Late last month, scientists – dental scientists, that is, broke down the mystery of the perfect smile into a set of hard numbers. That charming smile that made your heart flutter last week can now be explained by some basic mathematical ratios. 
The degree of perfection of your own smile will be a function of how close to these identified ratios your smile is. And the narrower the gap, the more easily you will be able to cause a flutter in the hearts of a beholder.
This research has got me thinking. What this actually means is that by careful reverse application of this discovery, you can engineer a flutter in the heart of a person you have chosen to subject the smile at. In other words, by exercising the degree of control you can hold over these metrics, you should be able to exercise the extent of the flutter.
The implications of this finding can be of great use in Mumbai. And the extensions of this research can be a blessing to common Mumbaikars. Especially to a hapless driver at peak traffic on a weekday around 7 pm in places like Chakala, Milan Subway, S.V. Road etc, where chaos rules. It is common for drivers of autos, cars, bikes, buses to become barbaric and insensitive and any hapless driver can be the victim of an accident resulting in minor scratches to serious dents.
In such a situation, what happens is not what should rightfully happen. Bullying, intimidation, threats of physical harm – these are some of the things that tend to allow the wrong-doer walk away without so much as an apology to the hapless victim. And as you might agree, it might not be a good time or situation to explain Gandhian thinking and values to the wrong-doer.
Therefore, it becomes very important for the common person like you and me to be able to deal with such a situation without feeling wronged.
And thats where this path breaking research can be of use to us.
But before we get to that, we must know the whole situation in order to appropriately apply an extension of this mathematical breaking down of facial expression. We must combine the application of these metrics with some other supporting techniques that work to your advantage –
- Accuse before you get accused. Who caused the accident is not important. Especially if it was your mistake to begin with. The first 10 seconds after the accident are crucial. This is a very important phase to set the stage and you need to always appear like an indignant, provoked victim of bad driving of the culprit.
- Abuse before you get abused. Open the door and step out and begin shouting in the direction of the other party. Louder you shout, more effect you make and the more public support you will get. Have a string of abuses ready for such occasions. It can be anything. You could recite the translation of Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech in Tamil or Swahili, or consider reciting names of your family read backwards. It does not matter. Just sound foul and angry and terribly wronged. But by all means resist the temptation of using abuses that involve the sister, mom father, uncles and third cousins of the other party. That would hijack your cause and put you on the defensive and can seriously compromise the position of strength you are tryin to establish.
- Gather supporters:By this time, your shouting will have caught the attention of passers by. Around now is when you come to appreciate a marvellous thing about India. At any point in time, even if it is the busiest city of India, aka Bombay, no matter where an incident happens – so long as it is a public place, there will be about 50 jobless people suspended invisibly in the air who immediately appear and descend at the site with ample curiosity and a helluva lot of disposable time to watch the proceedings. As you set the tone of your stand, begin speaking to people in the crowd in a victimised tone. A tone that is appealing with askance. You are askancing justice here.
- Being prepared:Most incidents like this happen unexpectedly. It helps to be prepared for such situations. Some common preparations that can be used in varying situations of seriousness include carrying the card of a big political leader, local MLA/cooperators name, name and number of a cop in a police station, awareness of names of ‘big people in big places’; eating ample proteins and drinking Complan when you are in adolescence (nothing however, beats having parents 6 feet tall); learning karate and ju-jitsu, ability to do 100 meters in less than 12 seconds(very useful if your tactics are not compelling and your efforts to appeal to the bystanders fails miserably because you ran over a the toe of a man sitting inside his shop); maintaining an Arnold Shivashankarnagar-like body and so on.
- Establish Dadagiri and intimidating tactics: Now we come to the important part which we have so far been leading up to. You have to be able to rattle the other party just by all what you have done so far and what you are about to do now. You have to appear big in size, mind & might, and engineer intimidation. And have the ugliest frown on your face.
And this is where the good old metrics can be of use. So taking cue from the good scientists, I present to you my armchair postulate on the perfect frown and the relevant metrics.
Pathe 
Takatax said:
LMAO! (No sound effects though) Precious :-))
Om said:
Hilarious, but a drivers daily chore. Reminds me of similarities in bangalore with some subtle modifications with a rash kannada and urdu dialects laced with temptations to resist attributes.
pODU said:
did you sketch that?? the baldie image da??? : )
JustPathe said:
@Tax: Nothing like a resounding laugh – just let it free..
@OM: True…its certainly a daily chore…afterall it steals about 2 hours of valuable evening time!
@pODU: Guilty on that count..Since I couldnt find any pic of Jessica Simpson with an ugly frown, was forced to dig out my dusty pencils and charcoal and quickly create one…if that wasnt bad enuf, this is a pic of that sketch instead of a scanned image, making it overall a terrible job! Result: a lot of things turned out ugly – not just the frown!
Basky said:
Wasn’t a smile the original ‘jaadoo ka jappi’?!
Basky said:
I remember seeing a similar tech diagram for Mona Lisa to analyse how her smile was so special. Btw, I just get the feeling tech 2 & 3 are contradictory, and tech 5 is ‘tooth’-less without tech 4. In Madras, usually, size matters, of the vehicles involved. The guy (without or) with the smaller vehicle wins. Of course, when a ‘ladeez’ is involved, your first paragraph factors work, big time! But man, that sketch is a magnum opus, not to mention the formulae! Reminded me of my childhood hero Detective Moochwala (Target comics)!
On a more sober note, these ratios are probably what the visually impaired use to ‘picture’ a person by touching faces. There are some rare ones among them who can actually sketch the same, to a fair likeness. Of course, sketching Arnold Shivajinagar’s face would still be nothing short of a miracle!