When Diana stays with us
A Simple Shot ‘22
I sat in a dark room, lit up the bedside lamp, and chose a corner to snuggle in. I opened the recently ordered book, Diana: Her True Story –In Her Own Words. I wanted to finish the book in one go. But something came upon; something slowed me down; something that mirrored; it mirrored to yell. From the very first page, one thing that yelled at the readers was, "Hey, it is not only Diana’s life story; it is the reality of a misfit."
On those black-grayish border pages, Diana came up as if she peeked into my heart and seamlessly gave those exquisite knots of similarities—probably the most unfiltered similarities that any misfit would be dashed to acknowledge. I took up my pencil and marked at the corner of the section where Diana said, “I could always tune in to which it should be. But I always felt that I was different, I was in the wrong shell.”
That day, I didn’t continue after this section. The next day, I read a few more pages. And this system continued slowly. I noted her words; I felt her. I was not reading; I just felt read!
After some days, I saw a dark, shabby, hazy room, a broken staircase, and a woman with her golden-blonde bangs moving hastily. She was wounded; she was helpless. She made up her mind to do something extreme. She could have fallen down, but she was stopped.
I bit my lips. I felt like she was about to fail in the midst of an unprecedented conspiracy. I was watching ‘Spencer’.
I find her every day. Her words guide me.
I’ve never seen Diana ‘live’ on television. My first memory of Diana came after her death. My parents recall that ‘toddler me’ used to stick with the TV whenever Diana appeared. As a child of the late 90s, I only got her farewell wave, but in my growing years, she stayed in my mind, probably even whispering some daring prophecies. She still holds us close. And we are awestruck; perhaps some of us have emerged as contemporary Gen Z ‘Diana-fans’. These fans only get Diana’s memoir, some ecstatic photographs, and some of the selected, handpicked clippings. And here, with these details, we can conclude one thing that Diana rules ‘time’. She still breaks down the barrier every quoted time.
"Who is Diana for you?"
I always feel that if we asked this question to each one of us, what would be the answer?
Perhaps ‘Princess’, ‘a gorgeous lady’, ‘a rebel’, ‘an activist'—would we continue? Probably yes, but that would come with some other similar tags. One theme would come in the last phase or would never come: ‘A simple, expressive girl’.
When I was reading her, one thing was very clear to me that she always simply wanted to be in a place where she could be herself and where she would be loved. In each book or in any fictional or non-fictional presentation, Diana’s personal life and her challenges always keep us glued; we call them bombshell details; perhaps we stay to see their ‘stories ’. But I reckon I always see someone fighting courageously as a growth-seeker. In Andrew Morton’s book, in a section, Morton said, ”[Diana] wanted the right to grow up, to learn from her mistakes, to achieve something for herself.”
Isn’t that very similar to us? Isn’t that the same wish that we all seek? I call that wish Ina*. Diana is the muse for us; whenever we seek growth, we look up to her. She shows the power of simplicity and the power of expression, both in words and in wisdom. As Diana says, "I no longer want to live someone else’s idea of what and who should I be. I am going to be me."
And surely she lives every bit of it, and she is showing us the way to becoming the powerful "to be me.”
(*In Sanskrit, Ina (इन).—a. means determined or anything that is powerful.)