Honest Lies

By Sakhi Dayanand Gundeti

On a bright Sunday afternoon, Vani's parents had left their house for lunch. She was supposed to stay back with her younger brother Harsh and look after him. Harsh was an eleventh-grade science student. He'd study for ten hours daily and often lose track of time. Before leaving, her mother had instructed Vani in her shrill voice, "Make sure he's eating on time. Don't go away on some photography exploration. Stay in the house today."

Vani banged the apartment door once her parents left. The crestfallen daughter had planned to create a photo essay on the Mahatma Phule vegetable market (Mandai). With the ruins of her plans glaring at her, she spent the rest of the day dragging herself through household chores, switching between occasional chats with her best friend Manika and Netflix binging.

The next day, Vani and her hosteler friends were students of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). After a long day, they hung out at the campus canteen to satiate their hunger for food and movie discussions.

"I went to Mandai yesterday. There were fresh stocks of fruits and veggies. It was so cool! I got these perfect shots you know, with just sunlight as the light source. They came out really well." Vani chewed a morsel of hot samosa.

"Sounds cool. Why don't you show us the captures?" Raghav said.

Turning the smooth black ring around her middle finger with her sleek thumb, Vani said, "Oh, I don't have my camera right now, I'll... I'll get it tomorrow."

Saurav started talking once Vani stopped. "We pulled a prank on Raghav's roommate yesterday. He'd switched off the lights of their room and was watching The Shining on his laptop. All alone. We smuggled some masks from the Main Theatre on Saturday. As we sneaked into his room wearing the masks, we howled real loud and it scared the shit out of him!" He threw his hands over his head as if it had exploded.

"The cinematography of The Shining is so damn good." Raghav nodded. "Genius of Alcott and Kubrick. Even though the lighting was that of a hotel, which is meant to be relaxing, the way they captured the frames manage to creep you out. Sheer brilliance." He removed an onion slice from his sandwich as if discarding a dead insect. While her friends talked about the film, Vani pulled out her phone from her jeans pocket and searched "The shining".

Based on a novel, has good ratings, she thought.

"I know. I've watched it thrice." Saurav showed three fingers. "I'd checked out Kubrick's interview about it, it was quite insightful."

"Yeah, true, true, it was a good movie, as good as the book." Vani nodded.

"Did you read the book?" Raghav chewed his sandwich.

"Y-Yes, I don't remember much, though. I read it long back." Vani lowered her gaze on her plate and ate faster.

"There was this scene in the movie where--"

"Raghav, I need to go. My...Mom needs some meds urgently, I'll get going." Vani grabbed her backpack and walked away as Raghav and Saurav exchanged starled glances.

***

It was the end of their second semester. Vacations had started. On a warm Friday morning, Vani plugged in some Bach classics on her phone and set out to create a photo essay on her new colony. Her family had shifted to a larger apartment so Harsh could seek more privacy to focus on his academics.

The colony comprised of a pair of seven storied white buildings. It had a sand-filled garden with newly painted swings and slides. A lone Indian pariah dog was an old resident of the colony. She was pale orange with pointy ears and anxious eyes.

After capturing the photos of the watchmen, the garden and the lobby, Vani spotted the dog digging the soil next to the compound wall. She tip-toed towards her new subject, crouched and captured her photo. Focus out, focus in. The dog noticed her and looked straight into the camera. Vani got her perfect shot. With a faint smile on her face, she got up and walked towards a bench under the tree of white periwinkle flowers. The dog gingerly strolled away. Resting on the bench, Vani started checking her new captures.

Five year old twins skipped out of the sunlit lobby. They saw a gaunt woman who wore a black t-shirt, a black ring, black spectacles and grey track pants, sitting on the bench outside the lobby. She had black Mickey Mouse ears. In her long fingers, she held a small black box with a long pipe attached to it. Cylindrical and shiny.

The air smelled of coconut oil. Vani looked up from her camera to find the twin boys with well-oiled parted hair, gaping at her camera.

"Hello!" She said.

The kids greeted back.

"This is a camera, a big camera. Should I take your photo?" Vani pointed towards the camera lens.

Two heads shook in the affirmative. A grin stretched their faces as Vani hid behind the lens. Click. The kids hovered over the camera's screen as she held it out to show their photos. They giggled. Vani showed them her previous photos.

"Doggie!" One of the siblings squeaked. "We have a puppy, Scrubby. Our parents brought him home on our birthday."

"We love playing with him," The other brother added.

"You can find the doggie over there." Vani stretched her right arm towards a distant dusty Ford Ambassador. "She has given birth to six cute brown puppies."

The coconut heads exchanged a glance, grinned, and set off to find the dog.

Vani stared at her camera's screen. She pushed a button to view the next photo. Round faces with a front tooth missing. Curious eyes and greasy hair. Smiles that would disappear once they found there were no puppies. Vani turned right to see small skipping figures becoming smaller. The 'Air on a G string' lingering in her headphones intensified her guilt. Sighing, she placed her camera on the bench and dug her face in her palms.

"Fuck!" She groaned.

Not the kids! They don't deserve this! Thoughts bombarded her mind.

A periwinkle flower dropped on Vani's bun, toppled down her headphones to finally rest on the lens. Sparrows chirped outside the lobby, pecking at a line of ants on a busy schedule. Pigeons hollered at a wrinkled old woman on the first floor.

With a flushed face, Vani got up, wiped her spectacles and trodded inside the lobby.

"Fifth floor." The lift said kindly as Vani stepped out and opened her apartment door. A teenager chewing a granola bar was searching the refrigerator in the open kitchen.

"What the...what are you doing here? Don't you have your class or something?" She asked Harsh.

"We have exam prep leave." The brother replied in his night suit, shutting the refrigerator door. He frowned at Vani as she bolted towards her room. "Hey, you okay? Why have you turned so red? Did you lose a lens?" He smirked.

She glared back and said, "M-Y-O-B, Harsh!"

Vani was so used to reminding her brother to mind his own business that she had to shorten it.

"Bookworm," She muttered and banged the door on his face. Vani placed her camera and headphones on her wooden desk and lay flat on her bed, staring at the tranquil ceiling fan. Grunting, she pulled herself up and switched it on.

"Time for dinner!" Pranjal said and knocked on Vani's door. Her room was dim. Faint moonlight peeked in to give an obscure view of things in her room. A wooden desk, a wooden cupboard, a green pinboard with photographs of a crowded Tulshibaug, her first camera, and the FTII main gate.

Vani lay on her bed curled up, eyes wide open. All the falsifications she had fed to people so far came flooding to her mind like water from a burst dam. With heavy steps, Vani entered the bathroom to wash the tears between the acne on her cheeks.

Vani joined her mother and brother at the dinner table. "Dad will be late tonight. Client dinner." Pranjal answered Harsh when he asked about Lesley Gomez.

"So, where did you go today?" Was a template question her mother asked every evening. Vani rarely revealed where she went. She would bend the truth and no one would have a clue. If they asked her to show the pictures, which they rarely did, she would talk about her camera's non-existent low battery level. But today was different.

"I went --" Vani mumbled and covered her mouth with her left palm. The perplexed brother and mother held their rice filled spoons mid-air.

"What?" Harsh demanded.

"I-went-downstairs." She forced the words out and kept her fingers still. "In the colony. I photographed our colony today." A tingle of relief ran through Vani's forehead.

"Nice, nice, show it to us later." Pranjal's rice spoon found its way to her mouth. Vani engrossed herself in her dinner to finish it at the earliest and escape further questions.

***

The following week, Vani strove to be honest. I am improving though, she told herself every time she blurted out fictions.

It was a Sunday evening when Vani stepped out to shoot at a nearby park. As she walked along the road outside her colony, she heard a blaring noise of an approaching ambulance.

"Madam, where is Kanchan Society?" The ambulance driver asked in his husky voice. For a moment, Vani stared at him blankly.

"It...it is, take a right, then a left, you'll find the society there." She drew directions in the air.

The driver thanked her and left before she could utter another word. Vani watched the ambulance take her suggested route. Her heart started pounding. Kanchan society was on the left, barely five hundred meters away. Vani looked around. Not a soul on the street had witnessed what she had done.

With a palpitating heart and trembling fingers, Vani unlocked her phone's screen and started searching her contacts. She dialed the most reliable person she could pour out to. Her best friend.

"Hey, I don't remember the last time I talked on a call! We're so used to chat--"

"Can you please come to my place now? Please, please," Vani clutched her phone.

"Yeah, I can...but is everything okay? You don't sound--"

"Just come around. I'll tell you everything."

"Yeah sure, sure."

Vani paced back and forth outside her colony's gate while she waited for Manika.

"You can park here," Vani pointed towards the end of a footpath next to the gate as Manika slowed down her scooter.

"What's up? Why are you so upset?"

"We'll sit on the other bench behind this building," Vani redirected Manika as she was about to walk towards the bench outside the lobby. The bench which held memories of coconut heads, their photographer and her flushed face.

"Tell me," Manika sat on a metal bench next to Vani.

"I did something terrible this afternoon. Horrible," Vani spoke slowly, breathing between sentences. "I misled an ambulance."

"W-What happened?"

"I had planned to shoot Tathawade garden today. I was on my way when an ambulance asked me the route for Kanchan society. I told them something absurd, I showed them a freakin' longer route!" Vani glared at her friend. "What if they were late because of me? Did I kill someone or what? It's eating me!" She tightened her fist. "And this isn't the first time something like this has happened."

Manika nodded and waited for her friend to complete.

"You know, the other day I lied to kids. They were so innocent and had never harmed me. I felt like a horrendous monster! I'm, I think I'm addicted to lying. Trust me, I am not making this shit up. It...it is beyond my control, I've realized that in the past few weeks. It's freakin' pathological, that's what they call it. Pathological lying or speaking more euphemistically, 'compulsive'." Her thin eyebrows drooped as she made air quotes. Vani let out a sigh. "I read some stuff before you came."

"Vani, calm down." Manika patted her shoulder. "Okay, I know you are not lying right now. Just tell me, when do you think this compulsive thing started?"

Vani looked away from her friend and stared at a car in front of her. A green butterfly peered at its red reflection on the tail light of the car, slowly fluttering its wings. The old resident dog walked past.

Vani looked back at Manika and answered, "I've been lying since childhood; I've lied to you, too." She began in a calmer voice, the voice of a receding storm, "You know, a lot of times, our friends used to brag about their new compass box or a trip they had been to on a weekend. As a kid, I rarely experienced all that stuff. Harsh was a baby then and Mom and Dad focused on him a lot. I had no intentions to talk about my bleak family life, so I used to make stuff up out of thin air. I guess that shaped into a habit. Harsh evolved into the center of attention; his academic records made sure of that. Meanwhile, I found solace in mom's PowerShot S40, my first camera." Vani smiled a sad smile.

"I don't know how people are gonna react to this. I mean, I can share this stuff with you Mani, you don't mind, but what about the people out there or in my house? How are they supposed to trust me? Who trusts a liar?" The words stung Vani as she uttered them.

"You should've shared this before, Vani. Why did you keep this to yourself?" Worry lines formed on Manika's broad forehead. "Anyway, you don't need to worry, okay? People are more considerate than you think they are. They can empathize. And you must be trying to control it, right?"

"I am, I am." Vani nodded.

Silence joined the friends and left when Vani said, "My parents have given this nice gift to me, haven't they? Compulsive lying in exchange for neglect. A perfect lose situation for me." She smirked. "You know, a lot of times I feel as if I was an accident. They didn't want me. I mean, why give birth when you can't fulfill your responsibility properly?" Vani rubbed her eyelid. "Apathy, loads of apathy." Sighing, she stretched back on the bench and faced the wide blue sky having orange strokes. Outlines of bird families were returning to their nests. A red light blinked at her; an airplane carried people to their destination.

"Didi!" Two coconut heads waved at her from a second floor window grille. They smiled as if they had spotted a long-lost friend.

"It's them." Vani waved back, forcing a smile.

Manika waved too. "See, they don't remember what you did. Don't be so harsh on yourself, people will understand." She looked at Vani. "And try to let go of that grudge. It's hurting you more than anybody else." She put her arm across Vani's shoulder. "As far as this condition is concerned, if you don't find things to be improving, you can always seek therapy. It's not a big deal. There's nothing to be ashamed of, okay? This can go away. You don't need to live with it forever."

With a pursed smile and moist bloodshot eyes, Vani nodded.

The sun, in a receding orange hue began retreating behind the building, bidding adieu to a woman and her honest friend.

By Sakhi Dayanand Gundeti