She stopped right there and stood stock-still as her dirty reflection reappeared in the mirror. It was dirtier than before. Eyes locked on her image, Iruj leaned towards the mirror unconsciously. Her thoughts conflicted with what she had in front of her eyes.

She struggled to negate that feeling she was having deep inside. She didn’t want to believe it was her own self. While she was going through a mental war, suddenly the image of a girl appeared in the mirror. She stumbled with a jerk as she was taken aback by the reflection of the girl she had ridiculed the other day.

Iruj turned around to see the girl but a look of surprise and incredulity spread across her face when she found nothing except the deafening silence of her empty room. She returned to face the mirror and stared at the girl’s reflection in perplexity. As she was trying to figure out if the girl was in real or only her mind’s projection, another reflection joined the others, adding to Iruj’s confusion or rather misery.

The whole cycle of turning around and not finding anything took place numerous times as gradually all those people who were hurt by Iruj over a lifetime crowded in the mirror. It was already becoming unbearable for her to face the reflections of her past when suddenly the words of humiliation uttered by her to all those people filled the whole room. The echo in the room reminded her of the times when her insolence had hurt people! She couldn’t bear meeting her true self.

Desperate, she tried to cover her eyes and ears, to block out the unbearable, to run away from the reflection of her past but to no avail. A person has to be accountable for their deeds.