lines—we chase one, thinking it will lead to the other. And sometimes, that chase becomes literal. Marathon running, for instance, is an act of extreme physical endurance and labour, yet for many, it’s a mental escape. Haruki Murakami captures this duality in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running when he says, “I run to acquire a void.”

The definition of happiness also changes with age. Now, happiness, I’ve come to see, is less about chasing hedonism and more about pursuing something quiet and difficult—like growing a plant and watching it grow. It reminds me of the Casey Neistat video title: Do what you can’t.

But then, one can’t be sure of what exactly the meaning of being happy is. There is no exact image or stage of happiness. Sometimes the madness of city life can be happier than the alleged bliss of a retired life in the mountains. An individual has to figure it out for themselves. It may not always lie in escape, nor in extremes. Infact there is no need for me to speak about it too much. As the saying goes: Once a wise man said nothing.

But yes recently, I made a video art exploring this very idea. It’s a 30-minute montage of internal monologues, existential musings, and visuals. The process—writing, editing, sound designing—was exhausting, frustrating, and yet, strangely enough, deeply rewarding. For me, it’s like getting better at something, like a practice. I make coffee every morning through aeropress method. The process is long, and I know most of the time I won’t get exactly what I want. Each morning, in that sense, is an exercise in failing. This video, too, is an exercise in failing.

Maybe, in that painful process, I found that happiness is not just about finding success but sometimes also about failing on your own terms.

You can watch the video here. Let me know if it makes you happy—or at least gets you thinking.

WATCH HERE:

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