The half-truth

I watch Gossip Girl. All the time. I don’t care if I’m almost 22, I love watching it.

Now that I’ve said it out loud, I can write this post in peace, proudly and shamelessly, with no feeling of stupidity.  

So, like any other Saturday, I spent the last one watching Gossip Girl and lazing around aimlessly taking breaks only to gobble up home-delivered fast food and Biryani. Gossip Girl is a gripping tale of the past, the scandals and secrets in the lives of the elite society of New York. The show deals with an assortment of emotions and scenarios - vendetta, vengeance, betrayal, hatred, jealousy, unchastity  and among all of this- pure unsullied love. It is an intriguing rendition of real human emotions - a little more of the negative ones maybe. I watched so many episodes of this that day that it was almost like I was a part of the Upper-East side. I was in their world like one of them; it was Nate, Chuck, Serena, Blair and me. I got how they protected each other; it was okay to wrong someone else to protect another of their own. Unconsciously or sub-consciously, I sided Blair in my own head and hoped to see her find happiness in NYU. I knew how she felt when she had a tough time fitting in. It didn’t matter that Blair was the most cunning, scheming and devious person in the real and fictitious world put together. I wanted Chuck to win her back. They were beautiful together. They might be two egoistic and obstinate people, but while together, they were invincible and nothing less than lovely. I knew even Blair had a good person inside her somewhere, even if it’s deep inside. Oh and needless to say, I hated Jenny. I hated the sight of her, that expression; I hated everything about her.

And in the evening, drowsiness took over me, completely – what else could I have expected after a spending a whole day glued to my laptop!

I felt like a sloth. I didn’t even get up when my roommate brought home a box of strawberry cheesecake flavored ice cream. I moved a little, maybe an inch, only to lift my laptop n place it on the floor. Then, I just lay there. Soon, I was deep in thought.

Why did I wish good fortune for Blair and not for Jenny? They were both unkind and venomous to the same extent. Blair is queen B after all and Jenny, just little J. Yet, I liked Blair. – Only because I had seen bits of her nice side, because the show had shown me her nice side and her aspect of the story behind her machinations. I got Blair. Not so with Jenny.

I was deeper in thought, now.

How different is life in actuality? Stories are always one-sided. One-sided is different from biased; One sided stories can be completely true, but they show you just one side or maybe both sides from one viewpoint. We don't hesitate to make judgments/decisions based on these stories. While at our creative best, we extrapolate these one sided facts to add our interesting suppositions and far-from-real conclusions. Sometimes, we slander the person who looks like the bad one in the story. And this snowballs to a mammoth story that’s no more even remotely similar to the truth. I have been there too, on both sides – the slanderer and the slandered. We all have.

We never wonder if the bad person in the story has his/her own reasonable story or an acceptable reason or a past that justifies his/her doings. Half-picture can be misleading. When has a partly solved jigsaw puzzle ever made sense? Getting to know the complete picture some day might make one regret in retrospect.

Everyone has a story – Tigerwoods, Shiny Ahuja, every other person on TV, you, me - everyone. That does not in any way justify anybody's doings, but let's not be in a hurry to belittle anyone. Let’s try to see the best in people. Let’s try to fathom both sides before getting judgmental; Or let’s just stop judging. Let’s make this world friendlier and kinder.

The upright protagonist of a story might be very moral like it appears. Or he might just be really really clever.