Seeing is believing ... or is it!!!

‘Its not what you think... I..’
‘You don’t have to say a thing... I saw it with my eyes’, she retorted and.... he kept quite.

How many times has this happened. You want to say something, convince somebody that what they think is not correct, but then the person says ‘I saw it!!’ and you don’t have an answer.. After all seeing is believing !!! We see something and then our mind builds on it making its own conclusions. Isn’t it the way it works and why not after all we saw it ...right ...

Let me tell you a couple of anecdotes that my old colleagues once shared with me..

One is surely a liar.
Once a city witnessed a gruesome hit and run case. A speeding car crushed a rebelling union leader. The morning newspaper quoted an eyewitness saying ‘a black car crushed the man and sped away, I saw it!!!’. That evening the local channel telecast an interview of a lady who around the same time was trying to cross the road. She confidently said ... ‘I saw it.. a white car hit the man..’
How can this be, somebody is trying to protect the culprit the rich industrialist whom the union leader was at loggerheads with..
One of them is surely a liar.. bought by the culprit... they are trying to distract the investigators!!!

He is such a cheapo.
He was the star salesman of the company, touring twenty days a month visiting his market. After the dust and toil of field visits, company allowed him the luxury of a star hotel to rest and rejuvenate. Feasting heavily on the complementary breakfast is one routine that he never misses. There’s another one that he always does. When he checks out, he makes sure that he has picked and packed all the toiletries that are kept for him to use. Those bonsai soaps, shampoos, talcum powder sachets.. he would miss none. ‘I have seen it when I am on tours with him.... such a cheapo.. and you know what, he makes a hundred grands a month.. even then...such a cheapo ’ said a colleague of his...
Such a cheapo he is!!!

Isn’t our interpretation correct? One of the two witnesses is a liar trying to protect somebody and our star salesman is a magpie, trying to stash every penny. Or is it...

All of us are like this. We believe what we see, what we hear... provided we like to believe it. Its because ‘we’ see it and ‘we’ hear it and ‘we’ cant go wrong. We presume our perception based on the primary inputs received from our sensory faculties as gospel truth. It is not limited to the inconsequential happenings of our day to day lives but spreads to the more serious undertakings such as personal relationships, professional equations etc. We see our close friend chatting animatedly with a neighbour with whom we had a fight and then seeds of doubt creep in.. Is he really my friend or he swears allegiance to our enemy camp? You see your colleague come out your boss’s cabin and then your boss calls for you to give a piece of his mind... I know its him... He has filled boss’s ears against me.. I saw him walk out of the cabin... I know... Isn’t it?

Now back to the anecdotes..

After a week of rumours, allegations and conspiracy theories, the police arrested a college dude for drunken reckless driving causing the death of the union leader. He was driving a chequered car with jazzy white paint on one side and metallic black on the other. The dude was on a high trying some of his drifting skills when he overstepped the pedal crushing the poor man to death... Wasn’t one of the witnesses a liar? We knew it right???

One day after returning from the tour a colleague followed our cheapo as he filled his loot into a bag and set out. The chase took him to a huge compound with a rusted gate that seemed to house an old dilapidated mansion. Across the gate was written in bold letters.. ‘Helping Hearts – house for destitute ’. Our cheapo donated all his loot there. He does this every time when he returns from his field visits. ‘When I pay for the stay in the star hotel, I pay for the toiletries also... why should I leave them there? I might as well pick it and give away to the needy’... he told his colleague. Wasn’t our protagonist a cheapo... we knew it right???

This is the fact in most of the cases. We are ready to give more credence to what ‘we’ see and ‘we’ hear. The faith in our fellow beings, friends, relatives, society... everything can be doubted. What we see is right, what we hear is gospel. Belief somehow seems to be a prehistoric adage... Seeing is believing ... or is it????