Tuesday, March 1, 2011

MEMO FROM NARA



‘Telling lie is sin’ – according to moral books and religious teachings. We are always reminded by our parents too. Lie is a statement one knows to be untrue. In fact, we are born to tell lies. As children we lie to our parents if we have done some mistake. We lie because we are afraid of our parents and punishment that follows. It is said that if you lie, you’ll go to hell, an imaginary place no one who live on earth has visited. A hell or a heaven is known only to dead people as a matter of fact. It is only to make people not to lie! There are various reasons for lying. I used to think whether it is possible to live in this world without uttering lies? The governments all over the world spend billions of dollars on judiciary in order to find out lies. Even a thief or a criminal lies after stealing or killing someone. They refuse to accept their mistakes. So they are tried in a court of law. There are millions of such cases pending at all levels from magistrate court to Supreme Court! Who is the real culprit is very difficult to find out if witness or evidence is not available. In other words, we live in the world of liars. There are good lies and bad lies! Good lies are told to cut a joke and bad lies are told to cheat others. Traders never tell us the profit they make while selling a product. The consumers know about the tax on a product but not the profit the trader makes. It is something no one bothers to ask. Profit is hidden in the price of a commodity. Profit is a variable which is manipulated by a trader to sell his commodity. So they try to cheat the customers at their will and pleasure. How to live in a world of no lies? There are ways and means to minimize telling lies to a considerable extent depending on the circumstances. But, complete elimination of lies in our life is not easy. At every walk of life, people want to escape from their wrong-doings by uttering lies. To cover up one lie, one has to tell thousand lies! Lies for fun are not serious but lies for escaping from serious matters are considered as very bad and subjected to punishment. In any court case, two advocates argue for their clients about their innocence! We all know one of the advocates is certainly lying to help his client. Still the judiciary allows this to happen because a judgment has to be made based on the evidences. People at high offices, can swindle public money and say that they have not done it. Corruption is the name of it. Is it not a lie? It is. Is there a world of no lies?

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