Many years back, when I was a last year medical student, I came to know of a physician with great diagnostic and academic powers.We medical students were in awe of this man.He would always be present at all academic meetings of the medical college and he would share his vast practical knowledge and acumen with flair. At the end of every such meeting junior doctors and medical students would flock around him and ask him questions pertaining to cases they had in the wards, and he would oblige.
However there was one aspect to this man that went beyond my understanding: everytime he was out of the hall where there was an academic meet that had concluded, he would have a grin pasted on his face. This grin was very difficult to make sense of : it was in part acknowledgement of another's presence, in part just a hint of a scoff, and in part perhaps a bit of self amusement. His trademark grin has remained with him ever since I have known him, even to this day. I often wondered about it and thought as to what must be making him smile the way he did; what must be making that smile-grin stick on for so long even when there was hardly anyone around to smile to.
Now let us fast forward to some twenty five years. Recently I was visiting a patient of mine at a tertiary care hospital. Every few paces I met a face that smiled at me because each considered me as being one of the doctors of that facility, and I was in some sense, their senior. The trouble was that I did not know most of them personally, and could only make out that this person must be on the staff of this hospital. If I ignored them, it would be very bad manners, and if I smiled at a person who in his opionon, I just did not know at all, I would risk being a little crazy. What to do? It was then that I noticed that I had had a smile on my face for the entire length of my stay at that hospital: smile just in case I met someone who smiled at me, even if I did not know them- it avoided the embarrassment of having to embarrass someone who showed the courtesy of smiling at me. It was that physician's grin. Now I knew what it meant!
