Of Humour and Happiness – Day Twelve of NaPoWriMo 2022

My thumbs have succumbed

to a novel sport lately.

They swipe up and down,

To eye the prize,

And neglect the unsought.

They swipe left and right,

To judge who’s hot and not.

Memes that a billion eyes grin at,

sources of your selfish solace.

A whirlpool of humour sucks you into

An unavoidable honey trap,

cutting you off from dear ones beside you;

that friend who always yearned for laughter together,

For whom digital comedy isn’t happiness enough,

as it is to share a lovely moment.

The Brits entered India,

as mere traders.

Decades later,

A cancerous venom

Dividing our vulnerable unity.

Isn’t this generation prey to a similar attack?

Do you know what’s funny?

We’re doing this to ourselves.

I rise each morning,

To witness a giant cobweb,

of infinite transactional connectivity,

but between disconnected people.

The distance between us, a looming threat,

Hand-in-hand with the age of digital convenience.

Let’s go back to the days,

When delayed letters were romanticized,

When her subtle twitch of facial expression

Could make your day.

When you lived a life of conscious coexistence;

When people could feel the presence

of their dear ones blindfolded.

When your emotions

Were not masked by diplomatic emojis.

For that was when

humour translated to happiness.

Written by Tejas Kulkarni for MTTN

Featured Artwork by Viswa Laxmi Venugopal for MTTN