I have a love affair with Hans Christian Anderson. I read the stories in Bangla when I was young, and three stories particularly attracted me, all leading to death and destruction.- The Little Mermaid
- The Little Match-seller, and my favorite
- The Steadfast (brave) Tin Soldier
I cried everytime I read those stories. In all the stories, people wish for something beyond their reach, and then fate intervenes, takes them through a horrifying journey, and in the end they die. But it's an inspirational death, since through death they finally transcend their limitations (muteness, poverty, or one-leggedness) and sort of achieve what they wanted, someone else's love be it a prince, a grandmother, or this cardboard ballerina.
For anyone who grows up on fairy tales, the concept of love must be this ultimate depressing thing. People die, give up things - the whole concept of sacrifice is always hovering over every story. It's only when you start treading in the real life dating world, you realize that the pure part of love is mostly the one which someone else makes you feel, and helps you become, but it is never about the other person. If Ariel the mermaid was stalking the prince in current times, there would be four tabloids hounding her down, and the police would take out an APB. What we care about is how Ariel feels about the prince, not whether the prince looks like hunchback of notredame or colin firth.
And the other bad part about fairy tales is that you almost never get second chances. You die, burn, vanish into the air. Gone, finished, only your spirit remains. In the tin soldier, the soldier eyes this ballerina, and tried to get her attention, and finally becomes together when they burn into ashes. It's as if, an epilogue is not possible to construct.
I almost cried when I saw the ending of Hellboy, where Selma Blair is trying to control her urges to light a fire, and she's about to kiss Hellboy, and blue fire engulfs both of them, and Hellboy remarks something like, don't worry, I'm fireproof, and they continue to kiss. Now that's the fairy tale ending I subscribe to.I've been consumed and burned by love, again and again, and some of them are amazing enough to last as fairy tales, and some could be cautionary tales that grandmothers tell to put children to sleep. But luckily, I'm more like Hellboy than the Tin Soldier, in that, in the end, I'm left alive and intact, and am able to dive into a hollywood kiss.
Love without fear and sacrifice. How lucky I am to be able to dream of that.
