Skip to main content

Why smile?




I usually put on a smile.  It’s easy for me because the people whom I meet usually are young students who return my smile with compound interest.  Young people love smiling faces and they are sure to reciprocate with more charming smiles.  When I come across adults, I have to make an extra effort to smile but I usually succeed.

At least I’ve been assuming that I normally carry a smiling face.  That’s why I was surprised when a student of mine asked me the other day why I was so serious outside the school.  The world outside the school does not matter to me except when I have some business to do with it like buying vegetables or negotiating the traffic at some crowded junction.  I guess I don’t smile at the vegetable seller or the stranger at the traffic crossing.  I also guess that my student didn’t mean that.  Probably he noticed a drastic contrast between my face in school and the one outside.  Probably he thinks that my smile in the school is a put-on. 

I earnestly hope that my students don’t take my smile in school as a put-on.  Because it is not.  The smile is genuine.  Young students extract that smile from me and I am grateful to them for doing it.  They do make that difference to my life.

I wish the world did the same to all of us: extract smiles.  Well, the world is never so good to anyone, I think. 

When I meet people who are acquainted with me in some way I do make an effort to smile.  The effort is genuine even if the smile may not be.  I know a smile is much better than any other expression.  A smile disarms people.  Most importantly, a smile makes people think you are a happy person.  People generally leave happy creatures alone.  They are more interested in sad people because sad people carry stories within them.  People are interested in stories, sad stories, sad stories of other people.  So it’s better to smile at least to reassure the other people that you don’t have any interesting stories to narrate.  They’d rather leave you alone.

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniJuly 4, 2017 at 9:38 PM

    I confess that during my earlier days in your blog I used to hesitate a lot before for making constant comments on your posts fearing the negative impact it would have on other readers.
    But how can I genuinely leave your posts without stating my love for reading such posts of yours. I have learned a lot from you. Being genuine at least in efforts may actually lead us to happiness:)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 4, 2017 at 10:01 PM

      The ruthless frankness in my writing makes readers think of me as a disgruntled if not negative person. But those who live with me in reality know a different me. In fact, I have extremely cordial relationships with my students which would be impossible if I were a negative person. I'm glad you understood me rightly.

      Delete
  2. CifarJuly 7, 2017 at 11:53 AM

    smiles are always wall breakers in any situation

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJuly 21, 2017 at 10:04 PM

    After reading this post, it felt nice. Thank you sir, for writing this blog.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more