This event happened almost a decade back. I love my kid and have always tried to give him the best education possible because I believe education is very important. I admitted my kid to the best school in my city and although, I knew that the fees was on the higher side and a little above my paying scale but still I was sure we could save enough to handle this which we did successfully for the first few months. Then came the season of Diwali and amidst all the festival shopping and hosting, our expenses crossed our expectations and I was unable to pay the school fees for that month. One day my son came crying saying that he had been called to the principal’s office and told to bring the fees the next day or stay at home. I and my wife were devastated seeing the tears in our beloved’s eyes and the helplessness to pay the fees. We promised our kid that evening that everything would be alright and saw the hope in his eyes.
Only we knew the truth but what could we do? After much deliberation my wife said that she would sell some of her jewellery and then we could pay the fees. I vehemently opposed this notion but also knew that this was the only way out. We sold some of her jewellery and paid off the school fees, telling our son that we had borrowed some money and everything was alright. He looked at us for sometime like he could see the truth and then agreed and hugged us. Although, we had told him a lie, sometimes it looked like he knew the truth and was just waiting for us to come clean. The guilt of lying to him was overwhelming. We had always advocated telling the truth and now were lying to him ourselves.
Every time we saw him, we were reminded of the lie and then one day, I could take it no longer and finally told him the truth. The little boy hugged me tightly and told me that he already knew the truth and was just waiting for us to have enough faith in him to tell him the truth! He had heard me and my wife talking about selling her jewellery so we could pay the fees.
I told him that we had implicit faith in him and asked him to forgive us, vowing never to lie to each other. That day, I understood that it is never right to lie because kitna chain hota hai na sachchai mai!
This post is written as an entry for Indi-Happy Hours for the Kinley campaign and Indiblogger.