Will Kate Middleton And Prince William Find Spirituality In India And Forsake The Throne?


Pictures of Kate Middleton and Prince William from their tour of India show the two young royals in the best of spirits, playing cricket in heels and meeting poor people, but on a more serious note, will India’s mystical spirituality seep into the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s very pores and cause them to do the unthinkable — abdicate?

India has long been marketed by men in suits of a slightly satanic persuasion as a spiritual and mystical place, where affluent and elitist young people in the western world go to find themselves and appreciate life outside of an environment of rampant consumerism and the dark shadow cast by Kim Kardashian’s butt.

In a land riddled with poverty, disease, and some of the poorest people on earth, westerners have long sought the salvation of simplicity.

As well as being enriched by philosophical insights which could have fallen out of a cheap cracker, these spiritual seekers also benefit from the cheap food and cut-rate lodgings which India is famous for.

And when the smell and sights of India’s great unwashed get a little too much for an honest law-abiding chap to stomach, there’s always ample opportunity to relax in a relaxing spa hidden away from the hoi polloi and nestled in some enchanting mountain range.

Searching for inner peace in a land ravaged by apocalyptic meltdown and naked economic greed is somewhat questionable, but rich kids of a certain persuasion will always go a little misty eyed when recollecting their travels through India, and wax lyrically about how the country taught them to find meaning and purpose in their existence by looking into the depths of their very soul.

There exists a certain retreat in the Himalayan mountains, apparently favored by spiritual trailblazers such as Kate Moss and Sadie Frost, where people go to “seek harmony, to balance themselves again, to be one with their surroundings, to retreat to the peace and quiet of the mountains … to the stillness of the hills and the natural flow of the rivers.”

Such wonderful waffle and stomach churning guff has little meaning to someone growing up in India’s slums, but there can be little doubt that India’s history, landscape, and extreme poverty leave an everlasting impression on any visitor to the country, and in some cases, it’s enough to incite radical change in a way a person views the world and their place within it.

Take for example, Prince William and Kate Middleton. Thanks to privilege and position, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will never be acquainted with unbearable hardship, an empty stomach, squalid sanitation, an illness borne of dirty water, the bite of a disease-riddled rat, or the narrowing of opportunities in a vicious and ever decreasing circle which slowly devours its center.

Yet, Kate and William have already met some of those who will.

Kate Middleton
[Photo by Heathcliff O’Malley/WPA Pool/Getty Images]
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited one of Mumbai’s notorious slums on their tour of India and met some of the city’s infamous “slumdog” kids in a deprived area that sits besides one of the wealthiest districts.

The Daily Mail reports that “On a small patch of dust known as the maidan, or square, the future King and Queen chatted to slum dwellers who said they had never been visited by their own country’s politicians or celebrities.”

“William challenged one boy, who has graduated from the teeming alleys to become a dancer in a Bollywood movie, to a hip hop dancing competition — but then bottled out despite Kate’s chiding.”

Will coming face to face with the “realities” of life in India make Kate and her prince question their own pampered existence, luxury lifestyle, and part in perpetrating a system which dictates that inequality of birth, social superiority, and the grossly unfair distribution of wealth as an act of god?

Anyone For Cricket?
[Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images]
As many of the “slumdog” kids asked when they were told of Kate and Will’s forthcoming visit, “Do they need such a big house?”

Infused with a new earthly spirituality and having the blinkers of wealth removed from their eyes, will Kate Middleton and Prince William ask themselves that same question when they return to England, and dependent on the answer, decide to forsake the throne and all its trappings?

Or will it merely be a case of what happens on tour stays on tour for the royal couple?

[Photo by Arthur Edwards/WPA Pool/Getty Images]

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