I was recently asked what may seem an innocuous question: what makes you joyous and what makes you blue. The answers should have been simple and yet the question turned out to be an existential one. And the reason it became so was that the enquirer was not one to be satisfied with a superfluous answer.

My mind went back to the famous song from the musical Sound of Music as I set out to seek what would be my brown paper packages tied up with strings. No favourite song or treat came to mind. No place I would like to travel to again. No particular person I would like to meet with again. I felt strangely at peace and content. What brings me joy today would be looking at the video above and seeing young Bittoo hug little Radha. Again an innocuous image and yet such a blessed one. You see Bittoo is locked in a silent world and Radha battles to survive in spite of her brittle bones. They should and would have never met but for pwhy. Today they are classmates and live from one day to another, stealing whatever happy moments they can lay their hands on, unaware of what tomorrow holds. As I look for more happy images, I find myself flooded with similar ones: a child proudly holding his report card, Manu sitting at a table, Sohil dancing… Simple images that fill me with joy and peace. and yet, as I look on, the same images fill me with fear and sorrow. Will I be able to ensure a morrow for all these little souls?

Strange how over the past ten years the lives, hopes, joys, fears, tears of once unknown little children have managed to obliterate my own. Strange how today when I want to conjure moments of happiness it is their little faces that spring to mind. So let me once again try and think of my very own raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens and I would say a pizza shared with a little boy on PTM day, a bright pink school painted by a bunch of kids, a little girl dancing with her heart. These are but a few. There are so many more safely tucked away in my memory.

And as for bee stings and dog bites, they simply happen when I realise the fragility of all these happy moments and the need to try and make them live happily ever after.