Happiness is free

Grandmother's weathered hands shaped dough as morning light filtered through our Chennai kitchen. She never owned a smartphone, never sought validation through screens, yet radiated something my generation desperately chased. When my reels finally monetized, I expected joy. Instead, I felt hollow. Each notification became currency, happiness quantified and commodified. That evening, watching Amma teach my daughter our ancestral recipe, something shifted. The child's laughter, the turmeric-stained fingertips, stories passed through generations—this couldn't be monetized or posted. True wealth, I finally understood, lived in these unhurried moments, in roots stretching back through Tamil soil, in community forged through kitchen tables, not algorithms.