“Soon, other things became a lot more important to me; I too had found our happiness appealing. Then, eight months back, few rumors began circulating before the news came in and it led to more rumors. Much of it, gradually, turned out to be true. And it gave me the answer of a question long forgotten. Why were we happy earlier? Mother had said we were growing–cars; house; furniture; holidays; money. And now our sources of happiness were being taken away from us. We needed these, not each other, to grow and to be happy.”

In other words, necessity follows invention. And this is made possible by one of the biggest scams in the history of the world-“Consumerism”. The entire education system pushes students to become better consumers. You are considered well educated and successful in life if you earn and spend more. The latest addition to this con is the creation of a new species-“The Uberconsumerist”. These mutants are like consumerists on steroids, specially designed to consume even those products that come with a guarantee that necessity will never follow their invention.

The moment I entered Muskaan it felt like I was inside a time machine, and I was being propelled back in time to my childhood. All the toys and joyrides in the park got me excited and I remembered when I was a kid and used to visit the Children’s park in my hometown with my parents. These joyrides were all exactly the same but they were made of junk. Old vehicle rubber tyres have become seats for a see saw, a huge unused concrete sewer pipe became the base of a slide and a tunnel, while bamboos and steel cables became swinging bridges.

It is a story of how a foreign power, then occupying the country, using their power, forced a native Kingdom to agree to give up its rights over a river and its water for 999 years, in exchange for a small amount to be paid as rent to the Kingdom. This agreement was inked in 1886. Even after the occupying powers had left the country, the succeeding popular Government of Kerala agreed to honour the agreement that was obviously one sided – in favour of Tamil Nadu – and executed a fresh agreement in 1970, with substantially same provisions.