Cinder Over Ella

Who does not know the snow-white-faced and the red bowed beauty? Who hasn't remembered (though yearning to forget!) the tale of "ragged- clothes wearing girl turned into a classy blue-dressed adorned princess"? The ignorance to go and marry the stranger who kissed her in her sleep, and the idiosyncrasy to kiss a frog just to become a queen, is what we learn in our bedtime tales, and also plan to teach our girls in future. But thank the gods, so was not the case for me. I had Socrates, Harry Potter, Arabian Nights, Mahatma Gandhi, Lord Buddha's tales, Bhagvat Stories, and Panchtantra Tales stacked on my bedside shelf.

But then school happened and so did the "Annual Functions" where we had one day of a week to dress up as any fantasy character we adored the most. I wore a Peter-Pan dress. I mean, who does not want to get lost in the shadows when Mom scolds. It was also the most comfortable and cheap piece. Green shirt, green trousers and the same rugby cap. But I was shell shocked and felt inferior when almost ninety percent of my girlfriends came up in pink, blue, purple glittered and beautiful drop-down frocks. It was like an odd-one-out down-right pauper of me. They were Aurora, Snow, Aeriel (the leg version), Tiana, Belle, and the ever so famous Cinderella.

With a face of a monkey whose mangoes had got stolen, I came home without enjoying the dinner and cried out in front of my beautician, Mom. "Why was I not made out as a princess? No tiara or beautiful bedazzled slippers for me, how?" Her simple answer, "Nobody would be that kind of princess in this world." She told me how pathetic sugar-coated Disney version stories of these girls are and tried to educate me how irrelevant their character design is. It was hard for a 7-year-old to understand and so I refused to placate. I threw tantrums for a week, but then relented when I realized no good is going to come. My mother has her own high threshold for adamancy.

Fairy tales and their balls were lost for me as my fiction world continued in exploring the Land of Mordor, Oz, Camp Half-Blood, Berk, Diagon Alley, Wonderland, and so many other mazes of awe and discovery. The only fairy tale I was aware of was Pocahontas, and I was not impressed. Admittedly, she was different than others in some ways like she had a little more courage and knew what she wants and how to work herself to get it, like how not to marry just because someone told you to. But then the John Smith came in, and I read her real story. The girl gave me creeps and I swore off ever trying to skim through such creations. Surprisingly in the late 2010s, Mulan came into the picture when I saw Jamie Chung in Once upon a Time series and I felt to at least know how the other stories are shaped.

It was unfathomably humbug but highly <instrumental to know the kind of such tales. Why humbug? Well, what other adjective can anyone give? And why instrumental? Because at least through them the girls will know how not to behave. The woman of today and tomorrow will have an example to differentiate "rescue", and "to get rescued". They will see the beauty with the cinder on their face. The cinder of feminist struggles that had left the mark, the cinder of uproar and fights they have won, the cinder of broken hearts they have withheld, the cinder of courage to rise again as a tribute to the lost child, the cinder to protect the nation in the absence of the fallen husband, will give them the bliss beyond the life in castles.

Princess stories in all have zero sense. There is no Half-Glass Full (Behensplaining reference) here. Snow-white takes food from the strangers and lives with seven, completely stranger dwarfs. Aurora can't keep herself away from a spindle and is ecstatic while being kissed without permission. Was she that fresh even after sleeping for ages? Not even brushed her teeth. Yikes. Why Red Riding Hood always feels the woodcutter be the kind-one and the big wolf to be bad? Why can't the woodcutter be the one destroying the lands and killing off the pack? Perhaps, the wolves were protecting her grandma like their loyal cousins and they needed Red as their voice against the woodcutter. They were looking for a Wolf-Queen in her! Why Belle didn't fight for her father in a normal way and report a complaint of abduction? Why Cinderella never helped her sisters with some beauty tips if their only insecurity was her fair skin. They would have made a great gang and might have won over the evil mother. Instead, she fuelled the hatred by accentuating her not-earned but only got by accident nice-to-look-at face! From Evil Mother I remember, Why do we spread the story where the stepmother is always evil? Why only a glass slipper can tell that dumb man who was his girl? Was her beauty not intact in a pair of comfortable home clothes? Why does the story want to point out that no matter what you are, you will always need a Godmother or a Godfather who has some magical connections to help your way up the ladder? Above all, why these girls believe that their only answer for the end of misery is getting a Prince. Why become a princess only by marrying a prince? Why wait for anyone to come to your rescue, and not even give a second thought if that someone is a beast, man or frog! They just want someone with a castle on a cliff at the far end of the city. Why can't Rapunzel use her own hair and brains to get down the tower? Is Aeriel crazy to give up ruling the Atlantis, wonderful father and friends, and above all, her identity as a mermaid for a fool who will promptly select someone else with a better voice?

At this point, I will say No. No girl dreams about this and none should. It's a waste of time, and more importantly, a waste of existence. Nikita Gill, the ageless intellectual writer, concocts up the best verses to spell out Tinker and if we consider thoughtfully, then ourselves:

A woman’s anger can change the world,
I know mine can
and this is not a gift
I will give it away.
I am small and I am angry,
it is how I channel my energy
and I like myself that way.

"She remembered who she was and the game changed"
-Lalah Deliah