Danielle in the Lion's Den

In a world of make belief it is so easy to tidily tie the knots and find a resolution to all the meandering, entangled lines. To straighten them out at the end and say “ C’est fini”. To close the pages and walk away with one’s soul contentedly replete, knowing that all has ended well. Good has prevailed and the baddies have met with their just desserts.

But reality has a wicked way of determinedly moving in the opposite direction - of crossed wires, no happy endings and a befuddled walkway that branches out endlessly. Just when you think you’ve found your delightful desire and can settle in to a peaceful place of quiet satisfaction, good old Father Fierce comes along with a huge “Ho, ho, ho,” and stirs up the waters until the turbulence lifts you, willy-nilly, out of your contented corner and throws you once again into the bewildering maelstrom called Life.

And so it came to pass that a young lady managed to undertake a quest that would have daunted the fiercest warrior on the planet and succeeded where hundreds of other, more experienced combatants were left by the wayside – she journeyed through the harrowing hell that, for some inexplicable reason, is given the vastly understated pseudonym of an “interview” and……emerged triumphant.

Now, by all the rules of good fiction, her story should have concluded there. The fair damsel, having bravely faced the vicissitudes of being grilled beyond bearing and succeeding, should have been left in quiet solitude to rest and recoup and recount her tale of trial-by-fire to any and all who crossed her path. But, as mentioned above, Father Fierce is not so kind, and so, in all innocence our lovely heroine made her way into the hallowed portals of learning, completely unprepared for the adventures that were to follow….

To begin with, let this teller-of-tales give you, my dearest reader, a little glimpse into our lovely lass’ life. The day she marched into the jaws of death, she was a mere two decades and two years old, and the only alphabets she could, in all honesty, append to her name, were the letters M and A, which when combined, gave her the rather dubious distinction of being one of gazillions who were Masters of the language proudly known as English. And if you think these letters had been appended to her name for a sufficiently lengthy period of time – enough to make her gracefully comfortable with them….then perish the thought. The simple truth is that the M and A were extremely precariously perched for the equally simple reason that she had acquired them a mere two days before starting on her latest adventure!

As for the much needed term “experience”, the currency most acceptable in lieu of academia, I am (un)happy to say – she had absolutely NONE.

So there you are, dearest reader – a preciously inexperienced princess, marched cheerfully into the death defying arena known as the Senior Secondary wing of an all-boys school…..and proceeded to stand her new world on its head!!

On her very first day, as she trotted into class….she promptly experienced what is popularly known as the ‘Daniel-in-the Lion’s-Den’ syndrome. Imagine yourself happily walking along a peaceful, scenic road, lost in your own thoughts, when suddenly, you find yourself accosted by not one, not two, but FIFTY giants – each one taller that the next and each one equally determined to test your mettle and see whether you are a fit enough leader for the troupe! Now, in the first place, to the best of your knowledge, you have never applied for the said role of leadership, and secondly, even if you had inadvertently done so, no one told you that the designation involved bringing not one, not two, but FIFTY giants to heel! So there you are – our royal scion found herself nose-to nose with no less than fifty hirsute young heifers pawing the ground and ready to do battle!

If, for a moment, you were to assume a godly demeanour and ascend in lofty majesty to the skies, to gaze down on the lesser mortals below, the scene that you would encounter would closely resemble a rather painfully comic scene with a very tiny, puny, pygmy-like Daniel on one side of the battlefield, whislt on the other side, confronting our pint-sized hero(ine), would be half a century of fierce, bison-sized lions roaring out a challenge with undiminished ferocity.

And what did our intrepid heroine do? Did she turn tail and flee the scene? Did she break out into hysterical weeping and dramatically cry “Nooooo!!”? Did she crumple to the ground in a maidenly, genteel swoon? Did she……

None of the above.

There is a wonderfully trite saying that I am now going to use with unabashed glee – it goes like this – “Ignorance is bliss.” And this was absolutely true of our young damsel. 

First: No one had told her that her situation was an impossible one.

Second: Being an avid reader of fairy tales and fiction, she had grown up with the entirely misplaced belief that an honest heart always emerges victorious. 

 

Third: She was fully conversant with the said story of Daniel and the Lions and, to the best of her knowledge, Daniel had emerged uneaten and triumphant.

Ergo…she walked in as calmly as you please, settled herself, her saree and her books (in that order) and proceeded to conduct her class with all the calmness and élan of the truly hugely ignorant.

And what do you, dear reader, think transpired? Permit me to introduce you to yet another trite saying – “Fortune favours the brave”….er…um….kindly substitute ‘brave’ with ‘ignorant’/’foolhardy’/’blind’/’plain stupid’….!

Be that as it may – so unnerved were the fifty ruffians by the calm (foolhardy) serenity of the diminutive damsel standing before them, that they subsided into incoherent, muttering confusion and by the time they rallied, it was far too late. For, by that time, she had managed to stir the chivalric sentiments (God bless the unwritten law wherein a single, unmarried maid in an all-boys school, WILL win the hearts of all and sundry, be she as unattractive as a moth-eaten carpet) in the breasts of a few of the self-appointed leaders and that, ladies and gentleman, was the beginning of the end!!

 

Suffice to say that Danielle emerged unscathed from the lion’s den!

The rest, as they say, is history……..