Lessons from Diana

Princess Diana would have been 50 this year. What would reaching that benchmark of indisputable maturity have done to a woman who, ever since she alighted on the public consciousness as a shy gamine in a see-through skirt, epitomised the endearing vulnerability of the young and foolish?

As I sat beside the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park, London this week, dipping my feet into the icy waters of her understated commemorative landscape, I found myself contemplating the tragic life of a woman lived as a modern-day morality tale.

Tabloids across the globe, Elton John, various members of the paparazzi, Tina Brown, Andrew Morton and others have tried to interpret the Diana phenomena with commentary that ranges from the cerebral to the sensational to the schmaltzy, but if there was anyone who could have done justice to her story it would have been that bard from Stratford-upon-Avon who died many years ago and who understood pathos, dark humour and the forces of human emotion.

Consider the components of the story: a beautiful but troubled child as sunny as she was dark, born to aristocratic parents, an emotionally taciturn prince from a dysfunctional family seeking a bride, a public hungry for a modern-day fairytale and a rapacious media ready for the kill, what last vestige of human drama and emotion could Shakespeare’s pen have coaxed out of such a volatile mix? Would the shenanigans of the Montagues and the Capulets come close in comparison?

Sitting beside her memorial I found myself wondering whether Diana could have found her key to happiness by living her life any differently than she had. What should she have done to keep the fairytale alive? Sure, she had been handed a pack of difficult cards, but was there anything for her to do to come up aces?

Counselling, psychotherapy for her bulimia, introspection, less talking to the media, more privacy, some exposure to the wisdom of religion, some understanding of history, literature and psychology, and perhaps even just more holidaying together might have saved the day for the royal couple.

Diana taught the world that fame, riches and glamour are poor substitutes for self-esteem, that castles often have skeletons in their basements, that happily ever after belongs in fairytales and that E M Forster knew a thing or two about Homo sapiens when he wrote "only connect".

She also taught us that some of the loneliest hours can be spent on the world’s most expensive bed linen if love has fled, that money can’t buy happiness, that fame is a cruel mistress and that some of the world’s richest and most famous people are also its most troubled.

Diana taught us that what you see is not always what you get, that the good life is not always an insurance against pain, and that those who appear to have no need of our compassion are sometimes the most deserving of it.

Diana, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse have lived their tragic lives out in the public arena, but there are enough individuals like them — rich, famous and celebrated — who have equally difficult lives battling private demons that the world can hardly suspect exist.

How many times do we have to be reminded through lives like theirs of the perils of the slippery slope to stardom and the price one pays for success?

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer