India has a smile shortage

Standing in a queue at a check-in counter at Kolkata airport, I was struck by a sense of déjà vu – you could call it ‘the blues’ too. Usually the staff of this airline are anything but blue, despite their colour-specific name, so my surprise was even greater. I was reminded of the bad old days when we had only one airline, and then only two, and their mostly truculent or poker-faced staff. It seemed to pain them to smile, unless the customer happened to be a VIP or a CIP – commercially important person.

Then came the rash of newer and mostly low cost airlines with their hordes of young staff, bright eyed, bushy-tailed – and presumably brimming with bonhomie and energy. These relative newbies have retained their smiles longer than their predecessors in the aviation business, but the good humour appears to be wearing thin now. Blame it on recession, long hours, staff shortages and even creepy customers, but smiles are becoming harder to come by again, unless you’re a VIP or CIP.

Only airline staff should not be blamed, though. Indians in general are chary of smiling. An unprovoked smile often elicits the same sequential response as an unexpected slap: shock, surprise, suspicion. If the smiler and the smilee – for want of better terms! – happen to be of the same sex, the reaction may be slightly less extreme than if they are of different genders. In case of the latter, the degree of suspicion or skepticism also depends on which gender initiated the smile.

Yet there is no real cultural barrier to smiling in India, unlike kissing, which has an unpleasantly occidental flavour for some. It is possibly the nicest way to say a range of things with actually saying a word. For a people who are not naturally physically tactile, it should be the best way to communicate or simply connect without any actual contact. But for some reason it is not. Indeed smiling in India – as many women have discovered to their chagrin – is often misconstrued as ‘interest’.

But that should not impede smiling in more discrete situations, such as offices and gatherings. Yet smiles are probably the rarest in offices. One puzzled and somewhat disappointed head of a large company once told me “People don’t smile”. He meant the employees he encountered when entering and exiting the office each day. He was clearly a familiar and always pleasant face but he drew blank stares most of the time. So he concluded that people just don’t smile in general.

I had a different take on such stinginess. “They don’t smile because they don’t know you,” I told him. Indians tend to smile – if at all – only at those whom they know or those who matter. Like airline staff. He was indeed a face that many employees saw very often but did not have the faintest idea of his identity, given his famously reclusive and low-key persona. Had they known he was ‘The Boss’, he may have got more smiles – ingratiating as well as genuine – than he bargained for.

The most precious smiles are impromptu and impartial ones, like a happy baby’s. As children grow up, their smiles become less carefree, more cautious. By the time they are adults, they ration their smiles for family and friends. The most pernicious non-economic shortage in India if not the world is of ‘real’ smiles. I can vouch that a smile (like the Bard said about the quality of mercy) is twice blessed: “It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” Are you generous with your smiles? I am.