After the common cold, the next thing,but the best thing that catches us quickly is a smile. A comic show on the telly, a baby that gives us a drooling smile in the train, an empathetic stranger in a long winding queue, anything makes you smile as a rejoinder.

Reading the facial expressions of people around us is a very ancient form of communication and expression. The human face is very expressive. It can register plenty of non verbal communicative systems. Expression tell us if a person is happy or hurt,annoyed or anguished, contented or distressed.

It takes human beings just a fraction of a second to respond to a smile. It would take a very hard day at work for us not to counter to a smile,whoever or wherever it may be.

IN a paper published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences researchers Paula Niedenthal and Adrienne Wood say that when w see a stranger smile it relives memories of the past when we felt the same emotional happiness and now this 'sensori motor simulation' triggers parts of the brain and muscular movement that makes u smile back in return.

Sometimes when you are induced to smile back,you may not be in form and a customary curling of the lips may suffice. This is because, the researchers say, only the 'somatosensory and motor systems' that activate a smile-muscle works, but the brain does not take the message to the facial muscles, hence the watery smile.

Whatever that may be learn to smile-at the person behind the ticket counter, the vegetable vendor at the roadside, the garbage collector-they might be the only ones that elp you to hold back the shattered pieces of the day together- with a smile.

Smile back in return and learn to take it home to others you migt meet-your spouse and your children, your parents and in-laws! After all a smile is an infection worthy to be spread!