Change

“Do you know
I have been queen barely 10 years
And during that time
I’ve had three prime ministers
All of them ambitious men
Clever Men
Brilliant … Men
Not one has lasted the course
They have either been too old, too ill or too weak
A confederacy of elected quitters!”

With those lines, a pregnant Queen Elizabeth II storms out of the room where her third prime minister is meekly lying on the hospital bed. In the new season of this Netflix show “The Crown” I find these lines as the best possible lines to express a stressed monarch’s disappointment.

Although Netflix might have created this show to describe how difficult and complex the life of a British Royal is; I find the show (to a very large extent) sarcastic. How these royals did nothing except gossiping in their comfortable chairs and planning marriages or other gala events. Despite this, one commendable aspect of Queen Elizabeth II’s ruling reflected by this show seems to be that she had somehow noticed and accepted the “fading away” of the crown’s existence. In one of the episodes, The Queen delivers an awkward speech at Jaguar factory and describes the workers there as “Average Men and Women”, thereby receiving a harsh flak by the media. After this incident, she accepts that Monarchy can no longer remain the same. Equality, inevitably, must be given importance. And hence the gates of Buckingham palace were opened for the general public for the first time.

Another scene depicts this change in such an iconic way where Queen’s mother is shown bickering about letting general public into their palace. The Queen herself is shown to be perplexed. And one wonders about accepting ‘change’ which is very hard. But isn’t monotony even harder?

Life throws ample monotony-breakers at you. It is up to you (I guess) how fast you take advantage of them.

Like when you are alone in the gym’s common shower area, bathing your ass away under the hot shower. Completely absorbed in your day dreams, deciding what to eat when you get back home. And at that very moment you hear a very witchy ‘Hallo’ (German for Hello) from behind. Unexpectedly your reflexes are set in motion and you scarily suppress a shriek, while the bottle of shampoo flies out of your hand. You see, an old woman enter the common shower area and starts bathing beside you. You come back from your day dreamland. Suddenly you have to accept the existence of another person around you. You laugh out loud in your head while reaching out to grab a towel to dry yourself. Your mind races back to the time when it was hard for you to even enter the locker room. Thanks to a conservative Indian upbringing, it was an uphill task to accept naked people chilling in the locker room around you and even showering together. But I did not lose heart. Slowly (and surprisingly very easily) I too started stripping myself every time I entered locker room. I too showered with the chilled-out naked women. I saw everything. From wrinkled boobs and melting asses to drop dead gorgeous waistlines and athletic figures bringing your inner lesbian out. Now I have accepted that nobody cares. Sometimes, I find a newbie changing her clothes within the confines of a wrapped towel and failing miserably at it. I smile and remember my good old shy days. Wiping my happy tears, I think to myself how far I have come. If someday my mother sees these locker room scenes, an imaginary aarti ki thali will drop from her hands. I mean, she is still coping with my new short haircut! Just for fun and to test her endurance, I will take her along to my gym when she comes to visit me.

After all, monotony is comforting but change is therapeutic!