A smile is a smile is a smile

When I was a kid, I doubled up in mirth whenever I caught sight of our local doodhwala with a chutiya (tuft) at the back of his head. Every time I smiled at that sight, my mother rapped me on the knuckles.

“That is his belief according to his traditions," she said. “You cannot hurt other peoples’ sentiments even if with a smile – in fact, that wide smile of yours is obnoxious. And do not forget the character of a person is determined by the things they laugh at," she always told me.

Obviously, she hadn't heard of the Delhi High Court judge who has virtually sanctioned murder if it is committed with a smile. I wish that judgment had been popularised during my childhood because then I would not have had to be told 'chullu bhar paani mein doob maro' by a classmate for simply smiling at a huge pink birthmark on her cheeks.

It drew lots of laughs from cruel eight-year-olds and I was one of them. I had to ask my mother what that phrase meant and she instantly looked at me, frowning. "What have you done now that someone needs to tell you something like that?”

When I told her I got another rap on my knuckles. “What did I tell you about not making fun of other peoples’ pain?” she asked. When I protested that all other classmates had done so too, she said, “I don't care about others. I care about you. And you cannot bring disrepute to your upbringing by such bad behaviour. “

Obviously, if the Smiley judgment of the Delhi High Court had been in place at that time, neither my mother would have had reason to discipline me, nor my classmate would have had the guts to ask us to drown in a palmful of water because we had all been smiling and laughing through her embarrassment and none of us had any hate in our hearts for her, only smiles.

Then again in a fist fight with a classmate during my teens, I ended up slapping her. As other classmates guffawed, I smiled very broadly at the stunned expression on her face. This time my mother locked me up in my room for a day and headed to my school to apologise to that classmate and the principal.

When she learnt the girl had been obnoxious to most of us and had it coming, she let me out of my room but still told me, “Even if that girl was mean, you had no business getting physical. And do not let the laughs you got from your friends fool you into thinking you are considered any better.”

Well, if the Delhi High Court judgment had been in place then, I could have told her I had a broad smile on my face as I connected with my classmate's cheek and saw her stunned expression. That surely did not constitute violence, because I was smiling, wasn’t I? How wrong could my mother have been!

In later years, I regretted passing on those values to younger children in the family. When my niece harassed her real martinet of a grandmother by disturbing her television settings in retaliation for refusing to allow her to watch her favourite cartoon show, I was stern with the little girl.

She giggled and could not keep a broad smile from her face every time her grandmother called the cable man desperately to come fix her television settings. The grandmother was not a loveable creature at all and I hadn't heard then that if you hated with a smile, it was not hate at all. So, I admonished my niece against her mischief and asked her to apologise to her grandmother.

Had I known about how a smile excuses a bad deed, I would never have done so-- for, well, the child was smiling and laughing through all of her grandmother’s distress and doesn't the High Court judge know better than any of us about such things?

Then, again, one of my bosses, in my early years of employment, handed me a pornographic limerick with a broad wicked smile. I wonder why I complained to his superior and had him pulled up by the management. If the Delhi High Court judgment had come sooner, I would have known he hadn't intended any sexual harassment because he had been beaming while he handed me those verses. The more fool me!

I wonder if Dhananjoy Chaterjee, the watchman who was hanged in Alipore jail for raping and murdering a 15-year-old school girl did it all with a smile. If so, his judicial execution was very wrong and the Calcutta High Court judges could have taken some lessons from the Delhi High Court judge who decreed a hate crime is not a hate crime if committed with a smile.

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In a whole series of bizarre statements from judges, particularly in north India, this smiley judgment has to really take the cake. I wonder what kind of exposure such judges have had through their education – I remember a woman judge in Nagpur stating that molestation is not molestation (in the case of a minor) unless there is a skin-to-skin contact between the perpetrator and the victim.

She was an additional judge in the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court collegium then decided to withdraw its recommendation to make her a permanent judge after the skin-to-skin judgment caused outrage all over the country.

It was an unprecedented decision and the judge resigned before her term was over as without being made permanent she would have been automatically demoted by being reverted to a district court.

Her case shows us that there can be course corrections even in these times of lack of institutional integrity. I wonder how the skin-to-skin judge and the smiling judge live with their consciences knowing that they have not executed their duties with integrity, honesty and the best of their intellectual capacities.

And if the judges are upset by the wrath of the citizenry at their judgments, well, we are smiling even as we express our contempt for them. Smiling through it excuses all. Didn't the Delhi High Court judge just tell us so?

(Sujata Anandan is Consulting Editor, National Herald Mumbai. Views are personal)