Mirror, Mirror on the wall!

There comes a moment when every human heaves a sigh at what lacks. When you are just seven years old, the woman or the man is more dormant and needs an event or a person to awaken that sense of being. Womanhood then was a far cry especially when being part of a male team.

A Friday midday meal turns sour as ‘b**’ a very beautiful girl disturbs the quiet munch Alan and I share. She drops on her knees beside us, holds out her slender hands at Alan and says, “Magic Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”  And she has Muhammad Ali to add the answer, “You of course, never this fat piggy”

Alan is a one-woman guy and flashes an unsettled gaze at me, the fat piggy.

“No, dumbo, not her…” B** pushes his chin away from my direction. She continues crooning her voice like a husky singer, “Look at her stubby fingers and my slender ones, look at her fatty cheeks and my chiselled lines, Look at her webbed feet and my lovely ones, She is an ugly duckling and me Snow-white.” She pulls Alan’s ‘un’- willing hands and places them on her cheeks. Alan pulls his hands back, grabs my arm and yells, “let us run”.

We run across the ground, my feet leaden with the newfound knowledge that am an ugly duckling and ‘B**’ snow-white. We settle down on the magic bench that healed our 'every'  conflict. I settle at the far corner and he says trying to hold my hand, “You my princess, you are the fairest of all.”
 “you held her hands so you can marry her” I yell at him, the woman in me born with a new face.

Alan looks at me with tear filled eyes, “ And whom will you marry?”

“someone” I reply still looking away, fighting the fresh awakening of something green and new in me.

He sits next to me and sniffles for a long time until I can’t withstand his sniffles, so I say, “Alright, but then who is the fairest of all?”

His eyes turn around, surprised at the sound of the woman in my query, and Alan is quick to reply like his breed, “you are my princess, she is a witch”

The last part of his statement quietens the new green activity in my mind, we snuggle close, our old comfort back. Alan, chants, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair” with a patience that defies the reality of a hair length that never could see the light below my ears. And in spite of my sparse haired blockhead, I become the fairest of all beside the mirror of a seven year old Prince Charming.

Perhaps that lack a human feels quells in that quaint satisfaction that the other is a witch. Maybe it is just what one chooses to see in a mirror, that adds the magical sparkle to the beholder and the beheld!