Monday, February 25, 2013

Tale of a home made Pizza


A conversation with my 6-year old after I served him a fresh home made pizza.

Me: So you think it's better than the little Caesar's pizza?
He: Mom, I am telling you this one last time. Anything you cook is way better than what we get at stores.
Me: You know what to say to make mom happy, don't you?
He: So where did you get all the ingredients from?
Me: Whole Foods.
He: Nice. Whole foods is never going to go out of business.
Me : :-)
He: Can I have more.
Me: You already ate more than half of it. But you can have a piece.

I cut out a small piece from the pizza half and he reaches for the other piece. That's my son!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Magic Mirror - Part 1


There's a magic mirror in my bedroom. I swear there is. You believe me, don't you? You have to, because no one else seems to.

I have told my husband, Rob, about it innumerable times. In the beginning he used to laugh at me, then he started ignoring me and now-a-days he seems to get angry – oh so angry – he starts screaming at the top of his voice.

I feel almost as scared as I do when I look into the magic mirror – well almost, because nothing could compare to the terror I feel in its presence. Not even when Rob accuses me of slowly going insane while turning him insane too. He keeps yelling at me not to look into the mirror. He threatened to smash it one time, I slowly reminded him that breaking a mirror amounted to seven years of bad luck.

He did not. I am not sure why.

I don't think he believes in superstition – but I guess its a matter of not pushing your bad luck further. So I keep looking into the mirror, trying to break its hold over me – trying to find things I want to find, not the things it insists on showing me, the things that terrify me beyond measure.

I don't know when I started to realize that there was something wrong with the mirror in the room. One day it was a simple but elaborately designed little thing that fit perfectly in our huge room placed in a way that it was visible from every nook of the room and also from outside.

I hardly paid any attention to it except when I had to snatch a quick look at myself before stepping out of the room. Maybe that's what angered it, I am not sure. But one day, as I did my routine of looking into it while stepping out of the room, I found a stranger staring back at me. Scared out of my wits, I just ran from there not trusting myself to give it another glance.

Soon the incident was forgotten and tucked away into the inner recesses of the brain where so many other unpleasant scenarios are left in the hope that they would be lost forever. In a perfect world things lost on purpose will never be recovered, but unfortunately, the world we live in is so far from perfect.

I was just sitting on my bed, I don't quite remember doing what, when I caught a movement in the mirror. I looked up to see a figure making its way towards our room. I watched transfigured, as the image of the man crept closer and closer towards our room. I could not tear my eyes away from the mirror no matter how hard I tried. The figure loomed larger, I could see it more clearly.

It was snapping and snarling like a wolf circling its prey , but what terrified me most was the look in those inhuman eyes. It was a look of pure hatred and disgust. I closed my eyes tightly, burying my face in my hands.

“Are you alright?” I heard Rob's voice come from the doorway.

I could not bear to open my eyes. Yes, the haunting of the mirror had started and was gaining ground. I could not quite shake the feeling off completely after that no matter how hard I tried. I would try my best not to look into the magic mirror, but it was a difficult thing to ignore. My eyes would involuntarily turn towards it and whenever they did, it would show me the most grotesque things ever.

I tried to hide it from my family first. I had to make sure I was not going crazy, because I knew that would be the first thing everyone would accuse me of if I even alluded to it – that I was thinking it all up and it was just a figment of my imagination. But the more I tried to keep it under wraps, the more difficult it became for me to conceal. It was not like I was seeking for things to happen. The mirror controlled what I saw and slowly it began to control how I reacted.

I can't ever forget the day that everything came into the open. It was the day Rob was due to return home from an official trip out of town. It was early in the morning and I had overslept by about a couple of hours. I tried to get up, but I felt extremely groggy and sick. I called out to Samantha hoping against hope that she had not yet left yet.

I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard footsteps making their way to my room. I don't remember what happened next, but the next time I opened my eyes, my gaze fell directly on the mirror. I saw what I assumed to be Samantha's back slightly bending towards me. I opened my mouth to say something before I froze, catching the gleam of a knife in her hand.

She was lunging for me and before she could bring the knife down I leaped out of the bed and ran downstairs – screaming. I opened the front door trying to make it to the neighbor’s house. I was about to ring their doorbell when a hand fell on my shoulder. I passed out.

When I came to my senses, I found myself in my bed and it as dark – really dark. I was sweating profusely and I could hear my breath – in and out, in and out. I wanted to call out to someone to come help me but the image from the morning held me in its grip.

What if Samantha responded to my call again? What if she came in with the knife in her hand? Why was she trying to kill me? My throat felt parched. I needed a drink of water. I saw a glass of water on the nightstand and reached for it. My hand wobbled and the glass broke with a crash to the ground. I closed my eyes. I did not want to look into the mirror – I was exhausted, I could not handle any more of its magic.

The next few months are a blur, but basically everyone came to know that there was a magic mirror in my room. Not that they believed in it, they seemed to blame me squarely for that.

Rob suggested moving the “darn thing” out of the room and I thought that was a very good idea until he started to take it out. The 'darn thing' was so securely fastened to the wall that no matter how hard he tried, it did not budge. He sat down exhausted and I turned my face towards it to see how much he had progressed.

I saw the stranger I had seen the first time the magic in the mirror had revealed itself to me. This time, I kept looking and I found her smiling – seemed like she was mocking us, mocking me, mocking Rob. I willed her to stop, she started laughing. It was eerie just watching her laugh, not being able to hear her.

I had to stop it, I had to make her go and leave me in peace.

“STOP!” I screamed out.
“Good Lord! As if mocking and laughing at me is not enough, you have to also try to give me a heart attack...!”

I looked at him. I could not understand what he was saying. He seems to be mistaking her mocking with mine. I had to tell him that it was not me who was doing that. I had to let him know that the magic in the mirror was doing that.

“No..no..it's not me. It's her who's mocking you...us..” I cried.
“Who?” he asked.

I pointed to the mirror. Slowly he kept all his tools away. I watched him as he turned towards me and in a voice that made me freeze to my bone said,

“The issue is not with the mirror or the room. The issue is with you.” and walked out.

I started to say something to stop him but nothing came out. I looked at the mirror. The stranger was laughing her head off. She was pointing at me and making gestures that indicated that I was mad.

Had Rob really insinuated that I was crazy? The same Rob, who not a long time ago had declared his undying love for me. Who used to profess that the only reason he would open his eyes every day was because he knew he would see me sleeping next to me. What had happened to all that?

The thick and long hair he used to caress fell in wisps all around my forehead. The lips he used to kiss so passionately were so colorless that they mingled with the paleness of my face. The face that he would hold in his hands, close, very close and just stare at it saying it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

I glanced in the mirror, fully expecting the stranger to be lurking there but instead what I saw horrified me even more. There was nothing there – absolutely nothing – it was like I did not exist. I have never been so scared in my life ever. I needed someone to be around. I needed to talk to someone. I needed to feel alive, give myself proof that I existed. Mom!

“Why do you keep looking into the mirror while talking to me?”
“I just want to make sure that I can see myself in the mirror”

My mom looked towards it.

“I can see you fine. You are as pretty as you always have been – my beautiful little princess! ”

Yes, everything was fine. My image appeared crisp and clear, right next to my mother's. She was sitting there in all her stately finery. White pearls clasping her neck and hanging from her ears. Her gray hair with streaks of golden brown that she had refused to color all her life. The crocheted white shawl wrapped slightly across her shoulders. Her eyebrows carefully plucked to form an arch that I had tried all my life to reproduce but could never quite get it right.

“Thanks Mom!” I said squeezing her hand.

“I am always here for you darling, always here...” she said squeezing back my hand as I drifted off to sleep.

When I got up she was gone but her shawl lay wrapped around me. I felt rested and refreshed after a very long time.

As had become the norm, I instantly looked towards the mirror and I found an image of a little girl. She was wearing a snow white costume and had her head down looking at what presumably seemed to be big basket. Ringlets of hair kept falling around her face and she kept pushing it back.

I strained my neck to get a good look at her face but could not get a clear picture. I watched her for a while as she kept looking down looking for something in her basket.

“Look at me, little girl. Look at me!” I whispered to her.

“Who are you little one...who are you?” My voice grew louder.

“SHOW ME YOUR FACE!” I finally screamed.

She looked up. Her eyes were moist, she had a look of terror in them. As soon as her gaze fell on me, she let go off the basket, got up and extending her hands with a smile playing on her lips as tears streamed over he cheeks she said something that tore through my soul -

“Mommy! Help me! Help me Mommy!”

Yes it was her. My worst fears were true. She had waited for me to help her. She had been hoping that I would rescue her. Instead I had pushed her into a death trap.

“I am sorry darling. I am so sorry...” I wept like a baby as her image faded away.

“Come back sweetheart. Please come back to your Mommy. I promise I will help you. I promise I will shield you from everything. Just come back to Mommy, my love.”

“Just how long do you plan to keep this going?” his icy tone interrupted my monologue.

Once again his head in the mirror was replaced with that of a wolf's. But this time around the image did not inspire fear in me instead it inspired loathing.

He walked in and I lunged for his face. He jerked back but not before I had gotten to him first. He screamed out in pain

“What did you do that for? Bitch!” he screamed as he looked towards the mirror.

Now I could see his human face – the face that he put on to fool the world. A face that he used to fool a silly young woman into thinking that he was the man destined to be the love of her life.

(to be continued...)