The truth isn’t that I’m a West Bengal Board student studying in a reputed South Kolkata school. The truth isn’t that half-yearly question-papers are very tough, but if you practise enough, you’ll pull through. The truth isn’t that political readers have gone crazy in this country. The truth isn’t that meat is getting costlier everyday. The truth isn’t on that TV, either. The truth isn’t that Domesto is the best toilet cleaner around, the truth isn’t that it takes eight hours to regain the moisture lost from the skin after a bath. The truth isn’t that Tom Cruise does all that he does to steal the limelight. The truth isn’t that H.C. Verma is a better book on physics than D.P.C. The truth isn’t that NFS 7 is awesome. The truth isn’t that Miss K on that soap on TV became Mrs K because she really loved him and decided to be tied to him forever. The truth isn’t that your colleague’s breath smells because he drinks in office. The truth isn’t that you should get up and start walking in the morning to lose those extra few inches. The truth isn’t in the newspaper, it’s not in front of you, it’s not in what anyone says, or does, or claims. The truth is not on the billboards and it’s not what the President says.

The truth is that we live on a little round blue planet that goes around a burning yellow ball of gas, and we live near the edge of a flat disk which is our galaxy. The truth is that there are stars in the sky at night because they are hanging in the same dark space that we are. The truth is that we are on one of the zillion little moving bodies in this black void. The truth is that there is finally no up or down, left or right, only the same darkness stretching out on every side. It’s the final design. And it’s not on TV. Mrs K won’t say it, and that toilet cleaner ad won’t say it either. Tom Cruise doesn’t know it, and NFS 7 doesn’t contain it. But it’s the truth. We live on the edge of a disk in space, a flitting existence in the unchanging continuity of time, a racehorse seen for a second through an eyehole, a scratch in the infinite fabric of everything.

Waste it. Come on, now, Mrs K can’t start crying till you’re in front of the TV.

1Life.