or a smile should maim, I would have been seriously injured or died many times over by now. But I'm still alive...
Why is it that people nowadays are so paranoid of a smile, a nod, a hello from strangers? Why do people give off that "do I know you?" kind of look or worse still return a friendly hi with a killer stare. A smile should be returned with a smile and likewise an acknowledgment given for any courtesy so rendered. But I guess that would just make everything too hunky dory and perfect and we insists on believing that we don't live in a perfect world anyway.
I remember a time when my friends and I used to make friday rounds at one of the more notoriously seedy parts of the city, bringing with us nothing but packets and packets of nasi- lemak (coconut-milk rice) and smiling our way through. Just so we could distribute our measly hand-outs to the not so fortunate late night workers doing over-time straddling the corridors of red-lighted shop-lots, or those self-taught "medical school interns" perfecting their already perfect injection skills, that despite the environment and the behavioral norm expected in that kind of vicinity, people there were generally more spontaneous and genuine in their appreciation, despite our intrusion into their world. People nowadays would have thought us obnoxiously presumptous then or worse, just plain silly to be making our presence felt in that special enclave. But if truth be told, I think we generally felt a lot safer and more welcomed there then.
And I must say that the warmth that emanated from those people, who were abandoned to stay and survive in that cold cold place, was definitely more real than even some of our closest friends or neighbors...
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