friends, were you ever the victim of irrepressible mirth, convulsive laughter that creeps in at the most inoppurtune moments. Moments when you are supposed to be concentratedly focused on the enormous seriousness of the situation. You try hard to stifle down the little impish stream of giggles but they adamantly burst out noisy in thier uncaring abandon. It constantly happens with me like in.... labour law classess, convocations, poetry recitals, interviews and quite often in romantic interludes .... which sometimes leaves the other person quite mortified.
And how different is this laughter from the pseudo- pretty smile which i sport in my numerous photographs. I wear that smile as a part of my carefully assembled armour against God-knows-what and it is supposed to mean absolutely nothing at all. In fact i wear that smile when i do not care a bit about what is going on and want to show you, him, her and the rest of the world that it is, in fact very important to me.
So why is it that in all great classical paintings men and women are shown smiling perfectly and not laughing? Starting from Da Vinci to our very own Raja Ravi Verma the paintings have beautiful,peaceful,cunning,innocent,frivolous, holy,pitiful and wonderful smiles but i am yet to come across the truly thoughtlessly laughing face. How can we explain why great painters ruled out laughter from the realms of beauty?
The great artist Rubens once said "a face is beautiful beacause it reveals the presence of thought, whereas at the moment of laughter man doesnt think. "In the instant that man grasps the comical, he does not laugh; laughter follows afterwards as a physical reaction. Laughter is a convulsion of the face and a convulsed person does not rule himself either by will or reason. It is again the greatest unifier..... we differ from each other by our immovable features but in convulsion we are all the same.
On the sunny side i have seen many a quarrel ending when people give in to the dormant nudge of laughter. It is one of the few occasions on which i relax and completely forget about how photogenically disadvantaged my face looks and keep laughing till i can feel the salt of my tears against my cheeks. I am lucky to be in love with a man who appreciates the rich abandon of laughter more deeply than i do and hence i had more of these glorious moments in the recent past.But no more of this now. Customer Relationship Management class beckons and i must rush.... Have a laughably beautiful day.... cheers..
