The Prince And Pauper Change Roles

The Prince And Pauper Change Roles

We had completed the first hundred days of our marital life with considerable happiness: we had touched an important milestone. There had been some moments of discord and conflict, but we had celebrated each passing day as an important landmark.

We were traveling by train to Delhi from Lucknow to be a part of a wedding. It was our first venture to a different city after marriage. On the platform, quite a few vendors were selling their merchandise on stalls, while there were some beggars urging people to part with some money.

I spread out the linen provided by the railways to make a cosy bed for her. I wanted to make sure she discovered all the comfort she possibly could while on the train. This was going to be an attempt to reciprocate a part of the favour she had bestowed on me. She had consented to be a part of me despite the affirmation that life was not going to be easy with me. She was sitting on the berth next to me, but I couldn’t help feel inferior to her in all ways.

A feeling of inferiority had been ingrained within me by the direction in which Time had thrown me. I had to put up with a lot of failures in life. But this is largely a matter of perception. Success and failures in life are largely a measure of expectations one has. I didn’t have a lot of expectations from life at that point of time, it is wrong to have any, I know, but I did hope for a bit of happiness in return for the trauma I had been through.   

There was a sense of guilt buried deep within me for being the last to touch the finishing-line. I had certainly wasted my youth, some of the best days of my life, in doing nothing. A closer analysis of the situation reveals it has not been my purview at all. The Creator chose to inscribe all this in my destiny with great meticulous care and planning.

The interaction of the past few weeks had been enough to convince me of her being a part of a carefully planned destiny. She was the reward for all the sufferings. She had been the propeller pushing life with all its paraphernalia through me. My mornings had certainly become a lot brighter, while the sun had lost its typical heat. The world had suddenly become the most beautiful place one can imagine.

She had certainly made my world a better place to live in over the past few months. She had guided me to her heart where mirth and happiness reign unchallenged. This is where I can get over helplessness ingrained within me by the way fate has dealt its cards to me.

In return, I wanted to make her the happiest person in the world.  The situation would  certainly have been different had I been like my peers and contemporaries. But as matters stand, I am a bit different. The difference is pronounced in a negative manner all over my life. Life has never given me a lot of options to choose from. I can never choose the cymbals of mirth or even sorrow ringing in our lives.

Practically, I can do nothing about it. She has to suffer because she is a part of me.  The most I can do is give her my company. The joy of discovering new planets through the same telescope every single day of our lives has certainly given us the realization that we are to discover a new   world of happiness everyday.

She had certainly discovered quite a bit of satisfaction in my company, while I too had extracted my share of happiness in the deal. I did feel bad about it when I thought of the immense happiness and satisfaction my peers and contemporaries had discovered had discovered in their lives, while I had to stare at a blank wall. I may have been in a better position to offer all the happiness she deserved and more had I not been shoved away from the crowd.

At the end of the day, I find myself holding up an empty bowl for my share of happiness   and satisfaction before me. The fact is both of us are to keep changing the roles of the prince and the pauper as long as we live. Both of us hold quite a bit of happiness and we are willing to part with it quite readily.

The train did get to Delhi in a couple of hours, and we continue to march towards completing 200 days of marital bliss and happiness.