Smile

I smile a lot. One day when my friend Satya and I were standing outside a Thai restaurant after dinner because it was raining, I looked into the rain and all those umbrellas and people under the pouring sky and smiled to myself. Most of you probably agree that rain makes you happy. So this middle aged gentleman that was passing by suddenly stopped near me and said "what a wonderful weather for saturday night. Is'nt it?" and smiled. Satya looked at me and said "This is why they say smile is infectious".
More often than not, people give a genuine smile back when I smile at them. Sometimes they say something about the weather or the scarf I am wearing. For the past many years in the united states, smiling at everyone that passes by is one culture that I'd embraced heartily. I love it when I see a pleasant face. I love it when people are not too busy to look around and notice others around them. I love the positive energy that a warm smile generates.
Rewind to my first trip back home after coming to the USA, I was smiling right left and center at all the personnel and passengers in Chatrapathi Intl Airport in Mumbai. Needless to say, I got back weird looks. One young man chased me to ask if I know him. Okay, so back home you smile at people only if you know them. Right? Or else they might fall in love with you or think that you are hitting on them, or worse yet look at you like you are "mad eye Moody" from Harry Potter series:-) So I quickly shunned the US culture and became this poker faced Indian.
All through my growing years, I'd seen many faces that looked like the face that looked back at me in the window pane of the passenger shuttle that took me to the terminal. A face that was stern with knit eye brows. A face that looked like I'd just lost a big battle or had the worst possible journey back home. I looked around the bus and everyone else's faces were the same. Stern. Smileless.
On my most recent trip to India, We traveled by EVA a Taiwanese airline. I met this very friendly and talkative Thai air-hostess named "Wanthana" whose name is the equivalent of "Vandana" in the Indian languages I know. I was amused at the similarities Thailand and India had culturally. So Wanthana and I chatted for a pretty long time, about 3 - 4 hours when the lights in the cabins were shut and all the passengers were fighting the cramped seats to get a good night's rest. She seemed to be very interested both in my motherland India and my foster motherland USA. We covered Sfo to Mumbai. "It is hard to believe that you are Indian!" Wanthana exclaimed. I was kind of perplexed when she said that since I was clad in a salwar-kameez, sporting a bindi and bangles. I was as Indian as it can get. I said " I cannot be anyone else other than Indian, look at me!" Then wanthana explained that Indians are very serious. Her accent made it difficult for me to understand the word serious. Then she smiled and said. "They serious. No smile"
Afterall, the similarities between the land of people and the land of smiles was not that similar at all. India has the most people one can ever see. Okay, may be one can see more people in China. But to me China is no more real than "china town" in downtown SFO. So India is the land of people. You all know what the land of smiles is. Don't you?
May be this is what we have to do before we aim hundred percent literacy or eradication of Child labor. We should all smile first. We should stop to notice the people around us. We should wear our hospitality on our lips. We should teach our children to smile. A smile need not be reserved to our family and friends. All our other brothers and sisters as we claim in our Pledge should see us wearing a smile that can generate so much of positive energy as I'd said before.
"Smile" my cousin N used to write to me often in the letters we wrote to each other. "It is the second best thing you can do with your lips"

Now do not ask me what the first best thing is. For, I never asked her and I am not as romantic as she is anyway. I'll probably say praying is the first best thing. Or may be I'd say "Smile - it is the best thing you can ever do!