A smile can make all the difference! How many times I had heard this phrase, how many times I must have read it and yet always gave and took smiles as a normal part of the day. But exactly how much difference it can make was brought home to me by a concentrated effort to smile at someone who never had a smile to give.

My office, where I was working as a secretary, was located in a hotel in the main shopping area of New Delhi. There were a lot of small offices in that hotel and we were expected to use the washroom of the hotel since there were no separate toilets for the offices. A friend in the office next door to mine and I used to normally walk down the lobby of the hotel together and every time we went to the washroom we were greeted by a grumbling old woman who was in charge of cleaning the washrooms.

She always had something nasty to say about everyone, always had a curse to shower on someone or the other and we felt it was extremely unpleasant to have to meet her everyday.

One day while generally discussing this lady, my friend and I decided that we would start wishing her pleasantly every day regardless of her rude behavior, because it couldn’t be very nice to hold a job like cleaning the toilets all the time. A smile and a pleasant word every day was what we were going to give her. So next time we saw her we smiled at her and asked her about her health. She looked as if we had done the unthinkable!! She couldn’t believe her ears and didn’t bother to reply.

But during the course of the next few days whenever we encountered her we stuck to our decision and smiled at her and asked about her and her family. Initially, she seemed in total shock, maybe because no one had treated her nicely before, maybe she felt that everyone was looking down on her because she was none other than just a toilet cleaner. But after a few days, when we smiled at her and wished her, wonder of wonders!! She smiled back!! She told us she wasn’t very well and by and by she started telling us about her family. Other ladies who would also be there to use the washroom would stand by, listen and may be sometimes add a word of sympathy or kindness.

We found that she had been married off at a very young age of 16 years to a man of 45 years who was an alcoholic, used to beat her and squandered away the meagre earnings she had. She had four children within a span of six years and with no help from anyone, brought them up single handedly, going hungry herself most of the time, trying to feed the four children, working from morning to night with not a moment to spare to contemplate the plight of her life. She was uneducated and could not get any other job except that of a brick carrier at a construction site or finally that of a toilet cleaner.

Years of nothing but beatings, hunger pangs, working without much return, her heart crying out at the thin emaciated looks of her children, the thought that the same future lay ahead for her children if she didn’t do anything about it and yet not being able to do much! She felt life had given her nothing to smile about.

But when we smiled at her daily, as she told us later, she felt there are people who saw her as a human being and not just as a toilet cleaning lady. All these years of the pains and miseries of her life had been bottled up inside her. Talking about them instead of giving vent to the pent up anger of years had given her a release. Her angry grumblings gave way to a gentle smile for people. In return people smiled at her and through the day she went around with a feeling that things were not so bad after all.

And all this began with a smile. So go ahead and smile because:

A smile costs nothing but gives much

It enriches those who receive

Without making poorer those who give it.

It takes but a moment, but the memory of it lasts forever

A smile creates happiness in the home.

Fosters goodwill in business

Brings rest to the weary, cheer to the discouraged,

Sunshine to the sad, and is nature’s best antidote for trouble.

Some people are too tired to give a smile

Give them one of yours

As no one needs a smile so much as one who has none to give.

Sulakshna Maira Copyright 2000 s_maira@hotmail.com

I work with the Cyprus High Commission in New Delhi now and am a firm believer that our Mission in life is not just our home, ourselves but we were sent to this earth for something bigger. And we can begin with feeling for others, caring for others and always taking one more step to make others happy in order to create joy in this world of ours.