THE SPEAKING MIRROR

THE SPEAKING MIRROR

"Mirror mirror on the wall. who is the most beautiful of all?" asks the lady and pat comes the reply from the speaking mirror, "you are, my dear lady".

Then one day SNOW WHITE spoils the fun and  usurps  that number one position. And the plot thickens!

That is, ofcourse, the evergreen tale of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS from your own childhood days.

The speaking-mirror is
everywhere. The desire for one-upmanship remains through life. It is in the nature of most people to  seek to be a cut above the rest. That explains the propensity to draw attention to such of your possessions as are out of reach for most others.

So there was the bizarre home refrigerator in (of all places!) the drawing room in early twentieth century crying to be noticed. So there was that huge radio in the forties in your drawing room noisily announcing its presence to your viditors and a crude but working T.V.  soon afterwards.. And lately there was, in late 1990s,  that very small cellphone, always  in your hand !! 

The message was, " Look, I have got something you cannot afford".

Chetan Bhagat's hero , a Punjabi, marries a Tamil brahman girl and the earthshaking run up to their marriage is scripted in the book TWO STATES, an interesting study of two vastly different cultures. Thus, as he maintains, a big house with shining marble floor is the dream of most Punjabi people and high scores in mathematics that of a Tamilian. The wish-list varies from society to society. A big battle scar running across the face would be more of a status-symbol in tribal people who place valour and honour above everything else. In many tribes even to this day it is so. And in some people it would just be a big shining gold tooth in the mouth!

Money, in our time, is a symbol of success and a manifestation of status. Riches, in whatever form, become a popular craze and an indicator of social success. In a lavish marriage that I attended a long time back, the groom's father exulted thus : "Very few can afford  lavishness of MY level". There was a great emphasis on the word MY.

So you get into a splurging spree if you have a surfeit of lucre. Second generation Indian diaspora in USA is doing exactly this by scripting bizarre events. Elephants have lately been in use in marriage procession there ! Deep-pocket diaspora has gone crazy! Read this:

"A few calls to the wedding planner and Minnie, a 3,175kg (7,000 pounds) grey Asian elephant, is on her way to Washington DC from Connecticut.

"Elephants are the latest
trend - and because there are not many around, the demand is always high,'' says Sonal Shah, who runs an event planning agency  'The Date'.

The cost of hiring an
elephant can go up to $
30,000 depending on
distance - but people still
seem to have the money to pay for it."
(BBC News.1 July 2008 ).

The ONE-UPMANSHIP cannot be done away with. The speaking mirror continues to be there. Only the context has changed in the twentyfirst century The question has been updated : "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the richest of us all" asks a filthy-rich person to the mirror and the mirror drawls, "Its a pretty long list buddy. Musk continues to top it and you are far far down. You continue to be still at number fortysix ."

And then suddenly the mirror clouds up
and the witches are seen  gathering around a bubbling cauldron, chanting, casting spells across the globe, conjuring visions of the future, and goading Men and women to be 'filthy rich' at the cost of humanity. 

Then the witches throw up their hands towards the sky and scream in unison:

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and
filthy air."

And the cauldron keeps bubbling  !

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