An old friend from High School I met for tea once asked me, if I was happy. He meant happy with my marriage. It was such an uncomfortable question that he winced and looked away after he asked. I wanted to tell him that if it was on a day to day, the answer would vary but if it was on the grand nature of things I would say yes. Definitely Yes. So I just basically said, yes. Although I did wonder about it soon after, what his backup plan would have been if I had said no and whether I had not looked dazed or happy enough.

Did you get your fairytale ending? O asked. For the Queen of Day time TV, she really did not give her guests much opportunity to talk. She cut them off at the most important angles and directed them to her own answers.

Yes, M replied, staring reassuringly at the Prince as she squeezed his fingers in a tight grip. “I did. And its greater than any fairytale you ever read.”

The culture of being in love in America is very overt. You must always be staring longingly into your lover’s eyes, squeezing their hands, touching their knee, nodding in agreement, saying the same thing at the same time, in continuous agreement, bathed in a halo of light and apparent joy. You must affirm to your spouse that you love them, once a day, twice, three times maybe. Anyone who does less than this is suspected of not being in love.

This is so different from the African context- where there were no I love you‘ s in the household before the millennials were born, certainly not between man and wife. Desire was expressed through the shyness of the wife- her inability to look into her husband’s eyes, through symbolic gestures and poetic words of victory. Love was submission, love was provision and protection- and in a sense it would not be described as ‘love’, those giddy telepathic synchronized sensations. It was more a sense of duty, responsibility for the continuation of life and community.

I listen to this podcast called Goop by Gwyneth Paltrow, which, although controversial in American society for its lofty high end ideas, and controversial to me for some of its strong leftist ideas, is mostly very educational and entertaining. On this date, the guest was talking about the mundane-ness of married life and how Elizabeth Gilbert never quite finds the one because of the very idea of The One. She leaves husband no.1 because the fireworks have died out. She goes on a quest to find herself. She finds a handsome aging hulk who guides her into his hammock with his smooth rainy day music and his exotic ways. This is supposed to be ‘the long marriage’ and yet, somewhere along the way, it does not work out and Elizabeth is off to find another adventure on a completely different channel. The guest on the podcast suggested that this view of love and marriage is not sustainable because marriage in its day to day is ordinary. He suggested that the things that end up holding up are unromantic – how you handle disagreements, how you step up and support each other during difficult times.

This is why cringed when M said she had found her fairytale. It is because I knew that something someone somehow would fall short for her and I hoped that the disappointment would not remove her from her real life Prince.

Of course, it is psychologically debatable as to why we invest in these people whose lives are so different from ours, whom we will never meet and whom society (media) has placed on a pedestal as super human. I think for me, it is because in the grandeur of their existence, I see a deeply vulnerable humanity and also, there is something Prince H said, about an invisible social contract between the media and the Royal- to create a sort of perception that attracts the ba kopi to follow the lives of the rich and famous. Although, this very perception, he implied, is like a quid pro quo, a symbiotic relationship, where both media and the monarchy (famous) maintain each other’s relevance. It once again proved how flawed and calculated the artificial creation of the untouchable, unreachable mogul, celebrity- the cult of the demigods. Financial empires have been built on thia and now actual empires are hanging onto it for their very existence.

But, what happens after the Prince saves the Princess and they live happily ever after? They never told us. The story always ends at the wedding party, or with the two riding into the sunset on a white horse-driven carriage. They do not tell us whether the Princess forgets her shoes at the wedding venue. Or whether the Prince continues to go out with his friends the way he did as a bachelor. Or what happens when the Princess forgets to flush the toilet. Does the Princess ever need a C-section? Do they ever get robbed in the middle of the night and have nightmares about it for several months afterwards? Do they ever misunderstand each other, forget who they were when they first met and attempt to start from scratch?