Liar Liar, Pants on Fire!

Pinocchio has some stiff competition...

We’ve all heard a few, or in some cases, more than a fair share of classic white-lies. Hell, we’ve perhaps also indulged in spouting quite a few, haven't we?

See if the following sound familiar:

‘Hey, what a freakish coincidence – I was just gonna call you.’
(When you are clenching your fist and berating yourself for not knowing the fine difference between picking a call and letting it go unattended)

‘Hey, this is just what I had been meaning to get. Thanks so much. I loooooove it'.(Bright smile at its fakest best).
(Upon receiving an itchy, fluorescent green cardigan for your birthday – the kind that would be stashed forever in your wardrobe, and never get to see the light of day)

‘Are you sure? I never DID receive any email from you!’
(To a friend whose email had long been sitting in your mailbox, begging to be replied to, but lazybones you had never attended to)

‘I would have loved to, but I’ll be busy with my volunteering at the local Blind School.,’
(To someone’s who’s been insisting on dragging you to a lousy flick)

'Yeah, I am working, but that's ok. Go ahead, tell me.'(Taking tired eyes away from your laptop)
(To that pesky co-worker who wants to narrate yet another mindnumbingly stupid anecdote, when the only thing you've been 'working' upon is your virtual soccer-team's score)

‘Oh no, you don’t look fat. You look like you’ve lost a few kgs since the time I saw you last.’
(To a BIG colleague who’s resumed office after delivering a bonny girl)

(Clapping hard). ‘Wow, that was some song.’
(To your boss at work whose vocal chords could
i. Ahem. Put a donkey to shame
ii. Ahem Ahem. Make the dead rise)

‘I played basketball for my school and college teams. Won quite a few matches too.’
(When the only game that you’ve played was that of cat-and-mouse – with your school and college sports instructor – for refusing to participate in anything that remotely involved running in a field, after hours)

Back during my school days, I was amongst the star performers.
(When the nearest you could be to ‘star’ would have been while removing the first letter from it, what with red underlines making your progress report very colourful indeed)

‘I really enjoyed the food – you’re a wonderful cook. Thanks for inviting me over.’
(To a ‘kind’ hostess whose ‘wonderful’ cooking required you to gag every now and then, and make frequent trips to the washroom to flush your system. Gawd knows that you cook better – and that's speaking quite a lot.’

‘I absolutely love your individualistic style of dressing!’
(To your brother’s best friend who looks as if he is getting ready to hit the town at night - to fetch clients)

‘Gosh, you still look the same like you were in college.’
(To a college mate at an alumni meet, who looks like she ate half of a continent, patted her well-fed tummy, and was considering beginning on the next one)

‘Fabulous hairstyle! Which salon did you go to?’
(To a neighbour whose hair made her look like your aunt’s squawking parakeet – on the days it decided to ruffle its head feathers. You also mentally make a note to never visit the salon that DID that to her (Shudder)

There are also the online lies – the herald that claims you are the sole nominee for a recently-deceased Arab Sheikh who’s left you a legacy of a hundred oil wells somewhere in the Middle East. Or the ones that congratulate you for being the 1,00,000th visitor to a website, asking you to click somewhere to claim your FREE FREE FREE prize.

Some people’s education in white lies - those attractively-packaged omissions of truth, begin from as early as childhood. What else can explain the wide-eyed obedience of an otherwise impish 6-year old who’s been told by his parents that a certain white-bearded, generous saint rewards only ‘good’ children with gifts on Christmas? Or the 4-year old girl who was warned by her imaginative mother not to squint or cross her eyes, lest they remained that way? Or the terrified kid who comes running to his grandma, tears streaming down his face – he had swallowed a pellet of chewing gum and now his insides were sure to stick together? And the petrified-of-dentists girl, who had a tooth extracted, all the while maintaining a stoic face, her mind busy thinking of the next day, when the tooth fair was sure to leave a prezzie under her pillow.

While parents tell white lies to children to teach them to be tractable and obedient, these same children go on to recount their own tall tales, white lies and fibs - bettering with the years.

The reasons why they grow up into adults who are not averse to speaking the occasional half-truth, may be varied – from a considerate ‘tactful comment’ that doesn’t hurt the listener, an avowal of the Ignorance is bliss module that maintains what they don’t know doesn’t hurt them or spreading an ever continuing charade of sunshine, peace and contentment. It also goes beyond – to the protector instinct which shields the listener from the not-so-bright side of life, and the trying one’s best to blend with peers by seeking acceptance and approval by agreeing with what is more commonly referred to as, pardon my language, Bullshit.

Whatever be the reasons – white lies are here to stay. Admit it – you’ve been there, done that too.

And for those who shake their heads furiously, let me toggle your memory – remember last month when you literally slept through your superior’s presentation at work, shook your watch a zillion times, doodled in your notebook kept for such precise moments, looked at the other sufferers in mute helplessness, and then at the end of it all - applauded it as ‘path breaking?’

Didn’t so much as blink, did you?