Indian institutes to offer students course on happiness

Maitri Kotecha with her mentor Justwin Singh

Maitri Khotecha is a final-year engineering student at Vellore Insitute of Technology. Though she has been a high scoring student for most of her academic life, in the last few years, she noticed that her grades were dipping. Battling a fire on the personal front, she noticed that much of her energy was spent in cribbing about every tiny aspect of her day.

That's when, the Baroda resident enrolled herself at the Institute of Happiness in Baroda, run by Jaswinder Singh, better known as Justwin Singh. The institute was set up in 2000 by Singh who has been working as a marketing director in a firm that's committed to saving energy for the last 27 years. Singh, says Khotecha, made her try the "rubber band" method. "I was made to wear a rubber band in one hand, and every time I complained, vocally or in my head, I had to take it off and wear it on the other wrist." In the first few days, says the 21-year-old, she switched the band 20 times in one hour.

The pursuit of happiness
Each year, leaflets written by Singh that form the course material, are posted to people in 92 cities across 18 countries, who are seeking a change in attitude - Kotecha says that happiness isn't just the absence of complaints but also "to be fully conscious of the present moment. Don't wait for one particular moment which you think will make you happy. Happiness is now." But, it's not just in Baroda.

Across India, institutes such as IIT Kharagpur, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, have started offering classes in happiness. On the international stage, in fact, the course is the most popular one on campus at America's Yale University, in the history of the university. The course, titled Psychology and the Good Life, designed by psychology professor Laurie Santos who set out to teach a new course on how to be happy, has seen 1,200 enrolments, meaning that it has to move beyond the physical classroom and onto screens across the university in order to accommodate everyone.

But, it's not just stressed students who need a path to happiness. Among Singh's many students is Anjani Adhikari, also a Baroda resident, who was suffering from post-partum depression. "Jassi [Singh] sends home a set of leaflets every month. I took the course eight years ago, when I was undergoing depression, post my pregnancy. I was not even aware of the concept of post-partum depression. Each topic in the leaflet would handle one aspect of the mind, such as anger, forgiveness, awareness and so on. There would be stories attached to each, to make it reader-friendly. It would end with an exercise that I needed to practise through the month," says the 43-year-old homemaker.

Recalling one such exercise, she says the course instructed her to meet every new person with full awareness. "'Don't keep it superficial,' it said. 'Even if it is a five-minute meeting, be fully committed and into it. Your attitude towards another being will make you aware of your attitude towards yourself. You will meet 'you',' it said." The course, she says, helped her realise how she was hinging her happiness on her expectations from people. "I guess happiness, now, for me, is not expecting anything in return, and not in a negative I-give-up way. I can see the other side better. And if you change, you see others around you change. Either they have, or you see them with new eyes. Either way, it works."

Breathing in positivity
Andheri-based advertising professional Puneet Garg sought the meditative route. In 2004, he signed up for the Happiness Programme conducted at a local Art of Living centre. On a break from the job, he had decided to turn to writing. "I felt a course like this would help me tap into my spiritual source, and therefore help my writing. I thought it would be a combination of lectures, readings and teachings from scriptures and other kinds of theory. But this course was all about breathing - as simple as that."

The Sudarshan Kriya - an advanced art of meditative deep breathing - helped him "experience a state of existence which I had only read about. We think it cannot happen to us. We need to give ourselves a chance." It seems incredulous that the mere act of breathing deeply with awareness can lead to happiness. Garg, however, says that it helps de-clutter the mind too. "Say, we know failure is a stepping stone to success. But do we think that way the moment we fail? No, we feel dejected. But when you cleanse your mind, this thought dawns on you at the right time, so you don't sink," he explains, adding he had paid '1,500 for a six-day programme in 2004.

Tearing into negativity
At the KKMII Stratford Institute in Delhi, the Happiness Course, originally designed by Harvard, has been part of the curriculum since 2014. Dr Ashima Puri, clinical psychiatrist and visiting faculty who conducts the course says that it was introduced in the American campus of Stratford first. "The students, in their early 20s, of course, feel they don't need a course to be happy. But, once they take it, it serves as an eye-opener. They understand the scientific logic behind things, and apply that, in their lives," she says, adding that they have conducted the course for off-campus candidates too. The course is also available online.

Irani Dutta, final year student, finance, took the two-and-a-half month course two years ago. Among the many exercises they had to do was write down one negative thought on a piece of paper daily and throw it away at the end of the day. "The literal act of throwing away a negative thought helped." The course had quantitative evolution as well. "We were asked to react to certain situations, and depending on that, our happiness levels were gauged." Dutta found her levels of pessimism dropping sharply over the period. "I think for me happiness is total acceptance of reality. Earlier, it was success. Then I realised success can also have its pitfalls. Happiness is what we do with what we have - good or bad."

It sounds like everything we've heard our grandparents tell us or may be even the wise sages in the comics we've grown up on. "But, such courses inculcate a discipline in you to follow certain steps, in an order. The concepts find a direction. It's not merely theory in your head," Adhikari says. Garg has taken the course more than six times over the last decade and he has finally learnt to stop asking himself, is he happy. "I think that is where the learning has served its purpose. You don't feel the need to question this anymore. Just give your best shot and live."

Also read: Delhi Government Schools To Have 'Happiness Curriculum'

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