Lying

Prafulla KumarMohanty

If I say I dreamt of a lion hosting my New Year Party you may just smile. But if I say  a lion served me tea in the jungle you may ignore it as a deliberate lie to pull a fast one. But a lie has its  place in the life of  human beings for it adds sauce to living. Often we worship lies to beguile the tedium of real life. We culturally  nourish certain lies and make them grand with fanciful celebrations. Our gods, idea of heaven afterlife etc  are compellingly beautiful. We celebrate the birthday of Rama, Krishna, Hanuman with devout faith as if they are more divine than they are imagined to be.  But faith is blind and it does not care for truth or  fact. The scientific temper or logic plays no role in faith. Lies too are independent of logic. The poet, the lunatic and the lover, as Shakespeare said are of imagination  all compact. Lies are imaginative bordering on the imaginary. All creative people create a world of make-belief. The truth serum test is irrelevant in their cases. But one may ask sincerely, what is  a lie? The ready answer is that which is not true. Well what is truth then? Truth is God  said Gandhi and practised truth with love which naturally is far away  from violence. But truth is never objectively presented. It is always subjective  except in the case of objects which have verifiable existence and have been named and identified. But truth of an aesthetic kind or of imaginative perception is not verifiable. The absolute truth is beyond human apprehension. Similarly a lie is never absolute or exclusionary.

Hitler's foreign minister Goebbels had said, "A lie repeated ten times is a truth". People have no scope of verifying a statement  repeated with convincing passion. We saw  evidence of it in the post- CAA protests all over the country. But how could a lie get acceptance as truth? The reason is fear, fear which could  be termed as existential. If a large group of people believing in a different faith are constantly told that the present political dispensation is most likely to destabilize your existence, you are likely to fall for it. For a prediction of likely disaster immediately enters deep into our minds as we are not fully confident of our being. Any prediction of the world's end will be believed sooner than the world will become a paradise in 2030. It is because death is a certainty. Any statement threatening our existence has the power to instill fear in us. And for this reason we accept lies quicker than truth.

Often people resort to lies to escape punishment. The lie may explode on your face later but the immediate danger is to be avoided by resorting to lies. This happens because truth is not easily accepted by people. A liar is more imaginative when he weaves a yarn which is complex. A man speaking the truth is factual. Truth is naked, lie is fully dressed up with frills and curls and attracts the listener to a different world. History records how lies of all kinds have  enamoured people to gloss over the hard realities. Hunger, sickness and war are driven out of the minds of people by a magical lie of otherworldly salvation. People forget the nagging painful problems of existence and pursue a relieving doctrine of faith. Ghost stories, Supernatural lore attract us more as those are like opium, numbing our real fears.

We are all fond of lies. If I praise a dark man saying you have the complexion of Krishna he does not protest. He gives a shy smile and wishes to hear more. If I praise my love comparing her eyes with sun and moon she will be happy. If I praise a country as peaceloving for it never fought external aggression the people will swell with pride. Lies distract the mind off the pain of truth. Life is so full of sorrow and misery that we find an escape route in lies . It compensates the present moment of pain. When a child cries of hunger a poor mother sings a lullaby promising the moon. A dying man gets a few more breaths when the doctor says he is improving. Lies, however, are not always comforting. Lies ruins a life, a family or even a society. But the magnetism of lies is strong, they lull us to an opium sleep.

Lies exist and are practised in a big way because man is afraid of truth. To face truth one needs greater courage. Hence lies come handy for cowards and the weak to hoodwink their fancies however transitory it may be. That's why lying is admired as an art.