Snow White’s isolation
This is the modern Snow White story, she is actually quite dark. She’s a political animal. Strong in her views. She’s not like the Snow White of yester years, where the Evil Queen held the mirror, to whom she would ask;
‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?”
In the modern Snow White tale, (this is definitely not a fairy tale) it is Snow White herself who is Machillivian , wily and sharp. She wears the spirit of the Evil Queen yet tries to play the innocent conveying a persona very different from her true one.
Swirling and prancing in her monogrammed clothes, she sets out to make a fashion statement. She seeks attention. She is so full of herself, so egoistic. But then, downed and maybe, having to face barbs of ridicule at her Modh- Ghanchi (oil-pressers) caste, it’s now her time to get even.
One is reminded of the theory by Freud, of the id, ego and the super ego. “The ego is responsible for repressing unconscious thoughts. Things that are too disturbing to face immediately are pushed out of awareness by the ego. However, the unconscious continues to exert influence on the behaviour of the individual.”
The modern day Snow White would have been an extremely interesting specimen of psychoanalysis had Freud been alive. He could have minutely examined many incidents providing a window to her personality.
One incident is about one of her states, there was a riot. It made headline news around the world. Religious hatred flared against the followers of a particular religion. “In February 2002 the state of Gujarat witnessed one of the country’s biggest pogroms. Responding to reports that [one religious group] had set fire to a train carriage, killing 58 pilgrims [of another religious group] inside, mobs rampaged across the state. The riots flared up again on 15 March – 10 years ago on Wednesday – and killing, raping and looting continued until mid-June. More than 2,000 [of the first religious group] were murdered, and tens of thousands rendered homeless in carefully planned and coordinated attacks of unprecedented savagery.” (Edited News from The Guardian, March 14, 2012)
Due to this incident, the Golden King, the King of Kings of all Kingdoms refused to accept Snow White in his court for many years. She was accused of instigating riots. How Snow White raved and raged inside herself all those years she was ostracised.
It was not until many years later, when the United Dairy Land crowned her to lead them into the sunshine that the Golden King relented. He was forced to relent. His aim was to exert greater influence over the region where the United Dairy Land was situated and could not afford to overlook the overtures by Snow White. In so doing, the Golden King had tilted the balance againstSnow White’s arch rival the Sleeping Beauty. The Golden King had been very close to Sleeping Beauty over decades. However, the changing geo-political dynamics needed a change of alliances. And … Sleeping Beauty slept through these changes. Her ministers were so involved in fun and frolic they never thought about devising a strategy to guard Sleeping Beauty’s state. This emboldened Snow White to order her dwarfs to shoot into Sleeping Beauty’sstate, killing her innocent people. Since Sleeping Beauty’s ministers were sleeping, they forgot for a very long time to lodge a complaint with the Council of Kings.
Snow White set her innumerable dwarfs in the state of Sleeping Beauty. It was incredibly easy for the dwarfs to hide all over the penetrated state. They lay in damp lands, in deep forests, eating raw meat. When the time was right, they created havoc, seeded discontent and hatred within the subjects, giving away golden coins to buy off some of the subjects to be the front men in stoking discontent. Ah yes, Snow White was very, very clever. The Diplomat ran an article before Snow White was crowned, stating that she may be interested in covert ops against Sleeping Beauty’s state. (Edited version of article published May 2, 2014)
Of course our wily Snow White denied it vehemently when finally Sleeping Beauty woke up to the reality of the destruction being caused by the dwarfs. As a counter-offensive she decided to use the age-old tactic of going on the offensive to be defensive. Snow White reportedly tried to break away part of her rival’s territory by giving out bagful of gold coins to local subjects. An ongoing policy of The Dairy Land, even before Snow White was crowned.
Snow White refused to talk about the disputed territory with Sleeping Beautyillegally occupied by her dwarfs, stopped the latter’s water at will. The source of the water sprouted from the disputed territory. At other times, she increased the flow of water to drown the sleeping citizens of the rival’s state.
For every issue happening in The Dairy Land, she ordered the Head Dwarf to blow a trumpet and announce that every happening was the doing of sleeping subjects of Sleeping Beauty. The announcement would be made in every community of every district with a dwarf beating a drum, colorfully dressed in vibrant reds and green colored lungi, swirling around as he beat the drum, showing almost all his short, brown leg.
Sometime ago, a girl from The Dairy Land had strayed over to the other side… the side owned by Sleeping Beauty. There she was housed by a wonderful couple who ran a charity home. The girl was finally traced to be from The Dairy Land and returned to her homeland to be reunited with her long lost family. Hardly had the cheers for this noble act died down that Sleeping Beauty’s state was hit by an earthquake. It was the worst earthquake in the history of her state. Glaciers shifted, landslides happened, buildings came down, hundreds died and hundreds were hurt, communication was disrupted. Reportedly, asSleeping Beauty offered to send her dwarfs to help the neighbours. A few hours later shots fired from her state killed some sleeping subjects across the border. This dastardly act made subjects of different states throw up their hands in horror.
Every day, our modern Snow White stands in front of the mirror and asks;
‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who’s the wiliest of them all?’
But Snow White will do well to remember that you can fool some people sometimes but you cannot fool everyone all the time. Such behaviour can only lead to isolation.
Cameron Jace, in Snow White Sorrow says, “What she looks like and what she is capable of doing are two different things.”
Cameron Jace does not know, maybe, the modern Snow White is not a she. She’s actually a ‘he.’