Don't break into a sweat over a smile

I've often wondered if people cotton on to the fake smiles I, at times, paste on my face. It's like this: you bump into someone you hardly know (or don't particularly fancy) but since you've seen him/her around, when you're face to face (say, at a party or at a press conference), you're obliged to acknowledge his/her presence. You flash a smile; the other person flashes one back in turn. Immediately after the deed is done, my smile is replaced by a "oh, whatever" kind of look (unless I'm genuinely pleased to see him/her, in which case things would go beyond my face being frozen in a momentary rictus and we'd probably even have a conversation); it's compulsive, just happens. Chances are the other person would not really notice the 'transit' because he/she is too busy invoking the "oh, whatever" look onto their face while hoping I don't notice their fall from grace.
Once, feeling guilty about my volte-face (and, by extension, my hypocrisy), I actually looked back at someone I had exchanged smiles with. Guess what? I caught her red-handed as she was transiting from the fake "hello, nice to see you" expression to the genuine "oh, whatever. and why do you keep cropping up at all odd times and force me to exercise my [reportedly] 17 smile muscles?" one. She had a lovely, all-embracing smile, and it was almost impossible to come to terms with the fact that her "all-embracing" smile was not all that all-embracing. But, hey, the upside is I haven't felt so guilty about my own infractions ever since. Fair game. Quid pro quo. Or as I espied on a banner on Sheikh Zayed Road, "dirham pro quo".
For all of the above reasons (and more), I greatly admire those who are able to overcome the tendency to break into a smile at the drop of a hat. A handful of those I know - even fairly well - will either look through me or deadpan when our paths cross. They don't have to struggle with guilt ("I am faking it!") or negativity ("I don't like so-and-so, so why did I have to smile at him/her?"). I might feel a bit weird when I pass them by and they don't smile (occasionally I wonder if I've done something wrong and they are giving me the go-by on purpose) but the larger picture reveals they are far more honest at heart - at the expense of public perception - than I can ever be.
Annals of etiquette books lay down the "rules of smiling". The rules seem to assume that smiling is like method acting; you need to be emotionally clued in to the smile - and the smiley situation - to deliver the perfect one. Sample this: "Allow your whole face to smile. You will look more genuinely pleasant, or even happy, when your cheeks move upward, the corners of your eyes crinkle, and your eyes become narrower and sometimes actually appear closed." I thought that read like how a step-by-step make-up guidebook should read like - plus the added inflection.
Then, there are times when I toy with the idea of donning the Mona Lisa smile. As most of us know, the reason why Mona Lisa is so hard to fathom (she obviously predates Sonia Gandhi) is her smile. She symbolises the ultimate enigma - because we cannot be sure if she is smiling or not.
There's a website called all-that-is-interesting.com (yes, really!). An entire chapter is devoted to the 'Mona Lisa Smile'. Leonardo da Vinci, reportedly, "used his self-taught technique of 'sfumato' to blend the paint pigments, particularly around the corners of the subject's [Mona Lisa] eyes and mouth." This technique is widely believed to "have created an illusion of the enigmatic smile that disappears pending on the viewer's vantage point. In the nanoseconds that it takes for the viewer's eyes to shift from the subject's eyes to the mouth, the smile seems to vanish."
If I can pull off the Mona Lisa smile, then by the time someone I bump into figures out if I am actually smiling or not, I'll be over the hump.
sushmita@khaleejtimes.com