Smile a mile

The bell rang twice. Cursing the person who invented it (Joseph Henry – I think), I went and looked outside. Two women, one of them quite tall (coz, I could see her head above our gate) asked for two minutes of my time. Usually I have tons to give away but yesterday I wanted to finish off the assignment so was studying pretty hard (sometimes i do that too). Seeing them I could guess that they were there either for donations or to sell something.

A habit of seeing them, as a disturbance and nuisance combined, changed a little only when I started working. Boarding two buses et al, I still think I had it easy after seeing the marketing guys and gals walking in the hot sun trying to sell their products to disinterested customers who shooed them away. (Can’t even blame them, what with thugs and thieves roaming around nowadays!).

So as all this gyan was moving about my head like a big crown! :-), I missed out on what the ladies standing outside were telling me when suddenly I heard a question. “What should we do so that all the wrongs happening in this world stops? Who is it that we should turn to for peace”? Apart from what Peter Drucker said in Business Communication, nothing else had the strength to penetrate my head at that particular moment. So when she saw all question marks and exclamations on my face she herself gave the answer, “Lord!” she said, “who in the bible is known as “Jehovah”. We strongly believe in this and wanted to share this with you. Thank you for your time”.

That was all? She called me outside to tell me this? I really didn’t know what to feel or think. Was it anger? Or relief that this was all. Then amidst this confusion of emotions, I saw it. A Smile, which radiated her face. As if it came from the bottom of her heart. She was really happy because she was doing something that she totally believed in and that showed. She then went and rang the doorbell of our neighbour to say it all over again with the smile never leaving her face.

All anger or relief or whatever gave way to wonder and the thought that ‘No matter what other‘s think about you, do what u want to do and that’s all there’s to it’ and yeah ‘Smile’ coz that will take you a mile. So smiling I got back to do what I wanted to do. Went straight to the kitchen to have a kachori (long time no eat, that’s why!!!) With half of it stuffed into my mouth I turned and found my mother staring at me. I did the only thing which came to my mind, I smiled. Took a while for my mother to reciprocate, but she did.