Mirror Mirror on the Wall

I realized how much I love a mirror when I climbed 3 floors to take the lift with the mirror as opposed to the one at the ground floor without the mirror the other day. And I realized that I have been doing that often – only now I have graduated from the first to the third floor. I like the lift with the mirror – sometimes I let the one without the mirror come and go – and wait for the other one.

When I moved into a flat, the first thing I looked for was not the western loo, or the big windows, or the yellow lights – but the mirror – was it full length? Was it true? Did it make me look slimmer? Oh then it would have to change – I would rather the mirror would make me put on a kilo or two so I keep myself on a healthy lifestyle!

I don’t like mirrors that are just next to the window – the natural light shows too much – all the pores, all the flaws – and I don’t want to get depressed first thing in the morning.

I also like to sit facing the mirror when I am in a restaurant – so I can glance once in a while to check my hair or any speck of food stuck between my teeth. I like mirrors in stores – and malls – where one can just walk across and slimily look at oneself.

I like clean steel plates and computer screens that are off. I like spoons and the magic mirror room in a fair. I like phone cameras. I like clear water bodies. I like it when I can see myself in the sparkle of my date’s eyes. I like photographs. I like photoshop. I like to talk with someone else while looking in the mirror. I like to talk to myself while looking in the mirror. I like the mirror in the car. I like to carry a small mirror to check my kajal. I like the little mirrors in my Rajasthani dupattas. I like them on sheer curtains. I enjoyed studying how mirrors are made. I like Saint Gobain.

I also like those magical mirrors in fairy tales where one could enter a mirror and go to a different world. I like Through the Looking Glass. And how everything gets reversed in a mirror. I like the fact that a flat mirror won’t lie. I like Snow White. I like the tale of Narcissus and the lake. I like Sylvia Plath’s Poem The Mirror which goes like this-
“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions….Whatever I see I swallow immediately….Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike…..I am not cruel, only truthful…”

So does that make me vain? All this preening and staring?
Does that make me loony? My liking for distorted images in a spoon?
Does that make me reflective? All these ideas of the mirror showing the truth and yet reversing everything?
Does it make me bookish? These references to Plath and Greek myth?


I don’t know. I like mirrors. For what they are. For their warped identities – to have the painful job of reflecting what’s true and yet inverting everything. To serve a purpose of utter shallowness and yet such immeasurable depth. I like the fact that a mirror has so many meanings. I like it that it’s installed everywhere- in lifts and corridors and bikes and bathrooms. But I like it best that a mirror reminds me of who I am every morning. I really like a mirror. It lets me be me and it makes me like me.