The Smile Millionaire

Most millionaires I meet have faces that look like crumpled pajamas. There is tension written large on a wrinkled forehead. Their eyes are sunken deep. Smiles seem to have vanished from their cheeks like the clothes of MTV starlets.

A smile is the bridge between a politician's tall promise and his null performance; it is the most convincing alibi of a late coming secretary when she is confronted by a strict boss. A smile is the perfect way for a dentist to tell a patient, "Sorry for extracting the wrong tooth!" When an aircraft refuses to take off for hours, the ground staff can cover the elusive distance of miles with frequently flying smiles.

The face has a thousand muscles. You can organise the same muscles either to manufacture a dimpled smile or a crumpled frown. In both cases, the input determines the output. In the case of a smile, the input is a playful and relaxed mental state. Behind a frown is an uptight and obsessive ego that needs to control everything. Every millionaire in the united States helps create eleven more millionaires. I do not know what the statistics are in India. But one can't fail to see that for every millionaire in this country, there are a large number of pakora faces raising eyebrows in envy. The poor in India smile more often than their rich counterparts. If you haven't made the real millions, you can at least be a smile millionaire. You cannot count these smile millionaires, but they surely count in lifting the spirit of our country!

Written by Dr.Debashis Chatterjee The author is a Professor at IIM, Lucknow.