A girl living in a small Barbie doll house, with her parents and brother, with decent living, has a normal life, playing with dolls chatting and giggling with her girlfriends, helping her mama with the house hold chores, doing her school work and dreaming of becoming a doctor or teacher suddenly enters from a carefree childhood to a youth full of fancy. The ideals in her society make her believe that the ordinary life she is living will suddenly transform into a fairy tale when a prince charming will come and take her to a land though alien and distant yet promising blessings uncountable. It’s not due to the fairy tales like Cinderella that she had been reading but the verbal prayers of her distant aunts and the naughty bugging of the elder cousins and everyone else she encounters growing up that she believes that the ultimate goal of her life is meeting her prince charms.
She gets ready, all prepared in her exotic dress and heavy jewels at a tender age, her prince charms comes with promises of keeping her like a ‘china in his hands’ takes her away, away from the chirping and giggling and her parents and siblings, from her Barbie doll house to a land though fulfilling a part of her dreams being alien and distant but, full of blessings uncountable? She’s yet to find.
Aware of all the possible consequences; compromises, patience, sacrificing ego, hurting self esteem, giving, she sticks to the belief she had grown up with. She enters this land whose identity is still ambiguous, considering herself to be a princess not less fragile than ‘china’.
Innocent and youthful, she takes the leap of years, in all this process of first longing for the prince charming and then finally becoming his china princess she forgets that she is not mere china, she is a human possessing a heart, and not mere heart, a mind too. She encounters reality which is far away from her understanding and she finds herself tracked in this net. No escape!
Dwelling in her comfy home, a girl is pampered and protected in her mother’s arms, in her father’s advice and in the playful teasing of her brother. She is taken care of, she is taught to live in shelter. She is never alone; she has never experienced the sour taste of the outside world. Now her prince charming is her cozy home, her companion, her love, her centre. She longs for him, his care, looks at him as her benefactor.
She has listened to the sweet melodious songs of birds under the blue sky and rock music of the honking cars, she’s amused by the exuberant city life and has wondered how life would have been if she had the feathers to fly, if she had the courage to plunge into the big sea of world, her own, yet distant from experience.
She has an observation, an opinion, a macro look at the affairs, but the filthy lot in the outside world has a taste alien to her. A day, stepping out and wandering alone leaving behind the world of her cozy home, the centre of her life, encountering the waves of the big sea, encountering the society people all alone by herself, in the bazaars, in the offices, in the streets, she tastes the bitterest of all tastes. She seeks protection of her home not the breeze outside, she seeks dependence not independence, she seeks shelter not feathers.
She comes back, comes back to her home, her companion, her love, her centre, to his cares and blessings.
