DOOR TO HAPPINESS

Rohan a 16-year-old boy is sitting in his chair and is waiting for the class to get over. He is bleeding beside the nose as if someone has scratched him. As soon as the bell rings Rohan takes his bag and leaves the classroom as fast he can. He runs through the old road of his city and decides to leave the city. While running he is thinking how cruel the world is, he gets flashbacks of the news he is watching about the bomb being dropped on a city, his mum and dad fighting at the dining table and his school fights. As he has left the city way behind, this deserted road is unfamiliar to him. Soon he is surprised to find a forest on the other side of the road. He crosses the road and reaches the entrance of the forest. He enters the forest.

As he enters the forest he is so mesmerized with the beauty of it, the trees, the flowers, the animals, the colouring sky and the silence, it is so magical; as if it’s a different world. As he goes deeper and deeper into the forest he is fascinated by everything around him. Then he sits under a huge tree, feeling the peace and calmness of nature. As he lays his head on the trunk of the tree he thinks of his mom and dad scolding him for his bad grades and is happy once their son achieves their given target. Similarly with his girlfriend who wants to talk with him, wants him to share what’s going on with him; he hates the method of conveying love. He is just so confused with the nature of humans. He feels that there is no real happiness in the human world by that time he feels tickling, so he opens his eyes and finds a rabbit sitting on his lap. He tries to pet the rabbit but it bites his wrist. Hopefully, his watch protects him from any damage. He checks his watch for any damage and finds that it's evening and gets sadden by the fact that he has to leave. As he tries to retract his path he realizes that the jungle doesn’t seem to end and he has been lost in it. As it's getting darker he decides to stay in the forest for a night. He climbs a tree in one go and is surprised how easily he has climbed it. So as he lays on one branch his stomach growls, he realizes that he hasn’t had any meal since morning. As soon as he thinks that a branch above him lowers down with a fruit stuck to it. He is just surprised how he just gets things. The next morning he wakes up in the sweetest way he has ever dreamed of, birds chirping, the sun shining and the calm nature. He soon finds a way out and has to make choice whether to leave the one place he loves or to stay.

 He thinks that he doesn’t have to leave the forest, after all, it's his life and he is the only reason for his happiness. There’s everything in the otherworld(human world) except for real happiness and calmness. He thinks that now he doesn’t have to please everyone around him, with a fake smile (relatives), with achieving fake targets (parents) or with fake talks (friends and his girlfriend). And so he decides to live here.

After few months, he finds a malnourished elephant calf. He realizes that because of being malnourished the mother has left him behind to die, so he starts to take care of it. He names him Jumbo after his favourite cartoon. After weeks of care, Jumbo is bigger and better, and he thinks that there’s this beautiful bond forming between them, they’re best friends.

Rohan has a scar on his head and is a grown man now and so is his best pal Jumbo, they have a blast together, they bathe in the beautiful lake, roam in the jungle like a king. One day while roaming, Rohan finds his watch that he had dumped somewhere before. He remembers the day he was introduced to this beautiful world and thinks about how chaotic his life would have been if he had left that day. He climbs a tree and sits there thinking, though he is happy there is a little part of him that wants to know what is happening with his loved ones, his parents and his girlfriend and Jumbo doesn’t know what is happening up there so he throws small fruits at him from the ground. One of them hits him and he looks down and laughs at Jumbo. Then he looks at the watch back and finds a bloodstain and realizes the cruelness of the otherworld, his fight with a guy in his school days on just a misunderstanding, he understands how people just react to fulfil their ego. And gets down and sits on Jumbo and they go ahead leaving his watch back.

They reach the same spot where he found Jumbo all years back. At night sitting on the ground beside the fire, he tries to ask Jumbo whether he remembers his mom in different ways but Jumbo couldn’t understand a single thing. And frustrated Rohan climbs on a tree feeling lonely that was buried deep into the heart by the richness of the nature around him, for the first time and Jumbo trumpets from the ground to know what’s wrong.  However, Rohan spends the night thinking about how he made the right decision by not choosing the otherworld in order to justify the wrong choice he made by relying on his negative perspective of the world.

In the morning as Rohan climbs down, Jumbo wakes up and behaves differently and runs without taking a break. Rohan barely manages to keep up with Jumbo and they are on completely different terrain and soon he can hear trumpets from a far land and then could see a herd of elephant. He stays behind the rock while Jumbo slowly walks towards the herd. Rohan couldn’t understand that why he would go to the one who left him in the first place. While on the other hand, Jumbo was really happy to meet its kind for the first time. Rohan couldn’t believe that Jumbo was so excited just to meet the herd. And after spending few days Rohan decided to leave Jumbo with the group and to continue along with his life.

 From now on he couldn’t enjoy the mornings, he gets irritated with bright morning, loud chirping and the silence of the forest started haunting him. He couldn’t understand what was going on, he has lived alone once in this forest but he never felt so frustrated before. He wants to talk to someone about what’s going on and who could understand him but there was no one around. He then remembers Jumbo trumpeting for a long time when Jumbo met his herd for the first time and realizes that Jumbo finally had someone with whom he can share everything and just be who it is. He realizes it was his negative perception of humans and their materializing way of happiness. He realizes that the watch given by his dad as a birthday gift had the same value as the fruit offered by Jumbo, the talks he thought had no meaning and were chaotic is actually the comfort he was missing and that the happiness is in being with your own kind the loved ones who add meaning to your life and cries his eyes out as he tries to remember them but he fails too.

And with that, the jungle wraps up like a flower and Rohan is a 16-year-old boy again standing on the other side of the road which is deserted, which he believed was a forest. Rohan couldn’t understand what just happened he remembers everything that has occurred with him in the past 15 years but suddenly it's just a dream and he just lets it go as he was just grateful that he got his life back which seemed meaningless in past suddenly had meaning and he runs towards home cause all he wants is to get home and hug his parents !!!