Jhoota hi sahi

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Since most of my colleagues are quite young, every time I join our work meetings, they are in the midst of the same conversation: the trials and tribulations of getting a vaccination slot.

One teammate shared with relief that her building was organising a vaccination camp, inspired by a society nearby that had done it. But on the day, the camp was cancelled because word had got around that perhaps the neighbouring building's camp had in fact been fake. Indeed the news confirmed that that particular suburban society had been scammed of 5 lakhs, and so had various film production companies, which can only fill us with wonder, that those in the business of make believe, were made to believe the farzi proposition. In a way the truth about the scammers was in their name: SP Events. Well they had organised an event, all right.

What is it about confidence tricksters, which makes us fall for them? Surely it can't be just their confidence. Surely, they know something about our most deeply held beliefs, or illusions. By believing SP Events perhaps we can hide from the truth that our government might not really be looking out for us, that India isn't quite as advanced as our PR says, but may have fallen back into the old days of queues and depleted rations. That may be 25 per cent fake RT-PCR tests at the Kumbh Mela allowed us to hide from the terrible truth of our threatened lives - or our need to have special priviliges over others. In a world of fake news, our eagerness to take something at face value is sometimes intertwined with something unspoken within. In the words of Kishore Kumar - or is it Dev Anand? - pal bhar ke liye koi hamein pyaar kar le, jhoota hi sahi. A confidence trickster of a line - jhoota hi sahi, meaning, both ‘let's pretend the lie is truth', and, ‘only the lie is the truth', is how we go when we want to be loved.

The celebrated Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also discussed disguised truths and falsities last week, in an essay widely circulated online. She shared emails expressing devotion and gratitude, from young people she had mentored, who had attacked her trenchantly online for her "transphobic" views. They had nevertheless named her on their book covers (she had those stripped). She denounced the younger generation as grasping social justice poseurs, unwilling to confront the complexity of disagreeing with someone they otherwise admired, in deference to a censorious online culture.

Well, social media's undeniable cancellation conformities are a low-hanging rotten fruit. Her account begged other questions too: was the online political vehemence of those younger people a performance that masks massive pressure to conform? Or was their adoration of her a masked version of sucking up to a powerful person in the field of their dreams? And, if one politics of virtue - cancel culture - is worth questioning - then isn't another kind - transphobia that does not see itself that way because your intentions are ‘good' -also worth examining? If there is love, is there no power? Which truth are we drawn to and why?

Yaniki as Ms Adichie has kinda said, where's the story in a single story? As also sung by Kishore Kumar, for Dev Anand in the words of the not-internationally published Indivar - jhoota hi sahi.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com