Smiles

How many lines and quotations we have read and heard eventhough some of them are done to death. Smile. It improves your face value. Smile is a curve that sets everything straight. And lines like that. Funny, I only remember the done-to-death ones and not the interesting ones. There are wellness books and make-your-life-better books which would definitely put in a page/chapter that eulogises the Smile. Sitting here at KLIA and generally watching the people that have been walking in and out the past couple of hours, I haven't seen one smile yet. Yeah, well, no one might be in a mood to smile this early in the morning after a flight. At least the one from Chennai to KL neither gives you time enough for a good shut-eye nor is it short enough for you to stay awake and read or do whatever.

Was on my way home yesterday after only a few hundred things that had to be done and completed, to pick up the bags with nerves that were already bunched up. It was getting uncomfortably late. I looked out through the window at the buses. And the people traveling in them. Have several memories of the PTC. And then I saw this couple perhaps in their very late sixties or early seventies. The lady had a scarf around her ears. They had a nice aura to them. Perhaps someone does know when you look at them and the man caught my eye and he seemed to say something to his wife. By the time she turned to look something else had caught my attention. After a while I looked out at the buses again and his time I saw the lady looking at me. Not something I do all the time, but I waved out to them. Just felt like I should. And then they broke into one of the nicest smiles I have seen in a long while. They waved back. And then we went our separate ways.

2008 December. Was just finishing my breakfast show on radio and was getting back home. And I got this call enroute that Sridhar sir had passed on. I couldn't help the tears that flowed. I didn't think about what would someone think if they saw me crying and all that jazz. I noticed in a little while that I was quite a sight. And then there were these two girls on a two-wheeler in front of my vehicle. They waved out, caught my attention and mouthed a "Smile" and gesticulated for good measure.  More than a year later, I still vividly remember them and that signal.

The adults do everything they can to get one smile from babies. They coo, make funny faces, dance, blab... anything. And as we grow up, they are taught to wipe the smile off. So that kids can look "mature" at 6 and 3 quarters. And for several other important reasons like that.

Anyway, there is this lady "rekwethin passenjuhs thu prosceed foh bohdhing" and I better heed her call. Naresh Iyer and I are performing there tomorrow and am quite looking forward to it. Perhaps this will also be a tweeny holiday.

And here I wish for you that you come across smiles that brighten your day and give you memories that are special just as they have for me.
God bless.
P.S.: Read this amazing article in the inflight magazine of MH. And surprisingly it spoke about the happiest countries in the world - namely Bhutan, Denmark, Malawi and a few other places. And they had these wonderfully smiling pictures of children in Malawi. Perhaps it was the theory of attraction at play. On an off note, this issue of the MH magazine is one of the best that I have read.