<p>Even at primary school I learnt the value of smiles. In our class II there were two charming twins, Thomas and Jacob, who liked to fool everyone by impersonating each other. But classmates could tell them apart, because Tom tended to smile a lot, while Jake generally wore a glum look, as if to contradict Tom. At playtime we would rush to the swings, next to the sand-pit and the see-saws. Once, when the kids were in full swing, soaring in higher arcs of levity, there was a sudden snap in the chains holding swing on which the twins were soaring high. Both of them fell down howling. But there was a surprise: glum-faced Jake, who was badly hurt, was in smiles, while smiling Tom was in tears, distraught by the accident that had wounded his twin brother but left him unhurt.<br /> <br />A smile beautifies a plain face and brightens a lovely one. It is a priceless gift that multiplies itself in company. But smiles should be given sparingly, lest they expose one’s hypocrisy. When the camera-clicker calls out, “Say ‘cheese’, we instantly oblige, perpetrating a mug-shot we would like to disown later. Decades ago, it was almost mandatory for the air-hostess to put on a welcoming smile as passengers trooped into the plane at boarding time. The frozen gash on reddened lips was too insincere to fool anyone, but was an attraction nevertheless. <br /><br />Two famous quotes from Shakespeare spring to mind. The first is Hamlet’s aphorism on witnessing the exultant ghost of his father’s killer, his uncle, Claudius: ‘one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.’ <br /><br />The other is Julius Caesar entering Rome, describing his seldom smiling friend, Cassius of ‘the lean and hungry look.:’ ‘He thinks too much...Such men are dangerous.’ The quote I like best is by Mark Twain: ‘Wrinkles should merely indicate/ where smiles have been.’ Ben Okri, the Nigerian writer, describes a smile as ‘the shortest distance between two people.’<br /><br />Our offices are full of cross-patches and frowners behind desks. Perhaps a little training in abhinaya will make them less forbidding to callers and the public. A genuinely winsome smile lights up the eyes and darts to the crow’s-feet at either end, expands to the lips, to frame the mouth in a parenthesis. ‘She smiled within brackets,’ as a poet said, ‘punctuated by dimples in both cheeks.’<br /><br />Humans can smile and also laugh, unlike other creatures. The laughing hyena is our image. I recall the limerick about a young lady of Riga, who rode with a smile on a tiger; only to return from the ride, with the lady inside and the smile on the face of the tiger. We should all be votaries of the emoticon called ‘Smiley’ to cheer up others and uplift our spirits. After all, the most famous oil painting of Europe which still draws endless admirers is Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, her smile remaining an eternal enigma of female pulchritude. Reading smiles is tricky, but one can always return the favour of a smile.</p>
<p>Even at primary school I learnt the value of smiles. In our class II there were two charming twins, Thomas and Jacob, who liked to fool everyone by impersonating each other. But classmates could tell them apart, because Tom tended to smile a lot, while Jake generally wore a glum look, as if to contradict Tom. At playtime we would rush to the swings, next to the sand-pit and the see-saws. Once, when the kids were in full swing, soaring in higher arcs of levity, there was a sudden snap in the chains holding swing on which the twins were soaring high. Both of them fell down howling. But there was a surprise: glum-faced Jake, who was badly hurt, was in smiles, while smiling Tom was in tears, distraught by the accident that had wounded his twin brother but left him unhurt.<br /> <br />A smile beautifies a plain face and brightens a lovely one. It is a priceless gift that multiplies itself in company. But smiles should be given sparingly, lest they expose one’s hypocrisy. When the camera-clicker calls out, “Say ‘cheese’, we instantly oblige, perpetrating a mug-shot we would like to disown later. Decades ago, it was almost mandatory for the air-hostess to put on a welcoming smile as passengers trooped into the plane at boarding time. The frozen gash on reddened lips was too insincere to fool anyone, but was an attraction nevertheless. <br /><br />Two famous quotes from Shakespeare spring to mind. The first is Hamlet’s aphorism on witnessing the exultant ghost of his father’s killer, his uncle, Claudius: ‘one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.’ <br /><br />The other is Julius Caesar entering Rome, describing his seldom smiling friend, Cassius of ‘the lean and hungry look.:’ ‘He thinks too much...Such men are dangerous.’ The quote I like best is by Mark Twain: ‘Wrinkles should merely indicate/ where smiles have been.’ Ben Okri, the Nigerian writer, describes a smile as ‘the shortest distance between two people.’<br /><br />Our offices are full of cross-patches and frowners behind desks. Perhaps a little training in abhinaya will make them less forbidding to callers and the public. A genuinely winsome smile lights up the eyes and darts to the crow’s-feet at either end, expands to the lips, to frame the mouth in a parenthesis. ‘She smiled within brackets,’ as a poet said, ‘punctuated by dimples in both cheeks.’<br /><br />Humans can smile and also laugh, unlike other creatures. The laughing hyena is our image. I recall the limerick about a young lady of Riga, who rode with a smile on a tiger; only to return from the ride, with the lady inside and the smile on the face of the tiger. We should all be votaries of the emoticon called ‘Smiley’ to cheer up others and uplift our spirits. After all, the most famous oil painting of Europe which still draws endless admirers is Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, her smile remaining an eternal enigma of female pulchritude. Reading smiles is tricky, but one can always return the favour of a smile.</p>
