I don't lie... I swear! ;>

Lemme start by telling you that I don't lie. I only say untruths. hehe! And Mark Twain's my favourite 'untruther'.

I think what I say falls into two categories — truths and untruths. There's no slot for lies. And whatever falls under the banner 'Untruth' is basically some effort by my under-developed imagination. And I love exercising my imagination. All of us ought to do it, you know. More untruths, more muscle-pumping in the imagination department.

But things like 'Drink your milk and you can fly like Superman' belongs under the banner 'Lie'. Now that's unfair, don't you think? We shouldn't lead kids to think in such superlatives as growing up to be Superman! Gimme a break!

Untruths may also be an effort to 'shield' your loved ones from harsh realities (Read: Goof-ups).

But delivering an untruth requires a kind of finesse (or, craftiness, whichever way you look at it) that most people don't have. I come under that category. I learnt that the hard way...

I did bio-chem-phy during my (10) +2, a.k.a. under-graduation, PUC. As usual, the pressures of producing projects in each subject lead my project group to 'stray off the beaten path'. Some of you may call that cheating. What we actually did was to 're-represent' a Chemistry project done by a senior batch.

The D-Day arrived and the External Examiner — sounds more like the Executioner — starts to interrogate us on our Chemistry projects. My team's turn comes up and, as usual, Murphy waves his wand over me, and I get called first. Gulllp!

We went through the preliminaries smoothly. The topic of the project, what I learnt from it, conclusions and so on. She went on to ask where I did the project. I told her XYZ Factory. She became very interested and asked me who the guide was, at the factory. Mr. ABC was our seniors' guide. Since I don't like to deviate from a script and since I respect copyrights held by our seniors I told my examiner, it was Mr. ABC.

At this point, she was extremely interested, sat forward in her chair, and this pleased me no end! Finally, here was an examiner who knew my guide and may, perhaps, be so impressed that my team might get bucketfull of points. She asked me exactly WHEN we did this project. Since the time we were supposed to have done it was just the previous month, I told her that too.

What's the harm, you might think... She drove a stake into my heart telling me, ever so calmly, that Mr. ABC is her husband(!!), and he had retired 3 years earlier (!!!) and my seniors were the last team whom he helped.

Well, all's well that ends well, and we did get respectable points. Afterall, I never lied. ;>