Beauty Lies In The Beholder's Eye

Also in the heart.

- Hyma Bal

A mala stood before the full-length mirror. What it reflected was a face marred with criss-cross scars and a crooked nose. Even one shoulder slumped. A travesty of a once-beautiful girl. Turning away, Amala threw herself on a chair and started to sob as if her heart would break.

‘How did this happen to me?’ she asked in rhetoric. ‘Why me?’

And she knew the answer: poetic justice – retribution.

The ugly duckling had turned into a swan. Here it was the reverse, the swan had turned into an ugly duckling. The most beautiful girl of the colony was something else now. A trick that fate had played on her.

The words of the rhyme came to her mind.

‘My face is my fortune...my face is my fortune, sir’ she said.

And that was what Amala too had believed. Proud of her alabaster skin, her chissered features, her doe shaped eyes, she was the acclaimed beauty of the college and she revelled in it.

Even as a child, she had heard her mother’s friends telling her mother, ‘you have such a pretty girl. She is sure to grow into a beauty and break men’s hearts.’

She used to ask her mother. “How can I break hearts, ma? Like breaking a plate?”

Her mother used to pinch her cheeks and say, “They are just joking, dear – Run off to play. But remember one does not see how fair you are of face, but how pure you are of heart!” So she had grown up into a ravishing beauty making heads turn. At college she was the acclaimed beauty queen.

“Even a model can’t hold a candle to you,” her friends flattered her.

“You must find a husband who will complement your looks. Where will you find him?