Most of us have probably heard the song, Padhoge likhoge toh banoge nawab; Jo tum kheloge-kudoge toh hoge kharaab, from the film, Malik (1958). This rather strange binary between studying and playing also willy-nilly hierarchises human emotions and experiences and the rewards associated with them, where one (abstaining from pleasure) is a desirable state and the other (indulging in pleasure) is not. However, the idea of joy is not alien to the Indian education discourse. It has been around for sometime, and finds focused attention yet again in the NEP 2020. The word fun and its various synonyms (fun activities, joyful classrooms/project, enjoyable manner of teaching, enjoyable and uplifting literature, fun course) appear at several places in the policy document and is also used along with terms such as activity-based, experiential learning, arts-integration, sports-integration and storytelling-based pedagogy etc. One can hardly doubt both the intention of the policy makers behind this idea or its underlying objective the need to reduce the burden caused by a didactic pedagogy and a stressful examination system. The central assumption here is that didactic pedagogy associated with traditional classrooms is boring and burdensome, bereft of any joy and, therefore, needs to be replaced with a joyful and interactive pedagogy. One would argue that this is a reasonable expectation. However, the only problem is in the way one understands joy, what will lead to joy and whether joy is the objective or a means of attaining something else. Most people confuse fun of learning and fun in learning. While the former foregrounds learning, the latter emphasises joy. Fun is important, but we need to also understand what it is that will lead to fun the process (visible aspects of pedagogy) or the outcome (as gauged by assessment). Process and outcomes of learning are both inter-linked but separate. A joyous process need not necessarily lead to learning and a mentally-taxing process need not always add to a child's burden. On the other hand, one cannot deny that learning in schools is serious business. Sometimes, a singular focus on ease/joy of learning can also be counterproductive as it may lead to falsification/trivialisation of important concepts/ideas.