royal weddings
since there is a great deal of useless discussion and analysis about a particularly strange wedding in a particularly strange country, i am inclined to add my reflections to the din, where i am sure it will pass off (safely) unheard. there is a great use in the yells of the mob. it gives the average man an opportunity to yell out his private and bursting emotions and attain a great satisfation in the same. for instance, i have seen little boys safely shouting obscenities at the principal in a school function where they were supposed to wish him happy birthday. this idea of shouting out private opinions that become too heavy to be private any longer is not new. king midas's barber, on knowledge of his king sporting donkey ears whispered away this piece of social scandal to the reeds which in turn spread the news much more freely.
as it is very probable that this essay may stay much longer than royal families, let alone the royal family in question, i refrain from extensively naming the players in this entertaining drama, lest it rob this piece of its immortality. the reader must not treat this work as he does those titled " socket joints - a review" or "manufacture and repair of pvc tubings" as community specific subjects. besides, royalty always concerns the average man as he is ruled by it. historically, people have been more interested in the extension of royal lineage than anything else, except perhaps in its termination. but unfortunately, such news travelled much slower in olden days and hence, the household was forced to the routine of honest work and some small domestic gossip. but now, due to that great and productive organ called the press, we are able to enjoy to the fullest degree, vital information on such essential issue as the one in question.
before we discuss this particular royal wedding, we have to consider royalty and weddings. i have never had (thankfully) the experience of belonging to royalty. royalty is not a repulsive concept. indeed one may remember that dainty queen who, when confronted with scarcity of bread for the populance asked them to eat cakes instead or that indian maharaja who shot two tigers between meals or the sweet queen cleopatra who spiked her wine with pearls. fortunately, that line of aristocracy has been toned down gradually with democracy or suddenly with the guillotine. today, royalty, for most part lives on like a relic of the past. one can make a case out of the badshah of timbuktoo or the king of monaco, but in general the people have intelligently snatched the reigns of governance from that unelected lazy and spiteful aristocratic line and handed it over to an elected active and depraved line. as for weddings, they are the classic examples of a wise man learning from other's mistakes and a fool from his own. amusingly, a new category has entered the market, which seems not to profit from its own mistakes. when one marriage is more than enough to dispel any illusions of the theory of " connubial bliss " coined , i suspect by marriage brokers and philosophy books, it is strange to observe people trying to get married twice.
coming back to the subject, the news is that a prince is going to get married to someone of non - aristocratic line. this has created a great deal of publicity and to the joy of tabloids, the queen is not terribly interested in the idea. this is a great plot for a penny dreadful.
consider this line- the scheming queen tries to dispose off the girl (to get her son married off to someone of a similar line, her brother's daughter for instance) with death threats and snake poison, failing which she hires a gang of supari killers to remove the upstart. the prince enters the scene and after two terrible battles in which the machine gun wielding villan gang is stabbed with paper clips by the hero, he rejoins the innocent and lovely village girl. the penitant queen renounces the throne and departs from the scene (for a holiday in switzerland) and the couple live happily ever after.
unfortunately, this is seldom the case in reality. the innocent village girl does not bring the prince to the level of the populance . instead, she goes 'up' to the level of the aristocracy. she forgets the days when she gathered wood for the fire and milk for cheese. instead, she gathers wool infront of the fire, buys emeralds and sapphires for millions, signs a few documents, slips in the bathroom, lingers unnecessarily for a few weeks and dies.
so, the current publicity of the model wedding can be attributed only to the senility of the press, which it in turn promptly attributes to the senility of the people. the press, with its fine discretion, decides that the article on the mysterious marriage is more important than the burning pipelines of iraq or the famine in africa. these are typical extracts
-- now people can bet on the next mishap to hit the wedding of prince charles . previously, the happy couple was hit by the news that prince's mother queen elizabeth , will not attend the marriage ceremony, just a blessing service afterwards.
in the odds released by bookmakers william hill, britons can gamble at 33-1 that camilla parker bowles will stand the prince up on wedding day, 25-1 that the wedding rings will be lost by the prince's son (??). chances of snowstorms and floods were given 100-1, while the odds of aliens landing at the function were at 10000-1 --
ah! what a beautiful reaction this splendid report will have on the populance! one can visualize a patriotic citizen torn between sorrow at the queen's refusal to attend the 'happy' couple's marriage and joy at the introduction of intellectual betting games as these. but that is not all. in a big report attractively titled " prince, bride to confess "sins" ", decorated with formidable pictures of the couple, is written
-- prince charles and camilla parker bowles, who have faced calls to apologise for having been "unfaithful" to their former spouses, are to acknowledge their "manifold sins and wickedness" at a church service.
prince charles has pointedly selected a confession from the 1662 ad bookof common prayer which reads "we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickednesses which we, from time to time,most grievously have committed, by word, thought and deed....we do earnestly repent, and we are heartily (??) sorry for our wrongs"
religious affairs commentators said in choosing the "sternest possible" prayer of penitence, prince charles was responding to calls for apology and giving indication of his penitent state of mind --
on the actual day of the revels,
--the prince held the door as ms.bowles, dressed in a white chiffon dress and an elaborate hat, gingerly got down from the limousine. the two then shyly waved to the crowd before being escorted to -
what elaborate nonsense! as though some one was expecting the groom to be dressed in hawaiian shorts and the bride to be attired in a red charwoman costume! as though someone sits in the eager anticipation of the prince slamming the door on her face and the couple performing a tribal dance before being escorted to wherever they were.
this was followed by an informative family line detailing all the illegal affairs the two lines had (to the best of public knowledge) which covers half a page. words fail us in appreciating the significance of this "penitence". one can as well expect reports of serial killers selecting the "sternest possible" confessions and walking in the streets with heads held high. child molesters will fall into paroxysms of regret over their manifold sins and celebrate their repentance with ale and beer.
on the other hand, if the whole affair is commonplace enough to avoid comparison with "grosser" ills, why go into all the bloody detail over the sham repentance? nobody is in the slightest doubt as to whether the participants would hesitate to plunge into another affair if they had the energy to go on. is the single reason of belonging to royalty sufficient to find one's way into newspaper columns irrespective of the idioticity involved? the entire affair dies down to this - a man who had an affair with a woman for three decades has, by some caprice decided to marry her. that is what it has to be treated as.
the world is at a regrettable state where the atrocities of "superpowers" are sidelined by their muscle, where the rightful owners of their lands are driven out by invading barbarians and asked to slave for food of their own produce. let the press not abase itself in reports of the cakes consumed by a handful of the populance for breakfast, the soaps they use and the expletives they mouth. the "popular press" has stooped as much as to condone degradation of human dignity, let it not stoop to the level of patronising inhuman frivolity.
since there is a great deal of useless discussion and analysis about a particularly strange wedding in a particularly strange country, i am inclined to add my reflections to the din, where i am sure it will pass off (safely) unheard. there is a great use in the yells of the mob. it gives the average man an opportunity to yell out his private and bursting emotions and attain a great satisfation in the same. for instance, i have seen little boys safely shouting obscenities at the principal in a school function where they were supposed to wish him happy birthday. this idea of shouting out private opinions that become too heavy to be private any longer is not new. king midas's barber, on knowledge of his king sporting donkey ears whispered away this piece of social scandal to the reeds which in turn spread the news much more freely.
as it is very probable that this essay may stay much longer than royal families, let alone the royal family in question, i refrain from extensively naming the players in this entertaining drama, lest it rob this piece of its immortality. the reader must not treat this work as he does those titled " socket joints - a review" or "manufacture and repair of pvc tubings" as community specific subjects. besides, royalty always concerns the average man as he is ruled by it. historically, people have been more interested in the extension of royal lineage than anything else, except perhaps in its termination. but unfortunately, such news travelled much slower in olden days and hence, the household was forced to the routine of honest work and some small domestic gossip. but now, due to that great and productive organ called the press, we are able to enjoy to the fullest degree, vital information on such essential issue as the one in question.
before we discuss this particular royal wedding, we have to consider royalty and weddings. i have never had (thankfully) the experience of belonging to royalty. royalty is not a repulsive concept. indeed one may remember that dainty queen who, when confronted with scarcity of bread for the populance asked them to eat cakes instead or that indian maharaja who shot two tigers between meals or the sweet queen cleopatra who spiked her wine with pearls. fortunately, that line of aristocracy has been toned down gradually with democracy or suddenly with the guillotine. today, royalty, for most part lives on like a relic of the past. one can make a case out of the badshah of timbuktoo or the king of monaco, but in general the people have intelligently snatched the reigns of governance from that unelected lazy and spiteful aristocratic line and handed it over to an elected active and depraved line. as for weddings, they are the classic examples of a wise man learning from other's mistakes and a fool from his own. amusingly, a new category has entered the market, which seems not to profit from its own mistakes. when one marriage is more than enough to dispel any illusions of the theory of " connubial bliss " coined , i suspect by marriage brokers and philosophy books, it is strange to observe people trying to get married twice.
coming back to the subject, the news is that a prince is going to get married to someone of non - aristocratic line. this has created a great deal of publicity and to the joy of tabloids, the queen is not terribly interested in the idea. this is a great plot for a penny dreadful.
consider this line- the scheming queen tries to dispose off the girl (to get her son married off to someone of a similar line, her brother's daughter for instance) with death threats and snake poison, failing which she hires a gang of supari killers to remove the upstart. the prince enters the scene and after two terrible battles in which the machine gun wielding villan gang is stabbed with paper clips by the hero, he rejoins the innocent and lovely village girl. the penitant queen renounces the throne and departs from the scene (for a holiday in switzerland) and the couple live happily ever after.
unfortunately, this is seldom the case in reality. the innocent village girl does not bring the prince to the level of the populance . instead, she goes 'up' to the level of the aristocracy. she forgets the days when she gathered wood for the fire and milk for cheese. instead, she gathers wool infront of the fire, buys emeralds and sapphires for millions, signs a few documents, slips in the bathroom, lingers unnecessarily for a few weeks and dies.
so, the current publicity of the model wedding can be attributed only to the senility of the press, which it in turn promptly attributes to the senility of the people. the press, with its fine discretion, decides that the article on the mysterious marriage is more important than the burning pipelines of iraq or the famine in africa. these are typical extracts
-- now people can bet on the next mishap to hit the wedding of prince charles . previously, the happy couple was hit by the news that prince's mother queen elizabeth , will not attend the marriage ceremony, just a blessing service afterwards.
in the odds released by bookmakers william hill, britons can gamble at 33-1 that camilla parker bowles will stand the prince up on wedding day, 25-1 that the wedding rings will be lost by the prince's son (??). chances of snowstorms and floods were given 100-1, while the odds of aliens landing at the function were at 10000-1 --
ah! what a beautiful reaction this splendid report will have on the populance! one can visualize a patriotic citizen torn between sorrow at the queen's refusal to attend the 'happy' couple's marriage and joy at the introduction of intellectual betting games as these. but that is not all. in a big report attractively titled " prince, bride to confess "sins" ", decorated with formidable pictures of the couple, is written
-- prince charles and camilla parker bowles, who have faced calls to apologise for having been "unfaithful" to their former spouses, are to acknowledge their "manifold sins and wickedness" at a church service.
prince charles has pointedly selected a confession from the 1662 ad bookof common prayer which reads "we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickednesses which we, from time to time,most grievously have committed, by word, thought and deed....we do earnestly repent, and we are heartily (??) sorry for our wrongs"
religious affairs commentators said in choosing the "sternest possible" prayer of penitence, prince charles was responding to calls for apology and giving indication of his penitent state of mind --
on the actual day of the revels,
--the prince held the door as ms.bowles, dressed in a white chiffon dress and an elaborate hat, gingerly got down from the limousine. the two then shyly waved to the crowd before being escorted to -
what elaborate nonsense! as though some one was expecting the groom to be dressed in hawaiian shorts and the bride to be attired in a red charwoman costume! as though someone sits in the eager anticipation of the prince slamming the door on her face and the couple performing a tribal dance before being escorted to wherever they were.
this was followed by an informative family line detailing all the illegal affairs the two lines had (to the best of public knowledge) which covers half a page. words fail us in appreciating the significance of this "penitence". one can as well expect reports of serial killers selecting the "sternest possible" confessions and walking in the streets with heads held high. child molesters will fall into paroxysms of regret over their manifold sins and celebrate their repentance with ale and beer.
on the other hand, if the whole affair is commonplace enough to avoid comparison with "grosser" ills, why go into all the bloody detail over the sham repentance? nobody is in the slightest doubt as to whether the participants would hesitate to plunge into another affair if they had the energy to go on. is the single reason of belonging to royalty sufficient to find one's way into newspaper columns irrespective of the idioticity involved? the entire affair dies down to this - a man who had an affair with a woman for three decades has, by some caprice decided to marry her. that is what it has to be treated as.
the world is at a regrettable state where the atrocities of "superpowers" are sidelined by their muscle, where the rightful owners of their lands are driven out by invading barbarians and asked to slave for food of their own produce. let the press not abase itself in reports of the cakes consumed by a handful of the populance for breakfast, the soaps they use and the expletives they mouth. the "popular press" has stooped as much as to condone degradation of human dignity, let it not stoop to the level of patronising inhuman frivolity.
posted by Praveen at 12:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home