HOW TO LAUGH AND SMILE My brief paraphrase of the poem "Once Upon A Time" by Gabriel Okara, included in Chinar (an anthology of English prose and poems prepared and published by FOUNDATION/Cambridge University Press India, adopted by Assam Higher Secondary Education Council as a textbook in English for HS Class XI): ONCE UPON A TIME Once upon a time, they used to laugh with their hearts and laugh with their eyes; but now they don't. 'Feel at home,' 'Come again,' they say, and when I come again and feel at home, once, twice, there will be no thrice - for then I find the doors shut on me. I have learned to wear many faces like dresses - home face, office face, street face, host face, cocktail face [a face which you show to the people at a party], with all their conforming [matching] smiles, like a fixed portrait smile. I have also learnt to say 'Goodbye' when I mean 'Good-riddance' [said when an unwanted person has gone]; t...