Princess for a Day

I thought the day was grey and gloomy, till I walked up to the window and looked out. I had my very own castle in the clouds.

 

Have you heard the story of the Prince of Persia and the Princess of Samarkhand?

 

It has been three days since the Prince or the orphan boy had eaten anything. Their supplies are exhausted. The thirsty Prince gets out of his tent and scans the horizons to find some water when something catches his eye.

Just a short distance away, shimmering in the afternoon heat was the Vanishing City.

The Prince yells to the boy to get his horse. Before he can even mount his horse, the excited boy starts rushing the mules towards the city. The running animals kick up a mini dust storm. The Prince rides after them with his eyes shut tight to prevent the dust from getting into them. When he open them, he finds that he has ridden straight into the Vanishing city. The boy is happily herding the mules towards a pool. The water looks cool and refreshing.

After drinking to his hearts satisfaction, the Prince takes a long  long bath. He then sets forth towards the tallest tower, where the Princess has confined herself, with only the clouds for company.

When the Prince reaches the top, he gets a shock of his life. Sitting on a chair near the window is a very fat girl with six fingers on her right hand. The girl tells him that she is indeed the Princess of Samarkhand and that the lack of exercise has made her so fat that she can barely stand. The strong long black rope he used to climb up, was actually her hair.

The Prince asks her why she let him in if she wanted to be all alone, and if she didn’t then why didn’t she ever leave. “Oh Prince”, she replies in a mournfully, ” One day in a fit of passion I locked myself in here and threw away the key. Ever since I have been trapped inside.”

In the room there was a huge vat of oil, that the Princess uses for her hair. The Prince quickly pours the oil on the wooden door and sets it on fire. When the door burns down they see that on the other side, there are no stairs. Instead, there is a giant slide.

The Princess sits down with a great big sigh on her mattress and asks the prince to push it to the door. At the door, the Prince climbs on behind her and off they go with a tremendous wooooosh gathering more speed  and more speed as they spiral down till they crash into the door at the bottom with such force, that it flies open and they land safely outside.

 

Spooksville

Oct 31, 2014

I love playing make-believe. Simply for that reason, I love Halloween. As a child, I would dress up my younger cousin as all kinds of people for fun. We have pictures of her as a witch , a “sadhu”* and a host of other characters, all testaments to my dress-up madness.

“Tere dil mein meri saanson ko panah mil jaaye; Tere ishq mein meri jaan fanaa ho jaayeā.”**  The Moth and the Flame

Last Halloween I persuaded the husband into being “JiJi” to my “Kiki”. This year we decided to be something closer to our oriental roots. We went as the Moth and the Flame.

The Moth is besotted with the Flame. He does not care that she will be the end of him, he is obsessed with being united with her. The Flame is won over by his devotion. She is deeply in love with the Moth, but she cannot accept his love, because she knows it will mean death for him.

The Headless Horseman

We met up with a friend who pulled on a pair of red gloves as a last minute costume and quickly became the man who got caught red handed, and drank away the evening at a bar called The Headless Horseman.

Caught Red Handed

Elsewhere in the family, we had a very handsome Batman, the most adorable baby giraffe, an awesome grandma and a spider.

From L-R Batman, Baby Giraffe and Spider

Batman, Awesome Grandma and Baby Giraffe. Guess who is what!

* sadhu – a wandering ascetic

** Tere dil mein meri saanson ko panah mil jaaye
Tere ishq mein meri jaan fanaa ho jaayeā.

-To be annihilated by love is worth more than living without it