The Promise of Fiction
It’s 2009. You are 12. You don’t feel special. You don’t
like the image that stares back at you from the mirror. And if you had a rupee every
time you felt like your parents are trying to control you, you would be a crorepati
(Definitely a better deal than KBC!).
Then one day, Cartoon Network starts running a new show. Or
in a dusty corner of the school library (where you are always forced to read uninteresting
stuff), you find a book. Or you go to the movies.
And just like that, nothing
is better.
“What? That doesn’t sound right. Let’s see it again.”
That new show stars an ordinary girl. (So mundane!) Who discovers
she has magical powers after she fights off an evil ogre from a magical land while
defending a fairy who is from yet another magical land. (Whoa!!). Our star then
goes off to a completely separate magical land to study magic, and her overprotective
father just lets her. There she meets a handsome prince (Swoon) from another
magical school and has an awesome girl gang (Go, girls!). They regularly fight
off the evil witches with the help of some magic, some cunning and a lot of
love.
“But all that sounds amazing!”
Oh, did I fail to mention that all the girls only wear crop
tops, adhere to the 36-24-36 ideal and that everybody seems to have an enormous
amount of control over their own lives? And that the boys all have bulging
muscles, are embodiments of chivalry and live to fight off monsters for their girlfriends?
“That isn’t that bad.”
The show was a promise of a world so magical, that it has a
special place for you, a world ready for your crop tops and pretty skirts and autonomy
over your life. A world which promised acceptance, love, no loneliness, and a
beautiful body. And the promise of wings. The only things that didn’t seem worth
the magical abilities were the theory tests at the school of magic.
What the 12 year old you didn’t know was that this was the
false promise of fiction.
It’s 2020 now. You are 23 years old. You are one of the
hundreds of students in one of the thousands of colleges on Earth. The crop
tops and the pretty skirts are where they belong, in the closets of people who only
travel to lavish parties in their luxury cars and the romance is only on others’
Instagram pages. The autonomy that was promised is now crushed under the weight
of your own promises and the body you dreamt of, only on the cover pages of
magazines.
You have no lightning-shaped scar on your forehead or wings
on your back. And your letter to Hogwarts didn’t arrive again this year!
The promise of real-life hits hard.
And still, you will sigh and wonder on the 1st of
September, “Looks like this year again, the Hogwarts Express will leave without
me.”
Truly an amazing read, reflecting the ups and downs that eventually await us down the line.
ReplyDeleteKudos!!
Thank you Anurag :)
DeleteAmazing. It actually somewhat depicted my childhood.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you could relate :)
DeleteSo beautifully scripted
ReplyDeleteThanks Tanisha :)
DeleteThe ending hit me hard
ReplyDeleteHit me hard too
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