A Princess' tale

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. In a desert kingdom, known for the valor of its men and the beauty of its women. Threatened by an empire spreading its influence, growing like an ink-stain on fine parchment. Her people were bound by the ancient codes of honor, valor and family. It could have been a fairytale. It is a legend. But for reasons quite different.

The eldest daughter-in-law of a princely state, in a world which respected its women for the male progeny they produced, she did not meekly go about the business of producing a male heir. Or even involve herself in political play and intrigue that always does abound at the confluence of wealth and power. She was not interested in jewelry nor fine clothing nor indeed in other comforts that the considerable wealth of her parents and later in-laws could buy. It was so very different from what everyone else was used to. True she was sweet, soft spoken and very kind. But these fell flat at how markedly different she was from everyone else around her. Uninvolved in jealousies and petty intrigues, uncaring of riches or poverty, uninterested in friends or even family, she inhabited a very different, almost parallel universe. It must have irked those around her to find her thus.

And then she began an earnest search for her divine lover. A simpler carnal passion, they would probably have understood, even while condemning it. But this was way too strange. Because it was not some quirk that could be kept in wraps. Rather, it involved a stream of mendicants and holy men and women of nondescript backgrounds moving in and out of the royal palace- the halls of which were not really for the hoi polloi. There were very public demonstrations of what most definitely was unseemly behavior for highborn women (though in fact there was very little a high born woman could do and not earn censure).

I am inclined to think it was not so much what she did, or did not do that earned the ire of those around her, as it was her supreme indifference to all the worldly things around her. She had been born a woman, to a certain role, defined as it was for others by the constraints of her society, yet she chose instead to live life by her own definition. She did not accept the mantle she was supposed to don, rather determine it for herself. And yet, she was not rebellious nor strident. Instead she quietly tended to her duties, and then retreated to her own universe. It was the silence, the lack of interest in everything else around her that must have been a sore trial.

How could someone not be moved by the glamor of her position. Yet she was. For she was held in thrall by something she perceived to be much greater. Stories always grow around things that are not quite as they seem. And what may be unusual in one age, becomes miraculous in another, colored as it is by romance, tinged by history. Such tales abounded, but they are probably not as amazing as the fact that this woman quietly, stubbornly lived her life her way- as much she could given her constraints- and then passed on- to even greater glory. For isn’t it something that nearly 500 years later while her kingdom is dust like the shifting sand on which it stood, and those so important personages who spent time cajoling, convincing then forcing her to be ordinary like them are known only because of their association with her. And the dulcet tones of Mirabai echo down history more substantial than her life was.