The smiles

Around here, like everywhere around the world, you get to see a wide variety of smiles. Its just more prominent around here because you get to see a lot of people from different nationalities or because you become more observant in a new place. i believe smiling is your way of showing others you wish them well for the day but people like me tend to overuse it merely because I choke on words around new people and I know that only air comes out if i open my mouth. so, smiling is always the safer option.

Lets get back to the different smiles.
The American smile : It is mostly the warm welcoming smile followed by a greeting of 'how do you do' for which you respond with a smile and more smile. Ideally, you are supposed to greet them back! Some of them might even give you the "what are you doing in our country you beggars!!" smile as well. There are others who could narrate their life stories in response to your reply smile and you stand wondering what you did to elicit that response! They could start off with how they had come to meet their friend and forgot which apartment she lived in, followed by how her dog cuddles up in the sofa eating its favorite treat and much more leaving you wondering what was so special about your smile!


The Afro smile : These are ever more friendly. in fact so friendly that they could pick up random conversation and usually they are so big that you wouldn't want to run out and risk being picked up from the ground like the burly dog in the tom n jerry series picking up jerry! Some on the streets could even greet with the 'morning sweetheart' which raises your malayalee eyebrows well up above your forehead and tend to give them that evil glance all the while maintaining that smile so as to save your skin.

The chinki smile : Those are the meek sweet smiles ever so worried about how you could make it to the other end of the road. The greeting that follow or conversation if any could make you wonder why they bother talking to you in their language and if you are lucky enough, you can figure out after some 15 minutes of running it over and over in your head that they greeted you with a 'how do you do'. but by then it would be too late and you would be left smiling to yourself.

The desi smile : This is what I encounter most often because of the high number of desis in the university. Some greet you with the "oh u Indian me too Indian" smile which you return with the same eagerness. You just walk on after that because that's what you do back home! Sometimes, you don't even bother looking at them because that is exactly what you did with strangers on the roads back home!

n then my favorite
The malayalee smile : Last day me and a friend were traveling in a bus and she tells me, " that lady up front seems to be a 'malyalee'" and her reason is "she makes the same weird set of noises without any linebreaks like you do". I try convincing her as always, that malayalam is a language and she still thinks it is just a mixture of whatever strange noises you can think of at the spur of the moment which by some fluke qualifies as a language! ok, so I listen to the lady carefully and I couldn't hear her properly and i was going to accept defeat. But then, she gave me that ever so familiar 'malayalee smile' and sure enough I knew she was our clan! We did not speak to each other but that smile spoke volumes. we even nodded to each other before getting off the bus! Sigh! That surely tops all other smiles! It helps firm the fact that we malayalees are everywhere. You just need to look around and flash 'the' smile when you spot one!