Faces in a crowd...

Yesterday, i attended a function where i hardly knew anyone. So, i was checking out how people were reacting and responding to various topics/events. I could make out that most of the people had gathered there in formal sense of duty fullness, than real happiness. While the men were concentrating on the drinks, the women made it a point to utter some pretentious statements of congratulations to the hosts. One could easily make out by the way they were meeting each other, the murmured one-liners after they had gone by, and the "how could you be more happy than me" looks they flaunted, that they were not living their own lives there, they were more interested in what others' had to serve from their experiences, good or bad. The entire gathering, barring a select few, looked like a get together of losers, who had no objective criteria for assessing their happiness, who were driven by what others expect out of them, and how has it been going for them and their families. Its probably rude to put it like this, but most of the people appeared hollow from inside, with a well-crafted covering they were sporting on the outside. The regular discussions included "hey, i came to hear about your new work" or "looks like you have been working a lot". Not that such statements are necessarily malign, but the way they were said made them look mean, if not evil. Anyhow, laughing, i messaged a friend and she replied with "Thats the way of life", the age old explanation of things which you find purposeless. I decided to call it a day, on analysis front, and went back to drinks :) Cheers to pretension, cheers to society, cheers to life! :)