Delusional Happiness

 

I suddenly realized that the year has almost ended, and I have done no creative writing whatsoever! It's not that I have not had topics, emotions, or tapestry to write on and about, but I just have not, so here goes …

Of course, I have grown older. The whole world including myself knows it, but I love to live in a delusional world where I am still in my twenties (I have grown in my fantasy world from sixteen to twenty-four now!) Hence the visit to the salon to colour my hair.

While I waited for the prerequisite forty-five minutes before my hair was washed and styled, I looked around. I could not wear my glasses as it would mess with my colour, and this led to the fact that I could not either play the games on my phone or read the books on my Kindle app, or do the incessant reeling that I am fond of! So to get back to the topic I looked at my fellow occupants of the very comfortable chairs that the salon provided their clients with.

I looked with envy at a young lady on my right. She was putting on artificial nails and getting them gel painted and showing the hair stylist pictures on her phone of her presumably last holiday.

“It was so cold”’ she said to the interested audience, “that we had to wear four layers of clothes and even then, I was shivering!”.

“OMG Ma’am”, breathed the hair stylist heavily.

“The skiing was lovely, of course”.

“Of course, Ma’am”, nodded the stylist knowledgeably.

“We had so much fun”, the eyebrows were raised expressively, “that I quite forgot to colour my hair”.

“I quite understand. But never mind I will look at it now.”, said the stylist running his finger through her thick dense black hair.

I wondered why she needed to colour her hair, it looked lovely and shiny and bouncy and black to me. “She must be twenty- four or twenty-five”, I said to myself, “she should not be colouring her hair, she will spoil them”.

Meanwhile, the stylist, along with his lackey was mixing the colour vigorously in the bowl. I continued to look into the mirror with interest. The stylist took the thin comb to part her hair and then to my horror, I saw at least an inch of white running through the parting! Poor thing! My envy was replaced with pity that this lady had to do what I had been doing for more than twenty years before me.

Oh well, it's the pollution, the lack of desi ghee, and maybe stress that has changed the age factor now.

Suddenly the grey-haired lady on my left raised her voice….

“What do you think I am!”, she extrapolated angrily, “First you make me wait for half an hour beyond my appointment time, then you say that my hair needs to be washed, and after all that….”

There was a pause as she was getting her breath back. She must have been around my age but looked older as she had not bothered to colour her hair! ( Now you know why I love my delusional world).

“Now this fellow wants me to wait for another half an hour because some client of his is waiting!” her voice was loud and clear, and everyone was now openly looking at her.

The Manager had come out and was trying to pacify her….

“Who is this VVIP”, she continued clearly, “ that cannot wait their turn?”.

The stylist was now shivering in his pants and saying, “Sorry ma’am, I didn’t mean it that way”.

“How dare you?”, she continued ranting, “What do you mean then?”,

“I need another stylist immediately”.

The argument went back and forth, the Manager was apologetic, the stylist even more so and the other stylist pretended to be busy as they did not want to do this particular client.

 I felt pity for everyone involved. It was a lose-lose situation. The client was justifiably angry, but did the anger help her get what she wanted? The Stylist was in the wrong but who amongst his peers or even his manager would admit to that?

The ping-pong game went on till the client walked off without paying for her hair wash.

The hum of dissatisfaction rose to a crescendo after she walked out and then settled down. It was just another day. The haircuts. Pedicures, manicures, and treatments continued as usual.

Is this then the real world?

You are reasonably successful, you have enough money to waste in a salon and you have the inclination, yet there is someone who is supposedly more important than you, or more valuable than you, and the Social rule of “first come first served” does not apply.

I could feel the pain of the second client and the passivity of the first client. In a matter of one hour, I skidded through the seven emotions- happiness, surprise, contempt, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger.

So life goes on and I ask you whether my escapism into my virtual games or the world of novels is worse than facing all these emotions. I am not sure who is the winner in the war between realism versus delusion.  

I have stopped watching the news because it throws the real world into my face. I hate violence, corruption, unfairness, and power. Yet aren’t these what the garden of reality exposes you to? I am at a stage in life where I can remove myself from the diorama of the cutout world, so I wallow in my delusional happiness. But can the new generation afford this? They must face this and work up to or create a better world so that they do not have to retreat into this world of illusion.