my tRUTH LESSons

Friends and lovers, I am very good at lying so really you cannot be sure how true this statement is. That said, I have made some very honest attempts to speak the truth, to bare my heart out, but all such trials were met with sarcasm, laughter, anger, and breakage of my aortic pumps (I remember Joey using this phrase for Chandler’s Best Man speech in F.R.I.E.N.D.S). However in scenarios where I haven’t, I actually was met with admiration, and awesome comments.

This was way back when I was kid with side parted hair and all. My mom had this habit of forcing food stuffs on me as most Indian moms do. It also so happens that whatever I didn’t like then, my sister loved them. It so happened that evening that my sister and I were served food item ‘x’, where x and Abhijeet are highly incompatible. So what I did was I quietly threw ‘x’ out into the garbage can outside my house. Upon being asked as to how I ate up ‘x’ without a fuss, I made a cute little sad face, looking up at my mom with teary eyes and said that my sister happened to eat my share of ‘x’. So not only my mom made ‘y’ for me, and here ‘y’ stands for yummy, she also chided my sister for being so rude to me. This was a new moment for me, where I was like Robin Hood who not only defeated the evil prince at archery but also won the maiden’s heart. I had shot two arrows with one bow or for that matter killed two birds with one arrow. I rejoiced so much that I chose not to do homework that night and play ‘Frogs’ and ‘Dig-dugs’ instead. Human mind is obscure, and when you talk of me, weird things have happened. For no reason, I felt guilty of making 1 + 1 = 4 and violating Einstein’s famous energy equations, and went to my mom and told her the truth about dumping ‘x’ in the garbage. She made me have ‘x’ for the next 30 days! See, when good things happen to you, don’t fool around with them, just let them be.

Then I grew up to be a nice little kid with glasses and all and still the parted hair, this was tenth grade. There was this girl on whom I had a huge crush on since the very first time I met her. She was very cute, a little short, I really liked her nose you know, ok let me not divert from the topic. So as it happens, this girl gained weight as all girls do, so once she asked me casually, “do I look fat?”. Ok guys, when a girl asks you this, especially someone who looks gorgeous or is someone you may want to ask out sometime, you just have to say no without blinking. Even if you blink, girls get suspicious and are put off. But the magnitude of hilarity of my answer was so great, that this ruined whatsoever chance left for me to ask her out let alone be close to her. I looked her up and down and again up, made a straight face and asked “where?” The next time when in KGP when someone asked me that, I immediately replied with a well rehearsed “of course not” and this made them immensely happy. I must confess though that I tried the not-to-be-repeated answer with the latter when asked the same question again. She seemed pleased though a little coy to my utter surprise. See my point now? Just to be clear, I had lost my parted hairstyle by then and had the current one.

But does lying then help bring out good things for us, in circumstances? Does truth really suck?

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by frost.”

No guys, turns out it doesn’t. My mom may have forced me to eat ‘x’, but from that day onwards she started giving attention to my wants and desires, and for the record, ‘x’ is one of my favorite dishes now-a-days. With my high school crush, well we guys never went out, which was really a good thing given my current state, because seriously when I started to know her, I really thanked myself for that answer. Love and friendship are not trophies which lie can ever win for us, atleast not permanently. Why should you say that you love a guy when you actually don’t? Why toy with someone’s feelings when you are just hiding beneath a façade of lies? Why do you have to say the three words that mean a lot to someone, in your fourth grade and later talk about your better halves with them over Yahoo! chats? What do you expect, that you be loved and not love back? Well people, if you want to build a relationship, build it on trust, on truth. Lies will only break hearts, bruise existing relationships. Of course there always be a comic villain – a hot spoilt vixen in case of girls, and a cute looking, rich kid in case of guys, who always steals the show because you lied to your sweet heart or were lied to by them.

Sometimes truth hurts. People turn their backs on you when you tell them what you really are. Those who stick around or later on come back to you, they turn out to be your awesomest friends. Sometimes, when you unload your true feelings on someone, they actually may start liking you for being the man you are. Sometimes when you tell your wingie, dude your room stinks like hell, he may actually turn out to be cool, say “arre yaar, ab iskya kar dalein, makda rehta hai to macchar nahi aate room pe! nheheh” and be one of your best friends. People generally preach that lies sometimes help save relationships. What a load of crap! If relationships were meant to be, how could they not hold strong against the fire of truth. If they cannot, maybe you should stop lying and trust your heart where it actually lies.

It is hard not to lie being a professional myself. It is hard to admit that you require the warmth of your friends’ ‘bhaat sessions’ just to cool off things, it is painful when speaking the truth means breaking your heart and saying goodbyes to relations that were mere sandcastles built on lies. But it is even more rejoicing when being candid, helps you win your broken-heart back. Sometimes that beautiful girl whom you never expected to accept you back after all the harsh truths, may just turn out to be a special, unerasable chapter in your life. It is hard not to cry when someone you love, someone with whom you’ve spent your awesome years – learning to be carefree, learning the art of creating PJs, knowing to say oxen and monkey curses, eating hot and spicy fried maggi that you will leave you with a watery nose, having wild treats when people dance to ‘Tip-tip barsa paani’ of ‘Mohra’, someone with whom you’ve seen your future, departs. Suddenly the windmill’s blades stop rotating, and the air stops whispering. The only voice you hear is that of someone within you wanting to be set free. If you want to be true to that little person inside you who helps you out through all your pain, cheers you in moments of sadness, and gives you the strength to run that last mile, try and let those tears fall, for they shall help you bond with yourself to be a strong and truthful individual.

It takes courage to stand by the truth, takes just a moment of weakness to lie and later realize “It's my heart, and it’s broken.” [Finnegan Bell from the movie Great Expectations]