Picasso said: Art is a lie that tells the truth.
There is considerable wisdom in this statement. From poetry, drama, novel, music and painting to all other forms in which man can express and expresses himself, something that doesn’t exist in reality is created and made to exist as truth for all times to come. For example Hamlet didn’t exist. He was a lie. But once he came out of the mind of Shakespeare, he became a truth. Similarly Dr Faustus was a truth too, whether you relate him to Marlowe’s imagination or that of Goethe. Mephistopheles too was a truth, to whom Faustus or Faust sold his soul in return for a kiss of Helen of Troy.
In the same sense we consider Satan as the hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost. As does Allama Iqbal when speaking about ‘Iblees’ he says that he (Iblees) pricks in the heart of Yazdan (God) like a thorn.
In the domain of art therefore ‘lies’ (or fiction) acquire the status of Truth. But in the domain of modern journalism, you don’t have to ‘lie’ to tell a truth. You just have to report an event that has actually occurred to become a teller of Truth.
The event is the ‘jailing’ of Mian Nawaz Sharif and his daughter.
The truth is that from the consequences of one’s deeds there is no escape.
