Gosh, smiling is easy

Did I tell you I first smiled on March 31, 2007? That’s two days after my birth. While my mother hugged me tight after seeing me smile, my father just stood there dumb struck. Isn’t a girl supposed to smile at a man? How old fashioned can one get?

It isn’t my fault that my father was wearing a yellow shirt with a gray trouser – I mean, anybody would smile (or laugh, depending on how old you were) at such a color combination.

I had once tried smiling inside the womb. I think it was when my mother came across this quote by Al Capone while reading his biography: “You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun”.

I remember being confused about what both ‘smile’ and ‘gun’ were. But then, in the evening my father came home and said something to my mother which made me understand ‘smile’. He had said: “Rekha, everything will be fine. Now, just relax and give me a smile…show me some teeth.”

It can be seriously stifling inside the womb, but I tried to relax. I then showed my teeth to the blood-red wall I had right in front of my face….I had smiled. Just that I might have allowed a few drops of the amniotic fluid inside…for I felt pukish the whole day.

I still don’t know what a ‘gun’ means. Someday I intend to find out.