Liar Liar

Someone random: Hey, how are you?

Me: Hello. I am fine. Thank you. How have you been?

Don’t read too much into the conversation. There are no innuendos here, no double meanings. This is a conversation you might have had million or more times. And more than 80% of the time you would have been lying. (The statistics are purely fictitious, highly exaggerated and based on my personal experiences, which in most people’s book won’t count as anything. Moving on.). There are, of course, no prizes for guessing what the lie is. (For the dim witted, it is the three words written post the colon in bold type: I am fine).

You can of course argue that you actually felt fine or good or great or mast (or whatever one word adjective you might have graced the interviewer with). That would be touché. I only speak for myself. If I try and recall (with no guarantees of exact recollections because of my erratic memory), I have never ever been just fine. Go ahead, call me a filthy liar. But trust me, it saves a lot of energy and exercise of mental faculties on my part, saves the listener from bouts of extreme confusion or boredom and in general, saves a lot of time. And believe you me, you wouldn’t have wanted me to go on one of my incomprehensible ranting sprees anyway!

Don’t worry your pretty little head wondering why am I never fine. I’ll answer with another question; how can anyone be just fine? The term ‘fine’ seems like an imposter camouflaging as a positive word. In fact I believe it has a very negative connotation. Ok, time for another of my famous examples.

I have just had a huge fight with my sister (which is not a rarity actually). I am fuming mad; willing to have my only sibling’s blood on my hand. My hands are itching to throw something. The nerve on my forehead is threatening to burst unable to take the suddenly escalated blood pressure. And then:

Someone random (Let’s call the poor chap ABC): Hi. How are you?

Me: I am mad enough to kill someone right now!

ABC: Oh. What happened?

Me: I had a  huge fight with my sister.

ABC: You have a sister?

Me: Apparantly

ABC: Younger or elder?

Me: Anukriti is 2 years elder to me. Her birth date is 25^th September. She is a Libran. Her favourite colour is pink. She is recently engaged. She has two moles on her back and one on her hand. Anything else?! (Heavy sarcasm! I love it!)

ABC: Oh. Why did you have a fight with her?

Me: Because she wore something that I wanted to wear.

ABC: You share clothes?

Me: No idiot. We were just fighting for the heck of it!

And I would have ended up killing this someone random, so lovingly named ABC, eventually. To avoid risking arrest, I would obviously take the easy way out and politely offer: I am fine. How about you?

And anger and depression and all the other negative emotions aren’t the only things which are hard to express and explain. Even happiness can’t be explained to certain ‘someone random’s. I have often tried to share my joy with people by offering: I am ecstatic, I am on top of the world, I am so happy I could die, in place of plain old boring fine or good. But then the questions which followed are enough to kill your joy and change it into irritation. Of course, I speak for myself because I am one of those low – lives who get irritated at even a little show of stupidity. I can’t help it if I have high expectations of being perfectly normal from people! That’s silly of me. But that’s how it is with me.

And hence, I prefer to keep the interviewer in dark by offering a little lie which does a world of good to both the parties. And this is one lie I am willing to buy too!