Ever thought: “What’s the purpose of life?” We grow up, we go to school, college, work hard, do well. Why do we do all this? To be happy. But somewhere in the hectic process of trying to do be happy, we get so caught up in life’s problems and forget the main reason we were striving so hard in the first place.  I think it’s time we addressed a real problem that most of us ignore in our everyday lives — the fact that a lot of us are not really all that happy.

So I made Happy Pill, a ‘what if’ film exploring the fantasy: What if someone created a medicine for happiness that could instantly make all of us happy? Just like when we have a fever or backache we can pop a Paracetamol. So when life’s problems have us feeling down-in-the-dumps, wouldn’t it be great if such a thing as a happy pill existed that would magically make us happy when we pop it?

Lego memories

Some people chase money, some chase success, I’ve always chased happiness. And when you chase something really hard you end up getting it.

Since school, whenever I had a bad day, I’d die to come home to a little corner in my room where I had set up my Lego Station. There I’d make things and break things and make new things and the universe could collapse as far as I was concerned but I chose to be happy in my happy Lego world.

Charlie in his chocolate factory

In college I was isolated and I didn’t have many friends, as I was never inclined to being social, I sat alone in a movie theatre and watched Magnolia (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson), when I had a magical moment — I realised for the first time I wasn’t just enjoying watching the film, I was also reading it and enjoying the movie making. 

This experience of feeling like an audience and a filmmaker combined made me so happy that after that whenever I went to video stores (my paradise then), I’d gaze at the movie shelves for hours, choosing films that would give me that same happiness. 

My Lego Station happy corner had expanded into the video stores  of New York which became my toy stores and I was Charlie in my new Chocolate Factory.

Bonding with mom

I enjoy watching cricket with my mother (who doesn’t really know much about cricket but basically just wants India to win). Maybe things could have gone up and down in our lives but in that moment we’re just rooting for the team, getting stressed and feeling that rush to feel good about something. 

I’m not waiting for the country to win. I’m actually enjoying the rush of whether we will win and spending that precious moment with Ma when the whole world and life’s problems don’t matter.

Walk the talk

I have always loved walking around aimlessly, because I can daydream and see reality and see a story in it. To know a city you have to walk it, feel it, smell it and be right there in it, otherwise you’re not in a journey, you’re just going from one place to another. 

Making movies makes my general life very hectic and unfortunately my job sort of needs me to be a social person, which I’m not. But in between meetings at coffee shops, one of the things I really look forward to is that window of 30 minutes where I can just be alone, stare, daydream and sip coffee.

In fact when I leave to go to those meetings, I go with the secret purpose that I’m going to wait for those 30 minutes that will transport me to my happy place.

Fly on the wall

Having loved studying world history, I treasure spending hours in transit in international airports as the whole world is right there travelling and I’m basically in the middle of history. 

As an anonymous fly on the wall, I imagine the various stories of the travellers from different cultures wondering who they are, where they are coming from, where their life is taking them.  Someone next to me might think, ‘God I have to wait for four more hours to get on that flight’, but I choose to think: ‘I’ve got four more hours to stare at people and come up with fascinating stories’.

Reel to real 

I pray that one day, just as the technology of old science fiction movies exist today, the happy pill, too, will transition from the world of our fictional film into our real lives. But until then, life will continue to be full of problems, but you have to find a way to ignore them. Things will make you unhappy but you can always choose to look at the silver lining, and concentrate on that, as it can make you happy.