…with the haunting thought, “He deceived me”, and with a heavy heart, I returned home.

I had no one I could truly call a close friend- no one with whom I could share my sadness. And even if I had such a friend, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Afterall what could anyone do to solve the five rupee problem? I didn’t have the courage to tell my father about it either.

Two or three days later, my father asked about the book. I didn’t tell him that I had handed over the money to my friend and that the friend cheated me. Instead, I lied: “I gave the money to the School, but the book hasn’t arrived yet”.

A couple of days passed, and my father asked again about the book. That was when I truly began to realize how right he had been when he said, “once you tell a lie, you’ll have to tell a hundred more to cover it up”. Faced with his questions, I was forced to tell even more lies…