Mirror and reflection of an existential portal

I am staring at the horizon where everything and nothing meets, where in the day runs the fastest and yet is the easiest to seize, where words do not weave the world, for the unsolvable Morse code of one's palpitations are enough to construe the unsaid.

Such glory had set my eyes ablaze when I notice tiny specks of dust frolicking in the amber hour as if sun itself had endowed its blessing upon them. We all have to end in dust.

I lay my body bare. A long time since we have met. I see it has withered but who am I to say? We have drifted. I cannot remember she who stands before me and I know not the one who resides within me.

All this life I could not be the muse in my own painting, could not be the protagonist in my own story. I must complain that I lost myself but blame or praise the irony, I never got to know myself, robbed of yet another fortune.

My lips follow a known sound and to the mirror, I ask: "Mirror-Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? The void in the eyes, the purple underneath, the swollen lips or the bruised cheeks."

These eyes were once home to a myriad dreams. The dreams are my past and the augmenting void, my probable future.

Funny how I have forgotten the past and lost the will to witness future. Thus, I sit, weaving the eventual as the transient today bleeds into yesterday, solemnly waiting for the thread to run out.

It was a day like no other, a few days into the married life, too young and restless to surrender to the monochromes of life. It was a day- mundane at best, when she first tasted this new shade of slavery, a different flavour than what she was accustomed to, back at home.

The face was lit with bridal glow and the mehndi on her hands had started waning. Deeper the colour of the henna stronger is the bond, they said. In more than one way was the henna symbolic of their marriage.

Not a day older than a blossom - she was delicately preserved, sacredly unexploited, her sanctity uncompromised.

Upon acquainting with the henna, cold and brewing with bewilderment, all this bud, yearned for, was to bloom.

The big day finally arrived and this wish was granted. The mehndi coalescing with the petals, mustered up its darkest shade. All was fine until it started dissipating.

A lot lost in a single day. It was then that the master gifted me, an anklet, slyly decorating my feet with his remorse.

Little did I know, it was a pompous felicity? When I move this anklet breathes, the hushed cries echo, forgotten aspirations howl and the reality reverberates.

Will these scars ever heal? No. They will be stolen, auctioned, melted, and somewhere in a distant land merchandised as love, compassion and fidelity.

The chirrupings have transitioned into car honks and traffic, a signal for the wives to get ready and pay homage to their returned corporate warriors.

Soon the stairs sing of my misfortune, its voice laced with grief, having been well acquainted with the horrors of my life past midnight.

Complementary to this, emerges the derisive sound of his footsteps, conceitedly proclaiming to the world, and the intentions of its proprietor. With each footstep, my heart births a thump- much louder than its usual practice.

Her eyes, tell a forbidden tale, an estranged tale of a secret desire. Glorious indeed would be a day when her insignificance becomes the most significant, her existence most explicit. On the burning ghats of Ganga, a wooden lattice decorated, belonging to her and her only.

The sculpture which had entrapped her all her mortal life, deceiving many rudimentary characters of the story, finally reduced to ashes. Tears would be shed, sorrow expressed solemnly, troop of mourners with their head bent low silently praying for the departed soul. Somewhere in this universe a burden uplifted, a maid out of job, a cage set on fire, an infidel at large, forgotten dreams weeping amidst the holy chants - unheard and unseen again.

It is just then that the clock ticks 7, cooker whistles, and the doorbell rings. The loud amalgamation of this noise cracks the mirror and the portal between us closes.

The writer is a student of Class XII, Sacred Heart School, Sector 26, Chandigarh