A few days before the year ended I had dinner with a dear friend and her husband in their beautiful home.

We had not seen each other in a few months, an unfortunate reality of 'adulting' and having married friends with careers and families.

So every time we do get that rare opportunity to catch up we try and speak about as much as we can. This in turn compromises the quality and depth of our interactions.

We literally engage in Q&A sessions where responses are calculated, brief and decorative.

We were indulging in vegetables grown from her garden. The organic stuff from the back yard.

A creamy eggs salad. The eggs had twin yolks and were all from her small egg farming operation. All the while having a discussion about her new venture into the Airbnb space and other prospects of supplementing our monthly income.

I was busy chewing on a piece of lamb from the spicy biryani when, out of nowhere, my friend asked me: "So, are you happy?"

Okay. I am a happy person. I am. I look 20 years younger than I actually am. I have a flat stomach and thick natural hair.

I am sexually active and seem to attract a strong calibre of men. I laugh out loud and keep my circle of friends neat and successful.

I eat well and read and engage in healthy constructive conversations regularly. I am humorous and witty. Add a law degree and two glasses of wine and I am the ish... right?

I mean, why would someone like me not be happy? While I don't really go around announcing that I am happy, I had never doubted it. But I hadn't quite checked if I actually am happy. Eintlik, that is a very loaded question.

Happy about what? What did she mean am I happy? Happy at the dinner table or happy as in happy all the time? Happy happy or just happy because I am alive and what not?

Which kind of happy? And. I just couldn't figure out how to respond.

I realised that while we had always quickly asked each other questions about our wellbeing, we had never really probed happiness.

It had always been a matter of wanting to know how a person is. Just asking if we are alright. But happiness? Yah! I realised that happiness required me to really think about it. I responded: "No. What the. what do you mean am I happy? I am not happy, I am broke."

This, because my understanding of happiness is really shallow. My happy has still not been defined and is largely attached to materialistic acquisitions that bring comfort.

The truth is while I know that there are things that make me happy, I just don't know if I am happy. I am not sure if I want to be asked. The question forces me to dig into depth I am not emotionally mature enough to tackle yet.

It disrupts a lot of my facades. It wants to know feelings I have masked with smiles and great humour. It is depressing really.

But at least I am not denying that unsolicited ewallets are still my favourite source of happiness.