The first time I cheated

The first time I ever cheated was in a school exam.

I grew up like any other kid being taught that cheaters never prosper. I saw otherwise. But then I've always been the girl who couldn't see the larger picture. So when I made a friend in school who I thought was super cool -- condescending sneer in place, disrespect for every teacher in school and wrote almost as well as I did -- I didn't think twice about being urged to cheat. After all, who wants to listen Mommy, right?

The challenge, then, was to cheat on the exam in class 9. How one gets past chemistry unless they cheat is still one of life's biggest mysteries for me. So anyway, I never paid attention in chemistry classes even though I was told I was going to be seriously shafted in class 10 if I didn't. Oh, I'll manage. Overconfidence of the intelligent.

And here was exam time and I looked at the textbook only to realise I had no clue what most of it meant. Which easily lead to me the conclusion that this exam I'd cheat and get by, because you just can't fail, and just like that I moved over to the other side and compromised part of my mostly-untainted soul.

I had to get creative. You could peek into the paper of the person sitting next to you but what if he or she was a total dud at chemistry. So that was out. I could carry slips of paper -- that's part of the charm of the uniform, so many places to hide things. But if one of them fell out or worse, we were frisked? So I let go of that one also. Being the kind who liked to show her shapely calves at school, my pinafore ended just above my knee or at my knee if it was start of the school year. That's how I would cheat then. Write down stuff on my pale thigh and keep hiking my skirt oh so nonchalantly and get my answers. And I did. I managed to get past chemistry that term. But I never got rid of the cheating even though I told myself that it was only that once. Next chemistry exam I was going to study and get through.

Since then I've cheated in more than chemistry at school. Think Maths (I refuse to fashionably call it Math. We CBSE students call it Maths). In more ways than just writing on my thigh. The hem of my skirt was a great hiding place for slips of paper, also were the sides of fingers, the back of my neck and as I have thick, glossy hair, that too worked. I even found a set of invisible inked papers Also, I have cheated on my parents -- lied to them about where I was for half the morning that something very important had to be done. I have cheated on almost all of my boyfriends and my current. (Strangely, I have never cheated on a girlfriend. Hmmm.) I have stolen money. I have hacked into certain people's email accounts to find out if they had lied to me. They had.

Almost all my cheating, except cheating on the boyfriends, had some justification. I felt completely convinced that I was doing no wrong. I still feel I do no wrong. Because mostly, I am just amoral.

The boyfriend cheating? Well, I have no excuse. I am a slut for exciting times. So giving in to the rush of physical attraction is something I can't resist. I love that moment when I suddenly realise that the guy I've been going to the terrace to smoke with has actual making-out potential. And mind you, that's all I ever did with all my cheatmates. Make out like mad. Only one lovely boy made it all the way and he was lousy in bed but super charming otherwise. So I just couldn't say no. Maybe the lovely wine, even better dessert and some seriously damaging pot helped him just a bit. But when he said, "Come on, give us a cuddle," at the end of a traumatic ganja trip, I just knew it had to go all the way.

Will I cheat again? I'd like to but I don't think so. I love my current wayyyyyy too much to do that. Besides, it gets boring after a while, no?