Cinderella Stories

“Etched in black and white
Carved in stone
A full stop denotes the end
A DEFINITE END”
“I hate definite ends! They leave nothing to your imagination.” The prominent fashion designer continued,
The end of a story, the end of an era…..The beginning of a new tomorrow. A tomorrow that never dawns….the glowing embers of the sun never scorch you….the cinders from the fire provide the warmth…the crackling fire wants you…you fell wanted…the cinders assure that you wont be consumed…the grayish cinders….where nothing is etched in black and white…the cinders don’t compartmentalize…Maybe that’s why I love the Cinderella story………”

Till now I never experienced something like this…a psychiatrist doesn’t really expect poetry from his patients sitting on his couch. So, when this happened to me I was flabbergasted. So what do you do when your patient suddenly mouths poetry like a long lost cousin of Ghalib? You provide the former with a pen and paper and hope that you won’t have to consult a shrink in near future. That’s precisely what I did…………………………………………………

“I have always loved Cinderella stories……there is a magic in it (and I am not just talking about the fairy godmother here) that stories like Hansel and Gretel lack. As a kid, I always admired Cinderella and Rapunzel for their courage and destiny. But it was always Cinderella who remained a personal favourite. I believe in Cinderella stories….I believe in happy endings…I believe that true love stories are meant to last forever……I believe that there is a prince charming waiting for me [I have a fair inkling of who he is but that’s still a top secret ;) ] My friends have always laughed at me when I told them that a knight in shining armour would whisk me off to a castle one day. “We thought it was a prince and not a knight,” they sniggered, ridiculing me for my ambitionless life; thinking of me as a lowly creature whose only ambition in life was to have two, cute, little of kids of the man that I loved, and take care of them as well as their father, my dream man, and his house….I always loved Barbie dolls, especially the one that had Kelly and the kitchen set. “Housewife ambitions,” my mother screamed, trembling at the mere thought. She didn’t dare tell my father that their only child didn’t dream of being a Doctor or an Engineer but a lowly housewife…. “He would be heart broken,” she sighed….As if he had a heart! As if she cared! All they cared was about their respective hearts which I thought were by now shattered into millions of tiny fragments and were now incapable of neither being broken further nor mended……..

But I divert from my original line of thought that says, I LIKE CINDERELLA STORIES…….I really like them…..the romance…….the devotion……the love between Cinderella and her prince seems so real…so heartbreaking……so touching…..so exhilarating
Whenever my parents fought, I cried myself to sleep, thinking of the Pooh lying next to me as my Prince…promising him that, I would never fight with him like this……making him promise me that, he would never hurt me like this. I always thought that he would come one day and ask for my hand. I was even prepared to run away with him if my father refused to marry me off. I was prepared to mount his bike, the modern version of the bike and run away; but he never came …….”

“He never came…… Doctor, he never came! All my friends found someone or the other…….. But he never came…….but I still wait for him Doc. Is it really wrong to have just one ambition in life- to find true love? If I don’t want a career why cant people around me understand that Dr.?” Amidst the sobs the saga continued, “I make a great living as a fashion designer doctor and I still believe in Cinderella stories, Dr …...I believe in happy endings ……….I believe in marriages, Doc…..I still believe in him Doc…….I still believe in my prince charming……I still believe that he will come back to me one day…….and I am prepared to mount his bike and run away with him towards our future.” I muttered under my breath, “but wouldn’t that be difficult?” Unfortunately he heard it and answered, “Running on the bike wouldn’t be so difficult Doc, I will be wearing trousers! And Doc, I will carry with me a book of fairytales, I believe in Cinderella stories you see……………….” I saw the man in front of me sobbing his heart out and wondered about the Cinderella after the clock struck midnight…………