POST-TRUTH
(#Experiments in absurdity)
We are all blind. Visibility is a myth — Ardh said to us. Must be true if Ardh said it. Ardh can’t lie. If he says three billion people in this country are actually blind, and are pretending to see things, then that is the truth. This is the new world. A world full of possibilities.
The honesty of Ardh is the bedrock on which our country stands. It’s even in our constitution. It’s not Ardh can’t lie. If it had been that and if it had been printed as a footnote of a boring sub-amendment, we could have found a way to legislate around the absoluteness of Ardh’s truthfulness. But read that backwards and in passive. A lie can’t be uttered by Ardh. Who in their right minds would put that in the foundational document of a country? And guess where they decided to put it. You have to sift through seven hundred pages to get to the first mention of fundamental rights (even there the right it gives us is to STFU) but for some strange reason, our founding fathers placed the shit coming out of Ardh’s mouth above reproach in the first line of the preamble. A lie can’t be uttered by Ardh. I am not complaining. This is not a rant, unless Ardh calls it one.
I am not saying Ardh doesn’t lie. I am saying that if he does lie, then it is the state’s responsibility to arrest whoever proved that he did, in fact, lie. Nine-tenths of the country is incarcerated for the crime of calling Ardh a liar. Two good things have come from this.
- A citizen population unbelievably skilled at building prisons of all sizes and shapes.
- Freeing up of public parks, cafes, and general lessening of traffic.
This country has three rivers. Harithulasi, barker and milkman — Ardh had said to us, seven years ago. This one was perhaps the costliest truth our great country had to create. We sank under a foreign debt of three trillion dollars, and lost close to four and half million lives, but we dried up the river beds, and erased flowing water bodies off the country’s map, until we were finally left with three rivers. An act was rushed through the seventeen houses of the parliament, renaming the remaining rivers Harithulasi, barker, and milkman. We don’t know what system he used to come up with the names, but there are rumors that Harithulasi was his crush in high school.
“What is the alternative, fucker?” someone asks.
I think I have an alternative. I don’t say it out loud because it sounds stupid.
“Can’t you focus on the positives? Civilization is on its last legs. You know how close we are to nuclear extinction?”
I don’t know how close, which means they must be right. This must be the best version of our lives. Yay.
Ardh’s latest proclamation is spreading street to street like a state-sanctioned riot. The citizens are tearing off pieces from their clothes and blindfolding themselves. People are stepping on each other’s toes and trucks are driving off bridges and waiters are carrying orders to the wrong tables. By decree, eyes have been demoted to the status of vestigial organs. What a beautiful world. A world full of possibilities.
