Mark Twain, a renowned writer once said that :
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember any thing”
A great Chinese Philosopher, Confucius said:
“The object of the superior man is truth”
It can be concluded that many great people in the past said great many things about the truth, in its praise. They were undoubtedly right. Truth is actually one of the greatest things that has ever happened to mankind. Infact telling something that is not true is pointless. The whole purpose of conversing is to convey some sort of information to the other person. If that information is incorrect from the roots, then there is no logical reason to convey that, instead of misguiding the other person.
I my self am a strong believer of the truth. I try to speak the truth as much as possible and I pray that The Lord helps me and everyone in telling the truth even when the circumstance of the truth is bitter and against us.
However we are all humans after all and it is in our nature, nay instinct to cover the bitter truth with infintive lies. I must confess that for a very brief time in my life, I did not consider the truth to be a bliss even when my conscience was banging hammers of redemption on my head rather I preferred and wished that I had never spoken the truth in my entire life.
I used to study in a religious school where they were supposed to teach ‘ethics’ along with the regular curriculum and the religious (Islamic) studies. The term ‘ETHICS’ is sarcastic. They had not the slightest knowledge of what morals were. Enough about the institution, so there I was studying in a ETHICAL institution and then one day the following occured to me…
I was 12 years old, sitting in my class room trying to concentrate on my mathematics. The teacher was on a leave so we were all ourselves incharge. A certain classmate, a real annoying one, came up to me and asked me for an extra pen. I said that I did’nt have one. The chair next to mine was empty so he took a seat there. He started annoying me. And this annoying was no ordinary, as my aura was very much biased towards the ever tough mathematics which is a very rare situation indeed, so I just ignored him. Minute after minute, second after second it grew harder to resist the itchness in my right hand, which in my thinking had a direct connection to atleast his head if not his face. But as I am a very patient, tolerating and reasonable person (:D), I ignored him further…… for 20 more seconds. Then something happened, at that time I might call it a terrible thing to happen. I CALLED HIM THE F*** WORD. I am not proud of it but it just came out of my mouth.
He said: What did u say to me?
And to add to my misery, my innerself was so furious that in addition to the F word, I added a prefix, relating to a family member of his, to be more specific, his Mother. He was stunned for a couple of seconds, I too was shocked as it was the first time I had used this word especially with such an intense prefix. He said he’ll tell the teacher, and I said I don’t give a damn.
But as the end of the day grew nearer, that guilt started to eat me from the inside and as my mind was immature, my head started being dazzled by these thoughts, what if he told the headmaster? What if the headmaster called my parents and told them? What impression would they take of me? How would they react to this? Would they even allow me to attend the school from then onwards? And the chain of thoughts just went on and on and on…
And by the end of the day, when I dropped down on my bed to sleep, I could’nt stop thinking about how disgusting a person I was. I changed sides several times but I could’nt sleep. I thought to my self “The damage has been done, Ill confront him in the morning and I’ll apologize to him in a manner that he could’nt refuse”. With that comforting thought, I went to sleeep.
The next day began like any other, except that I had a real urgency to go to the school. As I reached, I started fetching him, expecting him to be an angel of a person to forgive me. I asked every one I knew regarding his whereabouts, then I asked every one I did’nt know about where he was. I could’nt find him, so disturbed and uncomfortable, I ended the search and went to the class room. There he was ! Cheerful and playful as ever, He had this very elegant and decent side that I had ever failed to see. I went up to him and said can I talk to you for a second? He said sure, whats up? I said I’m really sorry that I said those disgusting words to you, I don’t know what came over me, and I would really appreciate if you did’nt tell any one. He smiled for a while and then said the dreaded words “I HAVE ALREADY TOLD THE HEADMASTER” and there I stood with my heart to my mouth, shivers of fear running down my spine I managed to ask him again, “And uh- what did he say ?”, He said ”he said that he’ll call your parents this morning”. I felt unreal at that moment. What had I done!
At that moment the bell rang for the beginning of the class. I took a deep breath and started to study, but I could’nt. As much hard I tried to concentrate, as much the guilt ate me. And at the end of the class, I was in a shivering and sweaty condition. I went to the men’s room in the recess to wash my face, on my way I saw some guys taking pointing towards me, and I thought OH GOD ! The word is out! What am I going to do. And that walk from the rest room to the class room was the most horrifying. I picturized all the scenes I saw in black and white, slow motion picture. Every one looking at me with a terrible face, even the sweepers were looking at me thinking that I would’nt catch their eye. The two staff members in the school yard were laughing and enjoying and as soon as I passed them by, they both stopped laughing and looked at me while taking a sip of their coffee as if I were an accused criminal and soon I was to be convicted. There were still 10 minutes left in the recess, and I could’nt find a place in the whole school just to sit down and have a glass of water or something because every where I went, it looked like every one present was hunting for me.
My mind again started to dazzle with the thoughts that had caused me trouble the day before. I could’nt find a way out. I was nearly crying, I had evidently lost all respect in front of my colleagues, my teachers hated me and my parents, GOD knows how, will soon react to this. I then remembered this statement of my teachers “Always speak the truth, and nothing else”. The moment was there to apply it, I knew how to implement this and most of all I did’nt have any other choice because the word was already out.
I decided that I will go to the Head Master’s office and tell him the truth and expect that he will be quite generous in forgiving me which was very much against his reputation. So I gathered all my guts and went to his office and knocked on the glass door as I held my breath, a heavy voice came from the inside come in please. Now the head master was a fat fat man, with a big beard and piercing blue eyes . All in a nutshell, he had all the qualities of an old black and white picture’s villian. He said in a very arrogant manner, yes what do you want ?And swalllowing all the saliva inside my mouth I began to speak, “I uhh I aaam uhm, really sorry sir” and I made an almost sobbing face. “ And what are you sorry about?”, he said with even a heavier voice as if he was expecting a full confession from me. And hence I began to tell the incident which has been worrying me since the last day. At the end of my full confession I was literally crying out of shame. And these were the statements that he gave after hearing my full confession which is what I thought he wanted:
“I must say that I am really disappointed and angry regarding the words you said, but it seems as if you have misunderstood something. You see I was never even slightly informed about this, now grab that chair upto my table”
And then began the lecture that I did’nt expect, but I never even listened to a word he said, because in my thoughts I was cursing and abusing a certain annoying fellow with very much intense bad words than the one that had caused me all this trouble. And at the end of the lecture, he shook my hand, I nodded in despair and disappointment, and then I went out of the office.
It was long past the recess, and as I entered the classroom, every one including the teacher gave me a look similar to the look everyone was giving me before the confession. And then out of dread I shouted, What is it? I confessed to the headmaster, he forgave me, so why are you all looking at me like this ?
The tutor said “There is a big spot of ink on the front of your shirt dear, and by the way what is it that you confessed ?”
The words unintentionally bulged out of my mouth “About the abuse ofcourse”, GOD knows I did’nt want to touch that topic again.
That annoying punk got up and said i’ll tell you all, and thus he told the story to every one about how I was a sissy little girl when I apologized to him and how he was a manly beast when he lied about telliing the headmaster, and then they all made fun of me beyond anyone’s imagination. And it was that moment that I wished that I had never ever told the truth ever in my life because I was made fun of due to the so called blissness of the truth !
Every one forgot that incident in a few days and every thing was back to normal…
Now when I look upon that petty matter, I laugh my lungs out and I actually get immensley pleased that I had such a clear conscience when I was so young. No doubt that school taught ethics. No doubt that head master was a fine educator. Only I was too immature to see that…
