{"id":865,"date":"2013-08-23T13:31:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T08:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.wordpress.com\/2013\/08\/23\/small-but-true-smile"},"modified":"2013-08-23T13:31:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T08:01:00","slug":"small-but-true-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/?p=865","title":{"rendered":"Small but True Smile!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lately I have had little to no inspiration to sit and write. Not just stories, but even my journal or anything for that matter. I keep asking myself what has happened to me? I used to pen down plots for at least 2 stories \/fan-fictions per day. Now I am not even able to continue my two different fan-fictions that have been in hiatus for almost a year. To add to my list of turmoils, my friends started commenting that I give a very forced smile for most of my pictures. I frankly did not see the point in it. I mean you have to force yourself to smile at your reflection when taking a selfie right?\u00a0<\/i>
I am not the kind of person to smile at myself for something! But that is not what this post is all about. This post is the consequence of that comment. How do people differentiate between fake smiles and true smiles? I did not have a clue until I saw it with my own eyes not once but a few times under different circumstances. Now you all might be thinking “So what is your point?” Just continue reading and you will understand.<\/i>

<\/i>I knew this guy who totally believed in soul mates and all. He fell in love with his best friend and they are now happily engaged. Until I met him I did not understand the whole thing behind soul mates, love and affection on a total stranger. But then when I saw the way he looked at her, I understood. Every time he sees her a very small, subtle smile covers his face. Only if you look close, can you identify the curve in his lips. But then his eyes would be giving an altogether different meaning. That is when I understood what one meant when they said “His smile reaches his eyes”<\/i>
This might be a cliche thing to say. But one other experience showed me how a true smile looks like. Read the below story to learn more \ud83d\ude09<\/i>

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<\/i>Mondays are always the most cursed upon day of a week. I am sure every one of you would have cursed poor little Monday. I am one among such crowd. For some reason the buses are totally crowded on Monday alone. Either people are eager to go for work or they just want to get the week’s worth work done as soon as possible so they could have an extended weekend. Well I am part of the group which goes to work on every single day mumbling all the way. So Monday is no different for me except the part that I had little time to sleep in the morning.
So there I was waiting for the bus. I had missed my usual bus and that was totally irritating since all the buses that came afterwards will be crowded like hell. Also the next bus was going to take at least 20-40 minutes. So I started doing what I was good at: Observing people.<\/p>\n

The first person I saw was a girl, about my age I guess. She was constantly looking at her watch. She did not have a back pack or any kind of bag that might contain books. By the size of her hand bag I could tell that she might be of the working category. She turned around and I noticed that she was wearing a college ID. So she must be a final year student who has only her project work. That or she is bunking college to go out with her friends or boy friend. I decided it was the latter when a guy on an expensive looking bike came and stood in front of her. With a big smile she got on and left with a big vroooooooooom.
My eyes searched for the next target. Not many people were standing at the bus stop for long since everyone were running to get to their offices in time. I was still searching when I felt something near my leg. I looked down to find a puppy nudging me. A brown colored puppy which must be around a few weeks old. The stray puppy looked very skinny. Guess it’s mother left it some time recently. As much as I wished to feed it, I did not have anything with me. Nor there were any shops nearby where I could buy some biscuits for it. After a little more nudging the puppy realized that I was worthless and left to find someone worthy who would feed it. I felt sorry for the pup and my eyes never left it.
No one in the bus stop tried to do anything. I even thought of running to the nearest shop (which was about 1.5 km away) to get something for it. Before I could do that I saw one guy bending and petting the pup. He looked like he was in his early thirties. I thought he was going to stop with that. But then he acquired a large enough leaf and laid it in front of the pup.
Then he opened his lunch box and put out some amount of his lunch on that leaf. The pup gave out a small bark and started eating it hungrily. Almost everyone waiting for the bus had their eyes fixed on the pup. But I shifted my gaze over the guy. He got up and went towards the small dump of garbage. I don’t know how he did it, but retrieved a coconut shell. I mean how many of us would put your hand into garbage early in the morning while going to your office or college? But he did. And he did not have even a tiny frown on his face. He brought it near the pup and filled it with some coffee I think. He had been carrying all that in his bag. Guess he was going to some on-site work where you don’t get food or good food. Or he must be the hygiene-freak who did not trust the vendors who made coffee in the shops. But I decided it must be the former and not the latter.
He then silently got up, packed his stuff and came to stand near me. I saw my bus approaching the bus stop. Looked like he was also waiting for the same bus. With much difficulty I got on the bus and searched for him. I saw his still standing there. I was wrong. He was not waiting for the same bus as mine. But then I saw him turn around to look at the puppy. That moment his lips curved. Curved so very lightly that one could doubt if his lips were still pressed in a straight line. His eyes gave out a warm and satisfied look that spoke almost a million words making me a billion thoughts.
I knew then and there that he was truly happy and satisfied. The pup had made his day! That was smile so small but so true that made my lips curve upwards involuntarily!<\/p>\n

Now I know many of you will be getting questions and might even think that my thought process is funny. But there are some moments that make you happy even though you are not even remotely connected to the people involved in the scene. You are just a spectator and yet you feel so good. That is the true feeling of happiness. It is so contagious that it spreads so easily! But not all smiles can make everyone else around them smile as well! For most people a baby’s smile and the laughter of innocent children is enough to make them feel good. But there is more to that list. We just don’t know it, or worse we just choose not to acknowledge it!\u00a0<\/i>
All of this really did happen. And after this incident I made it a point to carry a couple of biscuits with me so that I could feed these stray animals in that area. I did feed another puppy once and I have never felt happier than I did at that time. I am not saying that all of us should start feeding stray dogs. Not all stray animals are harmless. But then try doing something good once in a while and see how good it feels. That feeling will radiate through you and will make people near you feel good as well no matter how short the duration might be.\u00a0<\/i>
P.S: This is not an advice or anything. Just a thought I felt like sharing! <\/i><\/p>\n

Aratrika <\/i><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Lately I have had little to no inspiration to sit and write. Not just stories, but even my journal or anything for that matter. I keep asking myself what has happened to me? I used to pen down plots for at least 2 stories \/fan-fictions per day. Now I am not even able to continue…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[66,84,392,443,561,575,842],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inner-musings","category-story-corner","tag-aratrika-stories","tag-back-story","tag-friendship","tag-happiness","tag-life","tag-love","tag-short-stories"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":62,"today_views":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}