http://www.gupistan.com/gallery/1/doll.jpg
Hello. This is Guddi. Today is Guddi’s Wedding Day. Guddi is dressed in her finest clothes and jewellery. She is looking beautiful but she also feels sad…
*****
Barbie just didn’t have the charisma. She was emotionally an orphan, bereft of any feeling; she was plastic. Not that I ever blamed her, bless, poor thing because coming off a factory conveyor belt with multiple clones of oneself is enough to send anyone into a violent fix of hypercritical trauma but it didn’t end there, because then there was the universal barefaced exploitation, of a Freudian fashion, to contend with. So you see, it was a real handicap that I could never play the she-feels (and the one hundred one reasons) game with Barbie.
But you had to hand it to her: she was Moulded Perfection. And that was her fatal weakness too. Barbie had a stunning set of clothes for every conceivable occasion and time, she was a part of the jet-set with her perfect set of figuratively-enhanced friends and had the perfect boyfriend, Ken, with the perfect Barbie-house. Of course she had the perfectly perfect body, of which I suffered a terrible complex during my early adolescence; I hated her with a vehemence in those troubled times. It probably comes as no surprise to learn that I subsequently burnt her in a spirit healing ritual (but that is another story). Barbie was also elitist, un-cuddle-able and she had the most crystal cold beaded blue eyes one could imagine. But she was still perfect to the minuscule detail, which had been so painstakingly carved out, and that meant there was no room for imagination, which meant after a few changes of glamorous outfits, I got bored very quickly.
Unlike Barbie, Guddi – may her soul rest in eternal bliss - was a part of my extended family. Despite all her physical imperfections, she had the most nicest eyes, threaded heavily with black, (you could almost believe they were lined with kohl). This rag-doll was important because it was the toil of love. More precisely, the toil of my grandmother’s gnarled and slightly unsteady hands.
See there never was any competition between Barbie and Guddi. Barbie wasn’t human enough.
