Live, Laugh and Learn 

The Lighter Side 

By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam 

There is a wooden board hanging in almost every drawing room of our country these days and it carries three words painted in a cheerful font. Live, Laugh, Love. Nobody is quite sure who started this trend, but it has spread faster than any government scheme ever has. The board hangs above the television in some homes and behind the dining table in others, usually slightly tilted because the nail was hammered in by an enthusiastic family member who was certain it would stay straight. The irony is delicious. The board insists we live, laugh and love while the household below it is busy arguing about whose turn it is to refill the water filter. 

I have grown rather fond of these wall hangings over the years because they tell me something honest about the human condition. We put up reminders for the very things we forget to do. Nobody hangs a board that says breathe because breathing happens on its own. We only memorialise what we struggle with. So, the moment I see ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ painted in gold letters, I quietly conclude that the family inside is working very hard at all three and succeeding at none. 

My own preference is for a slightly amended version. Live, Laugh and Learn. The first two we manage somehow. It is the third that gives us trouble, because learning requires us to admit that we did not already know and that is the one confession the modern Indian finds most difficult to make. We will admit to a parking ticket before we admit to being wrong about anything. 

Consider the everyday business of asking for directions. A man who is hopelessly lost in an unfamiliar town will roll down his window, point vaguely in three directions at once and nod confidently as a stranger rattles off landmarks that no longer exist. He thanks the stranger warmly, drives off and is lost again within two minutes. He has not learned anything except that asking for directions is a ritual we perform to feel less alone. The actual finding of the place happens entirely by accident, usually when he gives up and stops at a tea stall. The tea stall, I have come to believe, is the true navigation system of our country. 

Or take the matter of the family wedding, where learning goes to die a quiet death. Every year an uncle promises that this time the function will start on time. Every year the cards print a sacred muhurta that everyone treats as a polite suggestion. The bride is ready, the groom is ready, the priest is checking his watch and yet the hall remains empty because the guests have collectively decided that arriving on time is somehow rude, as though punctuality were an insult to the hosts. We laugh about it afterwards. We live through it every season. We simply refuse to learn. 

The beauty of laughter, though, is that it makes the learning bearable. I have noticed that the people who survive misfortune with the most grace are not the ones who take everything seriously but the ones who can find the joke buried inside the disaster. A flat tyre on a deserted road is a tragedy if you treat it as one. It becomes an adventure the moment someone in the car observes that the spare tyre has been flat for longer than the one that just gave up. Suddenly everyone is laughing, the situation has not changed at all and somehow it has become tolerable. The tyre is still flat. The mood is not. 

There is a deeper teaching hidden in all of this and the sages knew it long before our wall hangings arrived. The Gita speaks of equanimity, of meeting success and failure with the same steady mind and I have always thought that humour is the householder’s version of that high philosophy. Few of us can achieve the serene detachment of a yogi. But almost all of us can manage a wry smile at our own expense and that smile does much the same work. It loosens the grip that the moment has on us. It reminds us that we are larger than the inconvenience we are facing. 

The trouble with taking ourselves too seriously is that life has an unfailing instinct for puncturing exactly that. The very week you decide you are an important person is the week a pigeon will choose your freshly washed car as its preferred resting spot. The day you wear your finest clothes is the day the autorickshaw will splash you with the only puddle on an otherwise dry road. Life is a patient teacher with a wicked sense of timing and the lesson is always the same. Stay light. Stay amused. Stay willing to begin again. 

So, I have made my peace with the wooden boards and their golden letters. Let them hang slightly tilted above the television. Let us live as fully as the day allows. Let us laugh at the absurdity that arrives without invitation. And let us learn, even if slowly, even if reluctantly, even if only at the tea stall where we finally found the way. 

[Dr. R. Balasubramaniam is the Founder of Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM). ‘The Lighter Side’ is a series of satirical articles meant to bring a smile by highlighting the funny side of everyday life.]