Friday: Don't Fear the Grin Reaper

Chapter Two of The Thousand Faces of the Smiling Buddha

PDSC	SPH	STG	RSR
0	0	1000	10.20
All the statistics in the world can't measure the warmth of a smile. -- Chris Hart

An accountant at heart, I immediately start to crunch numbers. Seven into one thousand. Take seven times one hundred... leaves three hundred... seven times forty... leaves twenty... seven times almost three. So a nearly 143 smiles-per-day average will be required to reach one thousand smiles in a weeks time. Assuming ten-plus hours a day lost to sleep, daily ablutions, and meditation, it works out to just over 10 smiles-per-hour. Ten smiles-per-hour! Quite suddenly I am engulfed by a wave of doubt. I may not even encounter 143 people in a day and there's no way I'm going to induce a smile in every person I meet. Maybe I should shoot for a more reasonable figure. Mother Teresa had encouraged her fan base to attempt to offer smiles to five strangers per day. Maybe I could take that number times five; twenty five smiles-per-day. One hundred seventy five smiles total over my seven day stay. Not too shabby a figure at all. My meandering mind is brought to a halt by a clear, yet unsounded injunction. It's one thousand smiles or bust. It's not 175, 250, or even 500 - it's the 1,000 faces of the smiling Buddha you're after. Time is slip sliding away and you need to start creasing some cheeks.

My pondering is cut short when a towering man built like an offensive-end proceeds to the head of the queue at the Indian consulate and brazenly pushes through the crush of people. He presents his snout at the mouse hole cut in the service window and snorts some unintelligible inquiry. I feel my indignation swell at his temerity. I have witnessed this behavior too many times before in India: some business-suited bigwig won't be bothered with peon protocol and is going to demand immediate satisfaction.

I'm about to abandon my place in line to educate the uncouth interloper in the finer points of linemanship, when he whirls about and we make eye contact. He smiles and I am immediately disarmed. Instead of reproaching him, I reluctantly find myself returning his smile. Thirty seconds into my grand smilethon and I've been preempted by my adversarial archetype. Remarkably, I discover my righteous indignation is nowhere to be found having been eviscerated in the exchange of smiles. I am annoyed, however, that I cannot tally the stranger's smile as he smiled first. The thousand smiles I intend to collect are going to have to be initiated by me and not the other way around. Continuing to beam, the stranger marches over to my position and thrusts his hand into mine to shake.

"I'm Sanjay," he announces with vigor. I look around as if for hidden cameras, dumbfounded by his inscrutable focus on myself. Sanjay leans in to confide in me that no one need be standing in line.

"The consulate staff will only see people in the order of the numbers handed out by the door," he explains, "These guys with higher numbers, or no numbers at all, are simply slowing up the process by crowding at the windows."

I remain baffled by my new acquaintance even as we work in concert to educate the others as to how the system, at least in theory, is supposed to work. The majority of those who were congregating in the unruly lines are convinced to return to their seats or retrieve a number. The congestion at the windows is considerably reduced, and for a while I imagine with smarmy self-satisfaction that the lines are dissipating at an improved clip.

Afterward I chat more with the broad-shouldered and baby-faced Sanjay and learn he is a pilot for Singapore Airlines and a competitive hot-air balloonist. He is in the process of porting his balloon to Delhi for a major international event. "You have to go with the flow," he explains of his pastime, "The only way to control the speed and direction of the balloon is by making altitudinal adjustments to catch differently moving currents of air." His explanation seems imbued with greater meaning as I embark on the smile project. And yet his parting grin only serves to remind me that I have yet to claim my first smilee.

I make the rounds of the waiting room, but have difficulty making eye contact, as the majority of those gathered stare vacantly at the ground or are engrossed in forms to be completed. A group of monks glance briefly at my nascent smile, but are unmoved and return to murmuring amongst themselves. My fledgling efforts do manage to make a painfully shy infant cry and elicit a nasty glare from her parents - but that's another project for another day.

Peering out a consulate window I spy army sharpshooters stationed on the rooftops of neighboring office buildings. Tomorrow will be Sri Lanka's Independence Day and the capital, always wary of bomb attacks from separatist rebels, is even more on edge in anticipation of the annual military parade. Although distant, I smile and wave to a serviceman scrutinizing the consulate with his binoculars. He hesitates on my position, as if weighing the propriety of responding to my childlike gesture, and then waves back. Though I am certain he is smiling – in the way that you know when someone is watching you even when you don't see them – I decide I cannot advance my smile counter with a clean conscience. I remain stuck at diddly-squat in my smile-pumping aspirations.

Once my number is called, the transaction of submitting my visa form and passport takes less than thirty seconds.

"I don't get to keep my passport?"

"No, you come back in six days." The consulate staffer responds without looking up from a cumbrous pile of passports that he thumbs through with dull precision. The jumble proves too unwieldy for even his seasoned, nimble fingers and a small avalanche of deep blue and maroon jacketed passports finds its way to the floor. I note with some chagrin that my passport is among the casualties. After the debacle of having my last passport lost by the consulate in San Francisco and then stolen in Ahmedabad, I have become keenly sensitized to the whereabouts of its hard-earned replacement.

"You'll have it ready next Thursday?"

"You come back in six days," the staffer answers from beneath his desk where he sets about retrieving the fallen passports. He is clearly disappointed to find me still at his window when he rights himself and my smile cannot penetrate his stolid facade. I scan the passports and with some relief recognize mine among the scatter.

"Thursday?"

"Six days. Next!"

"But there is a sign in the stairwell that says the consulate will be closed on Thursday and I have to fly out on Friday in the early afternoon."

"Sign is old. Six days."

"So the sign is incorrect?"

"Old. Six days. Next!"

Only partially reassured I make my way for the exit. On the stairs to the foyer I come upon an elderly cleaning woman using a hand rag to wipe down the stone steps. Her muscles appear taut under darkly wrinkled skin and her high cheek bones hint at a former pulchritude. I slow my pace and she looks up from her thankless task just long enough to make eye contact. I smile warmly. She returns to her work, but after a moment's deliberation looks up again and smiles back at me. My spirits soar. The campaign's inaugural smile. I'm finally on my way to one thousand. Only nine hundred ninety nine to go. I fairly skip down the remaining steps.

Near the exit I collect smiles from two security officers and a second cleaning woman. Score four for the proletariat. Outside I am set upon by a trio of competing tour guides. With the new project in mind, I am torn as to whether I should stay in Colombo to maximize the number of people with which I will be interacting, or head out to explore the island at large. The smallest and eldest of the three guides begrudgingly returns my smile and introduces himself as Lafir. I take his name to be a wink from the great beyond and agree to enlist his services after he asserts that a road trip will be slightly more economical than staying in the city. A wider arena to spread the good cheer, I reason. Go with the flow.

PDSC Previous Day's Smile Count
SPH Smiles Per Hour (calculations based on a fourteen hour work day or seven hour half day; reflects the previous day's tally)
STG Smiles To Go (smiles remaining to reach 1,000)
RSR Required Smile Rate (SPH needed over remaining day(s) to reach 1,000)