Not "Grand"

 I read a quote by Aldous Huxley, which can  maybe serve as an antidote to all the situations in life. It is, "Happiness is never grand". This precise,  a four word sentence is an answer, remedy and a solution to perhaps all anxieties in our life. I also remember another quote by Ruskin Bond. He says,"People often ask me why my style is so simple.It is in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversation.And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves". and yes, as we know, he writes simply in short and crisp sentences. Reading him is alike to meditation or a long walk. It is as calming as taking a stroll on a road after rain. Taking stroll with striving for clarity in thoughts or no aim at all, simply enjoying. As other authors, he does transport us to his world but as he says, he writes daily on a desk, which is near a window. So, the characters he introduces us to are not from the different world than his. Through this window he sees the world and then simplifies it for us. His stories are in no hurry to finish. His stories are not overtly  about about complex emotions but it is completely wrong to assume he is not dealing with them and not giving us the solutions to it. The authors who let us peek in their life are the ones seems sometimes as the ones who have made peace with their choices and style of living. He seems one of them. The characters in his stories are himself, his friends, people who has become his family and ones he was surrounded by at one junction in life. Unlike many stories of other authors , they are not "grand". They are simple people carrying on with life as it comes. His writing and his lifestyle are not at contradictions, rather in complete coherence. It is as transparent as the sky outside the window of his room must look like. This simplicity seems in symphony with Aldous Huxley putting Happiness as "never grand". The connecting thread between these two quotes is maybe a simple one. This is this that maybe, a  time when writing will not be made a grand act as it is made out today, it will become simple to achieve happiness.