A sincere smile invokes the entire face. It starts at the mouth, where the edges of the lips curl up and the cheeks rise, and ends with the eyes, which crease and shine. A genuine grin comes more from the eyes than anywhere else. They beam. A true Bengali smile follows this pattern only to an extreme. The edge of the lips look as if they are trying to leap off the face, the cheeks form little hills, and the eyes shine in their now deeply crinkled recesses. It’s easy to get one of these smiles in Dhaka; I manage it every time I speak Bengali.
