A Hall Of Mirrors

In the International Museum of Mirrors in Burbank, California, I was standing alongside my parents & little sister. They were getting bored, looking at their dumb reflections circling the room on all sides. I gazed at the stupendous panoply.
“ Come on, let’s go,” my sister blurted out.My parents agreed at the suggestion, but I stood fascinated at the numerous pieces of me staring at me with bespectacled eyes.I told my parents that I’d stay there a little longer & promised to meet them in front of the museum in half an hour. They agreed & walked away. As I went from place to place, studying each one carefully & distinguishing it from the other, I had a strange sensation that I was being watched.
“I am being watched by myself only,” I chuckled at my joke. When I stood in front of one & was examining it, I saw a flash of light in the glass & then a completely different world appeared before me.

I noticed that I’d grown up into a minister & was the president of The United States Of America. I was enjoying the power in my hands & lavishly spending my time.A phone rang, I picked it up & smiled heartlessly & cruelly.When my sub-ordinates enquired about the matter, I told them the whole of Asia has been conquered; they’re now in our hands.There was a burst of applause & congratulations started pouring in.I was at once named the most successful of all the presidents & thoroughly honored.The White House became the subject of every conversation. Washington D.C. was showered by innumerable supporters from all parts of the country- Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, Miami, Anchorage, Las Vegas, San Francisco & many others.Press reporters & cameramen flooded my sides, asking all sorts of questions about my remarkable achievement. The TV channels flashed pictures of thousands of tortured men & women, lying naked on the streets, dead.Vultures & other scavengers were zooming in & feasting on their big supper. The ones alive were made prisoners-of-war & treated like slaves. Chains tied around their necks, they were being dragged across the pavements. The pain they suffered was excruciating.All my American soldiers were laughing their hearts out, the inhuman cruelty seemed like some form of amusement to them.The newspapers read lengthy articles with huge headings “3 cheers for the President” & “America: The ruler of the world.”
Seeing the intolerable scenes, I turned away from the mirror in abomination & walked to another one, my heart aching with agony that I could be so unforgiving, heartless & monstrous. But, as I rounded off another mirror, a similar flash appeared & in it, I could visualize myself as a doctor, a cardiologist surgeon.

This gave me some hope & I looked in more closely. I was the head of the department of Cardiology in the J.F. Kennedy National Hospital in New York City. I was a respected person & reputed too. At that time, I was engaged in a critical surgery involving a heart transplant. The success rate being very rare, I was gripped with anxiety & tension & never, lost my heart. After 12 hours of brain cracking nervousness, I emerged victorious, I’d saved a 80 year old woman from the hands of death. I felt on top of the world & full of life & happiness, nothing could go wrong, it seemed. There was much excitement inside the operation theatre, all my colleagues congratulating each other. When the world comes to know of my achievement, I’d surely be awarded. And as expected, the very next thing I knew was that I was being awarded the most prestigious medal in the history of medicine. The newspapers hailed me as “The Savior” & my picture flooded the television channels. On the skies above, I could see God smiling at me, blessing & beckoning me for more such performances. Glad at heart, I left that mirror too, thinking about the huge contrast in my character that I’d witnessed just a moment ago. So, I learnt a valuable lesson that exercising unwanted powers to rule over the people doesn’t earn a place in heaven, but, helping them is the surest way to salvation. I thought of the U.S. president misusing his powers, killing people like a tyrant & on the other hand, a man saving the life of another fellow human being in the same country!

As I neared the exit doors, I could see my family beaming at me.“What did you learn from a bunch of mirrors?” father asked.“A thousand valuable things that can’t be told,” came my answer.My parents & sister looked at me with narrow, questioning eyes.
I smiled to myself, “You’ll never know what priceless teachings I got from them.”