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Journalism of Courage
How the fur flies! It may be difficult for those living south of the Vindhyas to comprehend the full import of the unholy row over a mere fashion accessory, a row that is threatening to set the Capital on fire. Suffice it to say that the controversy over the shahtoosh or toosh shawl, which is fashioned out of the fur of the slaughtered chiru antelope, may well prove to be the biggest existential conundrum confronting Delhi8217;s professional goodtimers since the Jessica Lal murder.
That case, you may remember, in which a young woman tending the bar of a fashionable watering hole was shot at pointblank range, was all about whether donning a nifty Webley Scott .22 semiautomatic to match your Hermes tie violated the official dress code. The jury is still out on that one.
It8217;s like this, dahling, there are just three precious months in the whole, god damned year, in which you could possibly display a genuine toosh shawl. You can8217;t wear it in a Delhi summer, for gawd8217;s sake, can you? For that perfectshahtoosh setting, sweetie, you8217;d need the night temperature to hover between 18 and 5 degrees centigrade, the twilight to set in early, the partridges to be nicely browning in the spit and the champagne crystal tingling in tune with the music of the stars.
Draped casually over a shoulder, the muddy brilliance of a genuine toosh can outclass any bauble that Elizabeth Taylor may boast of and a genuine toosh could cost well over a lakh, perhaps even a couple of lakhs. So when the Queen of England decides to sport one at a family wedding, it kind of warms the heart. It8217;s that kind of reassurance one needs in these topsy-turvy times, dahling, when nothing is sacrosanct anymore, when there is no value attached to fine taste or good living.
Take these bleeding hearts who are threatening to spoil the party just as the season is warming up and you8217;ve got all those weddings and cocktails to attend. They go on and on about some silly antelope inhabiting some gawdforsaken region in Mongolia, or somewhere, and howthey are on the verge of extinction because they are being gunned down by poachers and stripped of their hides to make shawls for us. For gawd8217;s sake, dahling, tell us another. This lot, to my mind, is just green around the gills, jealous with a capital J.
It8217;s this same lot who sent that poor BMW boy to jail. If he was driving a battered old Fiat and had run over all those people, nobody would have turned a hair. Just because he was driving a BMW, the whole world thought they could pile on him. Shocking how he had to waste six months of his life for a small accident. What8217;s more, his poor parents had to fork out lakhs to get those families out of their hair it8217;s such a shame really.
More than anything else, it8217;s the hypocrisy of this moral brigade that I cannot stand, dahling, that superior air, that holier-than-thou tone. They think they are the only ones who care for wildlife. Well, it may be news to them, but I8217;m something of a wildlife buff too, believe me. I simply adore the panda. I support themovement in the USA for the spotted owl. I wouldn8217;t shoot a tiger, of course I wouldn8217;t. In fact I have even moved that stuffed tiger, that grandpa bagged in the Kumaon foothills 60 years ago, from out of the drawing room. One has got to keep up with the times, dahling, doesn8217;t one?
But a line has to be drawn somewhere, that8217;s all I say. This shahtoosh business is plain crazy. Got such a start the other day when I read in some newspaper that we are being asked to burn our shahtoosh shawls. Have they lost their mind? Have they lost all sense of proportion? Do they know what my 25 shahtoosh shawls cost? Next they8217;ll be asking us to smash the crystal, melt down the silver, burn the Husains.
To my mind all this busybody bilge that8217;s circulating around smacks of a Communist plot I8217;m sure that man Jyoti Basu is behind it. These are shocking times, really. People have even lost respect for the law. Take that Priyadarshini Mattoo case. If a police officer as senior as an Inspector General cannot get his son offthe hook in a murder case, without inviting instant condemnation I, for one, would say that the times have turned barbaric.
