"The Bird and The Mirror" By Saurabh Baral

The Bird

I first petted the bird in September of 2021. I hadn’t been around birds as such for a number of years. The feathered creatures that I did play with — caged and flightless — weren’t birds proper. But I do owe them a nod: if not for them, thoughts of the bird would have never crossed my mind.

It started as an experiment of sorts. A certain examination had been postponed amidst fears of a certain pathogen and I was bored (I can come up with better reasons but for the sake of the story,

we will use this version). You could make the case that I am downplaying the bird’s significance while also writing an essay about it. But in my defense, the bird didn’t have as good an appeal at the time. It didn’t even have colors. Even so, should you find me radiate contradictions after every sentence, I do not wish to explain myself — I’ve always been this way.

It didn’t take long for me to forget about my little scientific endeavor. The spirit of the experiment seemed microscopic when put next to the beauty of the pearls that the bird brought with it. I did not care where they came from. It may have robbed someone, even murdered for all

I cared. All of it was holy to me, all was permissible.

If there was one thing I cared about, it is how blue the pearls looked. The bluer, the better. Attimes, the same pearls looked astronomically bluer than they normally did. A different shade, almost a different color. There were magic mirrors appearing at the bird’s will, intensifying the colors. The bird, for all its robberies and murders, was also a master of light. A being so learned in the discipline of mirrors that its very essence had become one.

The Mirror

I never had a mirror in my bedroom. When I enlightened a friend with this fact, he remarked that I was only using it as an excuse to look ugly. It wasn’t that I hated having a mirror, I never really thought anything of it.

After all, if I did need one, I could go to the bathroom. Or if I had the urgent need to check what my face looked like before answering an unexpected video call, the front camera was always there. It just never occurred to me that I lacked a reflective device. Mirrors project.

They broadcast to you an assurance that yes, there is a person standing in front of the mirror, and that person is you. You have no idea who you are, a mirror answers exactlythat. It gives you a definition of you.

But not all mirrors reflect light, some distort it. Are bright pearls worth losing both your irises?