"Grass Eaters" by Krishnan Varma

The founding fathers of the United States of America wrote five basic rights in which every citizen would fall heir to. The best right is “the pursuit of happiness”, happiness, such a simple world that has an innumerable amount of interpretations in the world. What is the happiness of some, maybe the misery of others. In the story written by Krishnan Varma, the happiness of the main protagonist Ajit Babu, might very well be the misery of the people who live in the modern western empire we call “America”. This story emphasizes on the daily lives of the Indian people and through Ajit he describes that being poor does not mean being miserable. The story itself it’s a critical perspective over how people in the high society are never satisfied with what they have and yet people who have much less than them can be happy with the little things in life. It takes the definition of what most humans think of happiness, like a nice car or a big house, and gives it in the simplest, rawest form possible. Happiness is what you make it and Ajit is the perfect example of what Charlie Chaplin meant to say with “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”