Devil’s Advocate: Dear Harry and Meghan, we’ve had enough

It’s 2023. You’d think the worst of 2022 is behind you, so you look forward, rather giddily to the uncharted. The whole point of a make-believe yearly cycle is to possibly tell you where all of life’s lessons end and where the finish line can be drawn. All of this makes perfect, if convenient sense. Nothing quite transpires according to plan, but at least there is the mental picture of new geometry emerging in life. Except, a handful of people continue to remind you, nothing really changes. Usually, it’s the ones you rent your home with, text obscenities to or begrudgingly share a corner of the office with. But leave it to Harry and Meghan, two names that are now synonymous with a broken disc playing from across a wormhole we simply can’t seem to make our way out of. It’s the Harry-Meghan vortex and there seems to be no physiological exit for the living and the breathing. The latest in the long, tiresome line of not-quite-revelations, comes from a new channel – a book. Ironically titled Spare, Harry Williams is now out with a memoir, roughly a month after a sorry, underwhelming Netflix series that paraded his and Meghan’s uninteresting lives for the sake of the many scandals they seem to have unloaded onto the public. In this latest book, Harry claims he was physically attacked by brother Prince William, who is possibly preparing his own barrage of memoirs, stickers, anthrax envelopes et al I’m assuming. So what’s next? Does Harry reveal William copied his essay in the sixth grade, ate his snickers at a charity event, unintentionally played nice to a date he brought home? I mean what else is left to give here? It’s hard enough to pretend to care for a monarchy that represents the worst of European imperialism. Harry and Meghan have, contrary to woke perception, made it impossible to even bear the takedown of a rigid monarchy. It was sensational when the details first trickled out. Meghan being ostracised, racially profiled and maybe even intimated are all tasty details for the voracious consumer of whatever scandalises the rich. Harry, operating with copious wealth and privilege mind you, felt depressed and wanted to kill himself. All of that’s fine. It made for some sensational, high-brow chaos that is now the stuff of TV pedagogy – rich people with petty third world problems. The two appeared gave an interview to Oprah and soon became an opera unto themselves. Every other week, some headline or brickbat has since dislodged itself from the mothership of sensitivity and inserted itself into the bloodstream of a public happy to just chew into the veins of family feud. Even Ekta Kapoor couldn’t have kept this going. Things briefly paused for a bit, because the Queen, if you aren’t aware, died. I mean it took an actual death to prevent Harry and Meghan from going on their latest multimedia gig where they milk the fallout of the kind of suffering we’d all frankly take for the mega-millions it comes packed with. Now that there is a book, there are probably other plans in the Harry-Meghan pipeline. Where’s my episode of ‘Couple Against Family with Bear Gryllis’, or ‘The Roast of The Monarchy’ featuring a couple of immigrant comedians. Has Harry been on a tell-all but not all of it, podcast yet? Has Meghan been on magazine covers with a dress that seems etched with ‘Death to the queen’ sequin patterns or other such unsubtle denouements for the easily pleased? Is there a t-shirt brand yet? Frankly, I no longer care, for I’m too scared some of these might already be reality or on their way to being realised. The problem with this Harry-Meghan circus is that it has now become a self-feeding monster, a kind of keyword zombie that simply feeds on its own depreciation. Every time we think we’ve heard enough to make up our mind about the Royal Family – did we ever really need this assistance though – up pop Harry and Meghan with a new in-swinger, about how Meghan might have been handed a blunt knife that cut both ways, or how Harry might have been served the smaller bowl of cereal. The whole point about confronting trauma and bullies is to outgrow it to a point where you’re no longer just known as the survivor. But Harry and Meghan won’t let you forget. They will return, sooner than you thing, with another moderately interesting, soapy, tale about the one time they felt undermined in a larger narrative that has simply run out of oil and gas. We no longer care! Maybe some of us do for the low-brow reality tv thrills this ripping-up-of-the-family-tree has turned into. But even cynical consumers will struggle to care for Harry and Meghan’s buffoonery or the ease with which they have lent themselves to a media feeding frenzy. Play the circus long enough and you go from becoming the trick to becoming the joker. So dear Harry and Meghan, it’s time to do something else. Like literally anything else. You have made your mark now don’t write over it with imbecilic opportunism. Frankly, we need a break too. Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.