Magical mirrors

Mathematician G H Hardy, collaborator of maths prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan, was extremely shy as a child. Later, he was uncomfortable being introduced to new people, and could not look at his own reflection in a mirror. So much so, if he ever had to stay in a hotel, he would cover all the mirrors in the room with towels!

Now, how would Hardy have reacted to one of those fabled metal mirrors produced in his friend Ramanujan's land? Your columnist indulged in this 'thought experiment' while attending Sharada Srinivasan's talk, 'Phases and Faces', at the Asiatic Society recently.

The Bangalore-based archaeo-metallurgist is presenting her insights on the makingand provenance of South Indian bronzes.

Her exposition on the renowned metal mirrors of Kerala, called Aranmula kannadi, likewise reminds us of Sri Jnanadeva's enigmatic verse about the mystified seeker: she looks into a kannadi only to find no reflection! The maths don Hardy would surely have loved such a device!

But alas, such a mirror exists only in the mystic's mind that has lost all sense of egoism only to attain a blissful state of communion with the universe. Elsewhere, he talks of moksha brought on by reflection: there is only One Face and so many reflections! "It's not the mirror but the Lord (the Consort of Rukmini) who stole my reflection," Sri Jnanadeva complains.

By a delicious stroke of serendipity, it turns out that the secret of metallic mirror-making also came from the Lord: " Krishna as Parthasarathy is believed to havesent it in a dream," Srinivasanexplains.