LIE THY NOT

“Don’t lie” was a sensible and golden advice given to me by my dad and mom when I was a child. So also I advised my sons and daughter and it continues generation after generation. In spite of this golden advice, we all lie at one point or other in our life. If I say that “I’m a liar and you are a liar” you may not agree. Still I am sure that everyone lies for good or bad or even for fun. One may lie for a good thing to happen like a marriage or a bad thing like stealing or cheating. A large number of jokers lie to make us happy. So lies are used at various situations.

Actually lies are hiding the truth or facts. A truth has to proved. Almost all criminals lie to hide their unlawful actions. In a court of law criminals are supported by one set of lawyers. In general, lawyers are good at lying. Fifty percent of the lawyers are liars according to me and they try to protect their clients by lying producing false evident and witnesses. Sometimes they are successful too if the judges are not able to find out the truth. Thus in everyday life, we witness such illegal activities.

All of us know fully-well that lying is unlawful and illegal. If one comes late to the class or office one fabricate some sort of lies to escape the punishment. Liars are punished in many ways. Depending on the seriousness of the lies the punishments vary. If a student comes late to the class or not doing the home-work he or she is asked to stand outside the class room till the class is over. Sometimes they are asked to stand up on the classroom bench. Earlier they were even beaten with a stick on the palms of the students. So, students learn that lying is punishable. All of us have undergone such treatments in our life. If one comes late to the office, the superior officer asked for an explanation by issuing a memo. Such explanations were filed to see whether the staff is correcting himself or not. If not his/her promotion was stalled. So lying in this case is costing one’s job.

Some people lie to please others. They may tell some lies about others and get what they want. Believing such lies will land us to unnecessary disputes. The capacity to lie is a talent human beings possess universally. Nowadays we are exposed to fake news in print and electronic media. Such news creates unwanted aspirations in the minds of innocent common people. The peace of mind is disturbed in some cases. Fake news are presented even in social media and people are cheated. It is commonly observed that innocent people are cheated by faulty advertisements too.

Discovery of a lie is a big job of the police department. About that we have intelligence agencies. They keep the liars in custody for months together to enquire and extract the truth by using many physical and mental means. In certain cases ‘lie detectors’ polygraph machines are also used. Volumes of report are written and submitted to the court for further action. We see many such cases with politicians and business people.

Another important source of lies is for entertainments as I mentioned earlier. Jokers’ jokes are nothing but lies to make us laugh and laugh. There are various kinds of jokes we enjoy every day. Even the cinema, stories and novels are a kind of lies. Nothing shown in the cinema is real. All killings, love acts and actions are a kind of lies. Even the buildings, ancient forts, chariots are only settings to suit the story. Stories and novels are simply imaginations of authors who are clever enough to putthings in such a way so that the readers are convinced to believe those lies. We do not say lies, but we call them cinema, story and novel.

Thus lies have become the part and parcel of our life. “Lie thy not” is only an advice or caution for all. To follow it or not depends on each and every individual. - NARA