Move to Manhattan while you read this column. I mean spiritually. Suspend your disbelief for a moment to connect with the cerebral, supernatural and the metaphysical. Let your psyche float among the tall skyscrapers of New York and search for that spirit (I’ll tell you about it in a minute) soaring high among rain-washed golden sunsets and pinky cherry blossoms. It’s got to be there!

Last week, I opened a blog with the kind of boredom that sets in when you find your mailbox cluttered with spam. Normally, with the right click, I quickly hit the ‘delete’ button as fast as I can to rid myself of junk mail for the day. I don’t know what made me pause at this particular story. Like a disinterested reader, I opened it and began to read, until I reached the end.

The last line blew me away.

The rest of the morning hung heavy on my mind. The writer’s narrative of her anonymous visitor to her apartment in Manhattan entered my viscera. The visitor’s facial expressions and her conversation with the writer got stuck in my mind’s eye. Words jumped out from my laptop’s monitor streaming like a 3-D virtual tour of the penthouse and the meeting between the buyer and the seller. The images were high definition.

Next day another story datelined Manhattan left something for me to connect with the earlier one. Remember the book Stumbling on Happiness written by a Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert? The New York Times interviewed him recently. For the ‘Professor of Happiness’ experience held more value than money itself. “You couldn’t pay me $100,000 to miss a play date with my granddaughters. And that’s not because I’m rich. That’s because I know that a hundred grand won’t make me as happy as nurturing my relationship with my granddaughters will.”

According to him, the best ‘predictor’ of human happiness was human relationships and the amount of time that people spend with family and friends.

“That people will sacrifice social relationships to get other things that won’t make them as happy -- money. That’s what I mean when I say people should do ‘wise shopping’ for happiness.”

People think a car will last and that’s why it will bring you happiness, says the professor. “But it doesn’t. It gets old and decays. But experiences don’t. You’ll ‘always have Paris’ -- and that’s exactly what Bogart meant when he said it to Ingrid Bergman. But will you always have a washing machine? No.”

Let me now revert to the story I had started my column with. It’s called ‘The cursed apartment’ by Seema Boesky. She wanted to sell her beautiful penthouse overlooking the East River. But her first buyer “dropped dead at the closing” and her second, “with contract in hand, bolted down 47 flights of stairs, never to be heard from again,” because as the contract was being signed the New York Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle flew his airplane into her apartment, killing himself and his flight instructor.

Seema was now convinced that her penthouse was “jinxed” and there was bad “karma” about it. Still she wished it gone as soon as possible. She found a couple wanting to buy her apartment but needed to remain anonymous. “The husband came alone for the early meetings. He was charming, attractive, in his 50s, and extremely chatty while his crew took measurements and photos. He mentioned this was their first home in New York, and that his wife was a workaholic who travelled constantly. He was curious about the neighbourhood, and asked for my recommendations of places to go, and things to do and see.”

Some days later the wife arrived. “A stunning woman with an engaging smile rang my doorbell. She took a full tour, including closets, and was very complimentary. ‘I love what you’ve done here. Your colour sense and style sensibility is much like mine.’ She spoke of the vibrancy of New York City and how she enjoyed visiting. She took an interest in my family photos too, and, seeing pictures of my children, she commented that theirs were in school elsewhere so would not be living in the apartment.”

But the woman wanted to change the location of the entry doors, saying “The feng shui is not right here and is very important to me.” Feng shui (literally wind water) is part of an ancient Chinese philosophy of nature. “Feng shui is often identified as a form of geomancy, divination by geographic features, but it is mainly concerned with understanding the relationships between nature and ourselves so that we might live in harmony within our environment,” says a definition. The woman was obviously very superstitious but did she know that the penthouse had a history of ill-fated buyers? Did her husband know?

The woman made a list of items she wanted, mostly 18th-century antiques, and asked for prices. “We rode down the elevator together, and before bidding me farewell, she mentioned it was nice meeting me and felt we shared similar family values,” writes Ms Boesky. The sale went through and Seema thought how ‘silly’ her broker was for believing the apartment was jinxed. Seema Boesky ends her story:

“One year later, newspaper headlines proved her (broker) right after all, and the sale has left me feeling sad ever since. My buyer? Benazir Bhutto.”

Can money buy you happiness? Is the oft-repeated question asked of us humans. Professor Gilbert of Harvard says that while money can buy happiness as I am sure it must have bought BB happiness to finally find an apartment of her own liking, still, owning a car, a house or expensive objects are no substitute for time spent with friends, family and loved ones.

Unlocking the mysteries of the universe and trying to transcend the arc of human experience and its unseen trajectories are the sole preserve of a Higher Being who rules supreme over us mortals. Yes, we can read Stumbling on Happiness and try to follow the findings penned by Daniel Gilbert based on his decades of research in his Harvard laboratory studying the nature of human happiness; yes we can follow the rules of ‘Feng shui’ and change the direction of our entry doors; yes we can go to a holy man and seek his guidance in fixing our karma, but our fate is predestined by the Divine.

Somewhere around Manhattan, the spirit of Benazir Bhutto must soar.