Writer: Vijay Madan
Photo: Vijay Madan
Vijay stood in front of the broken mirror in his room, whiskey glass in hand, his reflection fractured into countless jagged pieces. Each shard seemed to reflect a part of him he barely recognized—a graying professor, a seeker of truth, a lover of chaos, and a man who once believed he could see the world clearly. Yet now, he thought, his mind felt no different from the broken mirror: fragmented, clouded, and covered with the dust of his own experiences.
“The mind is a mirror,” he murmured to himself, his voice tinged with both wonder and resignation. “It gathers dust while it reflects.”
In the silence of his room, Vijay’s mind drifted back to the beginning of his journey. As a young chemistry professor, he had prided himself on the clarity of his thoughts, the precision of his reasoning. His mind had been like a pristine mirror then, reflecting the equations of life and the universe with sharp accuracy. But over the years, the relentless march of time had deposited layers of “dust” on that mirror—regrets, unresolved emotions, broken relationships, and the constant pull of his own imperfections.
He took a sip of whiskey, letting the burn anchor him in the moment. “Dust,” he thought. “The biases, the fears, the distractions…they’re inevitable, aren’t they?”
Vijay remembered a lecture he had once given about entropy, the natural tendency of the universe toward disorder. He had explained to his students how even the most ordered systems inevitably succumb to chaos. Was the human mind any different? It, too, gathered disorder as it journeyed through life. Yet, amidst this chaos, there was beauty—a beauty he had come to appreciate in the club’s increasing disorder, in the randomness of a photograph, or in the fleeting brilliance of a sunset.
But tonight, the metaphor felt heavier, more personal. Vijay saw his mind as a mirror that had not only gathered dust but had also cracked under the weight of its reflections. His children drifting away, his once-revered status in academia fading into irrelevance—had left marks that no amount of cleaning could erase.
“Still,” he whispered, “a dusty mirror still reflects. It may not be perfect, but it shows something.”
He thought of the practices that had once brought him clarity—meditation at the ghats of Banaras, where he had felt his consciousness dissolve into nothingness; the act of framing a photograph, where the world narrowed to a single, focused point; even driving, where the rhythm of the road calmed his restless mind. Each of these had been attempts to clear the dust, to reclaim the clarity of his mirror.
Vijay set the whiskey glass down and looked at the fractured mirror again. Perhaps, he thought, the cracks and dust were not imperfections but truths—evidence of a life lived, of battles fought and scars earned. Maybe the mind, like the universe, was never meant to remain pristine. Perhaps its true beauty lay in its ability to reflect despite the imperfections, to find meaning even in chaos.
He reached for his Nikon camera, feeling its weight in his hands. Photography had always been his way of reconciling with reality, of capturing the fleeting beauty amidst the chaos. He aimed it at the broken mirror, framing his fractured reflection.
Click.
The shutter echoed softly in the room, and Vijay smiled. “The mind may gather dust,” he thought, “but it can still create beauty. Even a cracked mirror reflects the light.”
In that moment, Vijay felt a sense of acceptance—a quiet understanding that the dust and cracks of his mind were not obstacles but essential parts of his journey.
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