There was a movie I watched many years back, I think while I was still in college.. ‘A smile like yours’ or something similar. I can google and find the correct description but I really want to take a trip down the memory lane instead of google making me correct my memories.
So all I remember is that this was early days of cable tv, the tata skys of the world had not arrived then but we had the usual Star Movies and HBO available. I think it had Greg Kinnear in it and I am actually forgetting the name of the actress. It was a beautiful movie on infertility and relationship.
This is not a blog post on infertility. You will be surprised to know what I will be writing about, however. Anyway, so you know how it is that few movies just stay with you. I don’t remember watching the movie second time around but it just stayed with me. So, many years later, while still married, as a couple my ex-husband and I were very similarly placed. To the extent that sometimes I felt that I manifested the movie in my life. I doubt, however, that is ever possible. May be it was just there to tell me that when your relationship is strong and love is there, you survive everything. Or maybe the regular ‘wear and tear’ of marriage can be catastrophic.
However, today’s blogpost is about something else. I have finally brought myself around to read ‘Atlus Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. I try to take out 15-20 mins every morning and read bit-by-bit every day. So there is this para that caught my attention in the early chapters of the book.
For those of you who may have read it, Dagny while walking back from work late one night, stops at the newsstand to pick up cigarettes in the Taggart Terminal. There,. the owner of the newsstand tells her how he has seen people change in twenty years. How earlier they were running with a purpose in life, but now they run out of fear. And interestingly, and what caught my imagination, was, when the newsstand owner says, ‘how they smile too much…’
So now I guess one can make out why the title of the blog post is this. A smile like ours or should I say the lack of it. How many of you have noticed this? Or does it bother you on days that there is a total lack of niceties? I mean even in customer services, it is rarely that you can hear the smile through the phone. I am telling you its not ancient history, there was a time when you could genuinely hear it. It was not, come-to-the-point business but of exchanging genuine pleasantries.
I have this habit of smiling at strangers. Could be anyone, the garbage man who comes to pick garbage in the morning, or a total stranger at gym or just any random kid in the car next to mine. Well! I feel it brings happiness in my life and when a person smiles back at me, I am sure some positivity gets transferred. Oh BTW, this smile is not the flirtiest one but a genuine human-being to human-being kinds. Any kind of misinterpretation is wrong.
Of late I have noticed that I have stopped smiling. Sometimes, it is because people keep walking around with a sullen face, may be because they are sullen because life got them or may be to show that they have a definite sense of purpose. What is that purpose, I have no interest in knowing either. Keeping a poker face is not going to brighten anyone’s day.
Although many a times I see a lot of people smile back very forcefully. I am guilty of it too. It just reinforces that Hey! I still believe in the niceties but I just lack the energy to return a genuine one right now, can you please live with my fake one until then? I believe a lot of people can understand it but the trouble is with those who will judge you for being fake, like hell yeah! the purpose of my life is to brighten up yours.
There are things that go wrong, terribly wrong. I have been told of late that I look sick. I will be surprised if I don’t look the part. I have a long list of things that are going completely wrong but I am still doing my bit of showing up every single day and yes! I am still smiling, fake or not. All I am saying here is, recession is here and we may not have many reasons to smile anymore, but can we still smile. If not out of sheer happiness, then out of common courtesy, humming jagjit singh’s tum itna jo muskura rahe ho in our head!
Pallavi Pratap 