Lifts, confined spaces and smiles.

I am in a lift in the evening. Maybe 7.30 pm. I don't have a huge rucksack that will be sticking out behind my back, the new version of the old hunchback that we have become. Two men have positioned themselves near the door strategically as they would be dropping down at 2 and 4 respectively. I hope you got that. 0 to 2, two flights of stairs and 0 to 4 is four flights of stairs. Evidently, they do not need the simple exercise. And yes, they have the hunchbacks. One guy has his laces undone. That's a fad. Or the office isn't far away. He's just slipped on his shoe. Carried the rucksack to the car park, got into his mobile hermetically sealed chamber and honked his way home. Then a few steps to a lift and viola! Home. Laces are for meetings, clients and photographs. The lift stops at 1. A gaggle of kids enter the lift along with the young moms after them. It's a large lift. Everyone makes their way in without trouble. A little girl with a distrught face is motioned towards me. "Go and make a pitch to uncle. He will listen to you. Go on, now" The sweet distraught kid looks down at the floor and starts her pitch as we are between 3 & 4. "Uncle, tigers are vanishing and have no one..." I lose the rest of what she's telling in the yells other kids are making. I bend down to catch a little more. Her mother, the young lady who's motioned her towards me, asks her to look into my eyes while making the pitch. In the meanwhile the girl is showing me the badge that she can give me if I "Adopt a tiger", an initiative rolled out by her school, Innventure Academy. I ask her how much does it cost. She says Rupees Fifty. By now, you know I have bought into her request. She could have sold me the badge, a bag, a boat and a jetty to keep the boat tethered to. She's earnest but she's glum. I feel for her. I take out my purse and hand her a hundred. She thinks she does not have the change and her floor arrives. Mild panic results. The mother helps her take out the change and hand me the fifty. We bid goodbye. The mother does a good job of allowing the kid to fight her battle herself. That kind of initiative is welcome. The school is a big and quite reputed one. Obviously, it's an initiative they have created to make the children responsible citizens and also contribute something to a wildlife fund or whatever the authorities have decided. But they have not helped the child with the confidence to do it smilingly. I know it's difficult to achieve. Everybody cannot be Shashi Kapoor or Madhuri Dixit. A ready smile for all occasions. But schools should have fifteen minutes on the art of smiling. Seriously. I mean, look at it from the point of view of children, glum mom speaking to glum Dad who's bent over his mobile answering office messages. Then glum mom turns to her own maid group and gets grimmer when she sees that some maid has been offered 7000 bucks to do JPB. What's the child to do. Where does she learn smiling? They don't have Manmohan Desai films to go to. Or Govinda to laugh away their worries with. JPB is Jhaadu Pocha Bartan. What did you think?