Once upon a time there was a fox roaming in a forest in search of food but he was unaware of traps set by hunters in the forest. He set his foot on the traps and get caught in that. The fox tried everything he could but failed every time. Sometime after struggling, he got out of the trap but in doing so, he lost his tail. Losing the tail made him glum because his tail was no less than a pride to him. He felt ashamed and didn't want to go back to other foxes thinking they would laugh at him, a tailless fox. He even thought of killing himself but then he thought that it would be an act of cowardice to kill himself. He thought he should come up with a plan to distract them, something which will divert their attention from his tailless appearance.

At last he decided to persuade all the foxes to part with their tails and called a meeting of the foxes and advised them to do away with their tails. He exclaimed, “Look at these tails we have to roam with, they are nothing but an unwanted, tiresome and ugly part of our body. We must get rid of them.”

But one clever fox then said, “Good, sir! You wouldn’t be so keen to ask us that if you were not tailless, would you?”

It’s the thing about hypocrisy, it seldom works. ‘Hypocrisy means someone pretends to have some qualities, beliefs, virtues, motivations, standards or feelings but they do not really have’. It’s one of the definitions by google but we really do not need to google everything we face in daily life, do we? It wouldn’t be an exaggeration if I say, our day is incomplete without facing hypocrisy. It has become an inevitable part of our life. Gone are the days where we used to say ‘love is in the air’. The phrase has changed to, ‘Hypocrisy is in the air’. It’s in our houses, offices, everywhere.

Many of us have witnessed it happening in families. Sometimes In-laws seem unhappy with their daughter-in-law continuing her job after marriage but they do celebrate the day their daughter gets a job. A woman argues with her sister-in-law and preaches to her about how to talk to in-laws, how to take care of them but her own in-laws are in an old age home. People will derogate racists but will crave for a fair spouse for their daughters and sons. An aunt, from my neighbourhood, wanted a girl's hand for marriage but when she went to the girl’s house with her son, she rejected the girl by saying, “She wears jeans, she will keep on wearing jeans. We don’t want our daughter-in-law to wear anything other than a Saree or a Salwar suit” but I have hardly seen her daughter wearing a salwar suit.

A joke I read on WhatsApp is like this:

A woman asks another woman, “How is your daughter-in-law?”

The woman said, “She hasn’t done any of the household works since she has stepped inside the house. My son does all the work. He wakes up early, washes the dishes and makes tea for both of them. After that he prepares breakfast and then she wakes up. My son’s life is wasted.”

“Poor son of yours and how is your son-in-law?”

Sparkle in the woman’s eyes and a big smile on her face, she says, “Oh, I tell you, he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen. He wakes up early, washes the dishes and makes tea for both of them. After that he prepares breakfast and then my daughter wakes up. You see how lucky my daughter is!”

The prime characteristic of hypocrites is that they never fail to show this ‘precious asset' of them they have acquired. ‘Attention-seekers’ is their middle name. I will give you an example. When I left the job, I left some stuff behind in my locker. As I was no longer an employee of that organisation, I couldn’t enter the building so I sent a text message to one of the colleagues if she could bring the stuff outside the office building.The message was delivered and remained unseen for 2 days. Eventually I got my stuff with the help of another colleague. A week passed and she texted me back, “I am on holidays.” I said, “That’s fine, the work is done.” And as expected, she replied after two weeks, “LOL!” was that even a reply to that question?

After that I deleted her contact number because the conversation made me angry but only after a few hours, I got a message from her, “Hey, why did you block me?”

These people expect attention from everyone they meet and wherever they go but do not think it’s necessary to give attention to others.

On social media, people will post about gender equality but at the same time, they will say, "it’s not something which a girl can do". They will comment, “Black is beautiful” on a picture of a girl with a dark skin but in real life, they will mock people with dark skin. They will talk about how we should respect women but will flirt with women using a fake account. They will say a girl’s character shouldn’t be tested through her clothes but we all know what they really think, don’t we? They will get offended if someone even looks at their sister but will pass comments when a girl passes by. They will talk about human rights and how someone should be treated but abuse children on television, can you guess who? Write in the comments. They will only drive cars and will tweet about how the government fails at controlling air pollution. They will spend 500 rs on popcorn in the name of luxurious life but will bargain while buying vegetables. They will post things about how homosexuality is natural with tags '#lovewins' but in real life mocking gays and lesbians won’t stop. The list continues…..

Same goes with the religious beliefs of some people. When the Citizenship Amendment Bill came into action, students at JNU protested against it, stones were pelted at Jamia millia Islamia university. AMU became a centre of protest against CAB. Protesters at AMU said, “CAB is only for non-Muslim communities. Government should not discriminate against a particular religion.” But the same were found saying, “Hindutva ki qabar khudegi AMU ki dharti par” Now hindutva and hinduism are two different things but it doesn’t seem that they would bother to differentiate as they have been a religious bigot.

So on one hand, they are trying to say that no religion is superior to others and on other hand, they abuse another religion. Does a particular religion give you the right to revile another? Has their religion become superior now so that some people could go to this extent?

When we talk of hypocrisy, how can we leave the news media behind? Media should be neutral but nowadays we see every news channel is affiliated to political parties. A very well-known executive editor at ‘India Today Television’ when asked in an interview, “why is it so that you never congratulate PM Modi for awards he has been receiving? Recently PM has been awarded ‘The order of St. Andrews the Apostle’, the highest civilian award of Russia.” His answer was, “The PM has received many awards. It’s no big deal. Award milne se kuch nhi hota” but when his news channel won the title of ‘The best news channel’, his words were, “Winning the best news channel is.. is huge because it’s the sixth time in seven years so it doesn’t get better than that. It’s a tribute to the entire network, professionalism and integrity of the people who work in the network. ”. Hypocrisy at its best, isn’t it?

Hypocrisy is everywhere and we get so annoyed because of it but what if it lies in us too, what can we do about it? How can we not be one of the people mentioned above? So let’s force ourselves to follow the things stated below. Let’s call them rules of er……behaving? Or whatever you would like.

·        Never ask anyone to do a thing which you wouldn’t do for anyone.

·        “You want to change things, start with yourself” – Mahatma Gandhi.

·        Treats your in-laws the way you would have treated your mother, father, daughter and son.

·        Always respect the speaker so that when you become one, there will be ears to listen to you.

·        Remember, you must respect people’s beliefs even though it doesn’t matter to you.

·        Everyone is different, different skin colours, different heights, weights, body parts. Do not mock people for something they are not responsible for.

·        And last but not the least, Stay the hell away from these hypocrites because when you think about them, ‘anger’ is the only thing you will be getting at the end of the day.

So let’s not be one of them by following these rules because not all the rules are meant to be broken!

Thank you for reading.

Tejaswini yadav.

Gryffinpuf11@gmailcom

Little help: Preeyonuj Boruah

Axelblz1@gmail.com