How to Be Happy? Spread the Smiles

Smile is such a beautiful, shall we say, creation of God. It is one of the best and the most wonderful ability bestowed upon us. Can we even imagine a world without smiles? Just try. I am sure your mind must have been flooded with a huge number of smiling faces. And each smile is associated with so much of happiness. The person who gives a smile is happy, the person whom the smile is aimed at is happy, and even a casual onlooker cannot avoid smiling and adding to the happiness. Then there are those toothless smiles of babies and the old that infuse us with so much happiness that their smiles become the very purpose of our life.

Isn’t it paradoxical then that there are very few people around us with a smiling face? By the time children grow up, their smiles vanish and a grim or grumpy expression settles on their faces. Luckily, there are a few people in this world who literally live by the dictum ‘spread the smile.’

Let me tell you about such persons.

My father and my nephew, Mohit, were two such people. They used to always spread smiles wherever they went and make people around them happy with their words and actions. People used to enjoy their company very much.

Then there are people who make a career out of their ability to make people laugh. I highly value such people for their clean and healthy sense of humor. Till people are in the company of such professionals, they forget their tensions and woes. And the laughter makes them mentally strong and equipped to face the challenges of life.

Also, there are a few rare people who are facing huge challenges in their own lives and yet live by the dictum, ‘Spread the Smile.’ Their capacity to laugh is amazing. They have conquered their own challenges with their smiles and are busy making other people happy with their smile. If you search the Web for 'a person without limbs' you will know about one such person.

There are quite a few like him and I plan to write about these people in the near future.

I would like to share with my readers about Anand Saigal in detail. Anand Saigal not only lived by the dictum, but he also ensured that he died by it too.

But of course, such extremities happen only in fiction and not in real life. Hence their impact too is larger than life.

Anand, the name itself means ‘happiness.’ He is the main character in a movie of the same name, that is, Anand that I saw almost five decades ago when I was in school.

Anand is a cancer patient and the movie is about the way he takes on life after being diagnosed with lymphosarcoma of the intestine. He has only a few months to live.

He is determined not to let the seriousness of his disease affect him at all. In fact, he takes upon him to infect all people around with light-hearted positivity.

Anand literally shocks his doctor Dr Bhaskar with his light-hearted banter.

Anand forms an instant bond with strangers, like with the wife of the doctor friend of Dr. Bhaskar. He tells her that though his disease has a fancy name it is just zukhaam, that is, the common cold.

When she takes him to her spiritual guru for his blessings, he tells the Mouni Baba to bless him so that he should speak endlessly in a way that makes other people happy. Even decades later I could sense the effect of the striking contrast, to seek the blessings of verbosity from a saint who has chosen to be silent.

A chance encounter with Isa Bhai, a theatre actor, on the road is a delightful episode in instant bonding where he learns a dialogue, “Hum sab uperwale ke hath ki kathhputliyan hain ….” that he uses as his final goodbye in the last scene of the movie.

In between, there is his interaction with Dr. Bhaskar’s girlfriend and how he helps her in her relationship with Dr. Bhaskar.

As his condition worsens and he is hospitalized he meets his nurse. Anand addresses her as mummy and tells her that she has initiated an altercation among the Gods by praying to Jesus for a Hindu patient.

As expected, the final scene of the death of Anand had to be the most impactful one, and that it indeed was. Who could have expected that Anand himself would come back to life to console the immensely disturbed Dr. Bhaskar? But the all-positive Anand could do even this. The otherwise silent and serious doctor, moved by the death of his dear friend and patient Anand, was violently shaking the dead body, urging him to speak up and not remain silent. He was once again shocked as he could hear Anand say, “Babu Moshai, hum sab duniya ke rangmanch mein kathhputliyan hain, jinki dor uparwale ke hath mein hai. Koun kab kahan aur kaise yahan se chala jayega, ye koi nahi janta.”

It was through his recorded voice that Anand continued to succeed in his life’s mission even after his death. The result, Dr. Bhaskar wrote and published the story of Anand as a book that ended with, Anand mara nahi, Anand kabhi marte nahi.

So true, Anand is still alive in me and it so many other people like me. And from now on he will live in the hearts of many of my readers too. Some of them could be inspired by him to spread happiness through smiles. Or at least to face their own challenges with a smile.

Just in case, you have the time and will to watch the movie, here it is.