So there was this Princess and she had long, silky, dark hair. So
what’s special? All princesses have long, silky, dark hair. That is
part of the princess package, isn’t it – you get to have everything
beautiful, hair included. And for good reason too – the great era
of the princesses, you see, was not like our vulgar, democratic
era. They were really refined days, you see, when beauty treatments were given their due respect as the state-secrets they are
– or deserve to be. Only the really special ones had access to
those, and the special ones, of course, were princesses. It was
not like now – when everything is shamefully in the open and
advertisements are crying out that any vulgar Tina, Dickie or
Harriet can have great hair by shelling out just half their year’s
income for a bottle or jar of something or the other. It is a
different affair that the great hair never happens – and no doubt
that has something to do with having no proper respect for what
is special.
Sorry, back to the Princess. No, there certainly was something
special about her hair. And by the time the princess was ten, the
Queen found out what it was. The princess’s hair could grow to
unusual lengths and thickness – the only thing needed was proper
care (Note : Those days such stuff was whispered in the strictest
confidence. It was certainly not ad-slogan material). The Queen
sat on this fact and considered its pros and cons, and one day a
gleam appeared in her eyes. From that day on, the princess’s hair
grew and grew under the careful ministrations of the Queen and
the barber woman Panchafula. Barber women, as you know, not
only knew beauty secrets, but they also knew how to keep secrets
– to not let them spread all over the harem.
Initially His Majesty paid no attention –it was a princess after all,
not a prince. But later, when, thanks to the queen’s skilful
string-pulling, the minister himself rang the bell in his ears, His
Majesty’s eyes gleamed too, and he sanctioned a respectable
royal grant to the Queen’s project.
And the whole thing reached its culmination on the Princess’s
14th birthday, when his Majesty organized a gala lunch for a lot
of kings and princes from nearby kingdoms. And just as the lunch
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