"How does it work, Ajji?"
"Did you use it?"
"I don't… I have seen it work once. When my father took us back to Oros, with my paranoid mother and sick brother in tow."
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We took the late afternoon bus to Oros. The journey was sweaty, the bus stopped about 10 times, the conductor would come around to pour water to the steaming engine. Those ghats were scary, thin single roads, lonely stone signs that warned of animal crossing. Raju's sickness was weakening everyone. We got down to a cold dark morning, my eyes were adjusting to the sudden jolt to consciousness as we crossed the highway to take a lonely side road. It was a long trail.
Oros was just waking up, indifferent to its visitors. My father dropped us off at the old Shyamappa house. The house was dusty, cobwebs swinging from the ceiling arches. Cushions turned hard with time had jute poking out of them. My mother started violently cleaning a bedroom as Raju slept on my small lap uncomfortably, while my father went searching for Malla and I suspected some food.
By afternoon a room was clean, my mother had borrowed groceries from neighbors and had a cooker whistling loud. I followed my father around, since staying in the house meant seeing my ill brother. So I tried helping.
We walked across the fairly clean estate and bent over simple ropes. Against my best wishes we entered a collapsing old house, the dust was intense yet silent. The marks on the walls were fading into cracks. The monsoons had destroyed the left side of the house completely. Malla guided us up there making telling my father unnecessary news of town. He was too old to help my father clear the mess. He walked with a hunchback wearing an old lungi, spitting casually red blobs that merged in with iron rich mud.
It was a dark secluded house. The greenery had spread through every corner, the scent of life had twisted and forced its way inside. The only closed room stood with rotting door. It's lock had corroded of the hinges, specks of mud water were littered all over the door. With two hard swings from a wet wooden block the lock down.
The door still would not budge, with two kicks and a final shove the door swung open falling of its hinges. The room was empty and dark, light bursting through the door was the first rays to enter in about 30 years. Malla patted me on the back and walked away. I went in, trying to notice all the details in the room before tracing it up.
The ceiling was void, but with faint light trickling through there was a blur reflection. It was pristine, with no cracks. I stood in the corner staring up and he walked around trying his best to not look up immediately. My eyes tried noticing patterns in the cracks on the walls. There were 2 empty shelves carved into the wall with a thick film of dust on it. He grabbed debris to make a makeshift stool to stand on.
With a deep breath he lunged on top and brushed his hand into the mirror. The gesture breathed life into it. The inky void turned into a dull gray, a painting of the room started to emerge and soon he was there, not a perfect reflection but an image of him for sure. It was filled with gears creaking in opposite directions, his face and arms all made out of metal sheets in this image, the surrounding room was reflected like a mere square. Soon it moved, and I saw myself there a small creature, sharing some parts of his but some completely foreign and I had more roots and swirling stems around my machine-like parts. My father sat down and willed the image to move, sometimes rapidly.
This was the power of the mirror. It would let him play out all of his life till he got right. Raju was sick, and he needed to find a way. This mirror would help him choose, all he will have to do is look up and will it. So he played out one scenario after an another, sitting there without any food or water for days sometimes.