Embracing moments of timeless magic, one rub at a time.

After playing Holi, I was relaxing outside our flat when Malik my next door neighbour in Delhi, covered in colors, sat next to me. We discussed minimizing water usage for cleaning. Malik mentioned he typically uses a wet cloth. Then, leaning in conspiratorially, he whispered about a strange experience cleaning his face last year after Holi. Meanwhile, his wife, a towering and dominating personality, occasionally glanced at us from her jhula!

Malik's experience

........

As I stood in front of the wash basin, the vibrant hues of Holi  colour still clinging to my skin, I began the familiar ritual of removing the colors. But this time, something extraordinary happened. With each gentle rub of the wet cloth, I felt a strange sensation coursing through me. My reflection in the mirror seemed to be undergoing a miraculous transformation.
With each clockwise motion of the wet cloth, I felt as though I held the power to defy time itself. The wrinkles smoothed out, the lines softened, and I watched in wonder as the years seemed to slip away, leaving behind a younger, more vibrant version of myself.


Curious and emboldened by this surreal experience, I decided to experiment. Tentatively, I reversed my motion, rubbing the cloth counterclockwise. Instantly, the effects were reversed. My reflection aged rapidly, lines deepening, posture stooping, as if the weight of years bore down upon me once more.

Intrigued yet cautious, I pondered the strange phenomenon. Was it the mirror playing tricks on my mind, or had the colors of Holi somehow tapped into a hidden power within me? With each passing moment, the boundary between reality and magic blurred, leaving me to wonder at the mysteries that lay within the colors of the festival.

The colors which was on my face was mostly the ones I purchased,red and green.My friends were using my colour to play Holi with me.
I kept my newfound ability hidden from my wife, fearing her disbelief or worse, her insistence on sharing the secret. It was my own private escapade, a journey I wasn't ready to share with anyone just yet.

But lurking beneath the surface was the sobering realization that one day, the colors would indeed run out, leaving me stranded in the present, unable to revisit the past even for a moment. And so, I savored each clandestine trip to the wash basin, knowing that eventually, the magic would fade, leaving only memories and the faint whisper of a once-cherished secret.

,.......

Malik stared at my perplexed look shyly. I asked him whether he tried doing the same experiment in the other bathroom of his flat.

He nodded his head and said it didn't happen there.

I started thinking about his experience and I concluded that the mirror and those colours together produced a psychological shift which caused the time travel in his mind , triggered the optic nerves to produce his image of various young age cached in his memory disc. But then I couldn't find any explanation of his getting aged with counter clockwise rub.

After a while Malik left after extracting promise from me of not sharing his escapade with anyone else , especially with his wife.

I thought of borrowing some colours from him ,do the experiment in our bathroom mirror but I resisted the urge. I really didn't know whether he really went through the above mentioned experience or under the influence of bhang he was hallucinating!