Happiness is a Four-Letter Word 

By Cynthia Jele

Happiness is the one thing four close friends – Nandi, Princess, Zaza and Tumi who live in an affluent South African city of a Johannesburg suburb that keeps them on their toes. It is a narrative reminiscent of the travails urban young damsels who have everything going their way.

It portrays how our make easy life is most of the time easy, the life that most people admire, of parties in wealthy neighborhoods, dream weddings, nice cars, good jobs and the like and that this life is not happiness itself and in fact most of the time hides away the real turmoil going on the these ‘nice’ lives.

Nandi is preparing for her glamorous wedding; Zaza is having a sizzling affair as the "trophy wife”, waits for the day her affair comes to light and her husband gives her a one-way ticket back to the township; Tumi’s dream of having a child is about to come true and Princess is head over heels in love for the first time ever with Leo, a painter who seems to press all the right buttons. But soon she discovers – like her friends already have – that life is not a bed of roses, and happiness never comes with a manual.

Happiness is indeed a Four-Letter Word for the four ladies and they pursue it feverishly hoping to reach that point where they live happily ever after. Each of the four women is faced with her own personal crisis which she must endeavour to overcome.

Ends