On the intersection of Pearse Street and Westmoreland Street is a Thai-Myanmar specialty cuisine restaurant called Camille, which is a favoured eating haunt for my friend Jane and me. It is a favourite for two reasons — one it is right across the street from Trinity where we both spend most of our waking hours, and two because we are comfortable in our ways and rarely change our habits and the restaurant fits our sensibilities in an odd, obscure way. On one lazy afternoon we were in the South-East end of the restaurant working our way through an order of Massaman curry, brown rice and Khao Soi Gai Beef Noodles when the conversation came up.
It is no secret that I spend days drumming up conversations with random people from all walks of life. It is a habit that I carry forward from my days in India and perhaps from journalism. It is not one of the most prudent habits to have when having company so I usually do it on my own time. This day however, on our journey from Pearse Street side of Trinity to Camille, we had run into a homeless man, a janitor, a well dressed old gentleman in a tweed jacket and a couple of children, all of whom had waved out to me with a smile. Jane was amused at this and at the restaurant it had come up when our respective orders had arrived.
‘It must be cool to be able to talk to strangers,’ she said. I nodded in agreement.
‘I don’t think I could do it. How do you do that?’
Her question got me thinking. I rewound back in time and realised that this habit had been with me since my growing up days. People always had stories and they told it all if you smiled at them and asked them politely. It was one of the reasons that subconsciously pushed me to a career in writing and perhaps journalism. But that was on a microscopic, personal level. A polite smile actually helps break barriers faster than government laws and regulations. And if you’re in the business of interacting with people, it is perhaps a valuable skill set to have. But what does it do on a macroscopic level? How does smiling at people help make you better? I went back to an article I had read in the Smithsonian magazine about how smiling helped reduce stress in human beings. A ‘Duchenne smile’ also referred to as a genuine smile, by psychologists not only helps reduce stress in the person doing it but also acts as a barrier breaker and allows people to approach one another with ease.
But in addition to all of this on a more simpler level, it helps make the world a slightly better place to live in. It forms unnatural bonds of human relationships amongst people transcending all man-made and genetic barriers. It allows people to be free and unshackled and a little less guarded in a world that prides itself on becoming more Big Brother-like with its need for constant monitoring. Sure there are psychosocial elements that researchers could delve into, behind the workings of 18-maxillofacial muscles but in my case, it opens up portals to people. It affords me a conversation with a homeless man whose contentment I envy, it allows me to play hopscotch with little children in the park, gives me conversations with old people who speak fondly of bygone times and even allows me to find comfort and familiarity amongst people in a new world far quicker than most others.
In addition to making the world better, the smile gave me stories. Every person walking by on the street is a story. He or she, had a family, friends, dreams, hopes, aspirations, struggles just like me and that was fascinating. It has made me realise that there is not enough time left for me to write all of these stories down. Some are assimilated and absorbed, others are adsorbed, and a few quietly forgotten. If not stories, then it has given me characters for my stories, and if in that process it made someone feel nice, then I think the universe would not grudge me for stealing happiness from its pocket.
Jane brought me back from my mental ramblings when she reminded me that I had been quiet for a while. I told her I was thinking of the answer.
‘So how do you do it?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I just smile. You’d be surprised at how many doors a warm smile opens for everyone,’ I said.
‘I believe you,’ she said rather nonchalantly and laughed.
(Rohan Swamy is a former journalist, writer, photographer, now working at Trinity College Dublin)
