Pulse, the school magazine, Sarala Birla Academy, Bangalore, June 2017. Published in the magazine’s first issue, when I was seventeen. Half a year later I read a longer version of it at a school assembly.

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” — David Foster Wallace

We live most of our life on a kind of autopilot, doing what we think we are supposed to do, living how we believe we need to. We establish routines as a fortress against our greatest fear — uncertainty — and break sieges against armies of change. We accept other’s opinions as facts and regard our desires and dreams as whimsical fantasies. We live for others, for our parent’s satisfaction, our spouses happiness, our children’s dreams.

Yet, there are times where we see past this, past the cocoon of our monotony and through the dessert of dead habit and have a tiny glimpse of meaning. It is only a moment, a moment while everyone is praying after a meal or when you’re running at that time the day kisses the night goodbye. In that instant, you wonder at the poetry of everyday objects and the magnificent complexity of the objects around you. You shiver at the beauty of the human mind, of billions of atoms arranging themselves in ways that enable them to decipher their own existence. In that brief moment of self awareness, you are alive, your soul resonating with their frequency of the Universe, marvelling at the enchanting magic of a sunrise or the sonorous ring of voices in jagged harmony.

Our reality is water, not the reality we spend most of our lives in, a reality of mundane jobs and unpaid bills but the reality that exists right alongside it and opens up only when we are aware of living. Water is the kind of living where we create memories that run on completely different chains of neurones and not just variations of the same old routes. Different cultures call it by various names — Nirvana, enlightenment and inner peace, and it is said that it can be achieved through a multiple of ways — meditation, yoga or psychedelics. Yet, we all have experienced this by simply being aware, of ceasing to exist and beginning to live.