Tailor made for change

The days of dhurzi'' stitched clothes are slowly fading away. Readymade garments, aka as RMGs, are now the rage. This trend is happening...

The days of 8220;dhurzi8221; stitched clothes are slowly fading away. Readymade garments, aka as RMGs, are now the rage. This trend is happening all across the country 8212; in cities, towns and villages; among the rich, not so rich and the almost poor; reflecting in clothes for babies, kids and adults of all ages. Visit any shopping cluster and you can see this for yourself. Maybe, you can also check this out by scanning through your cupboards at home and at your own risk when you visit friends and relatives. Remember all the very many ads advertising clothing of every kind 8212; inner, outer and whatever else you can wear. Somebody out there is surely buying! Another measure of the spread of this new look trend is the surprisingly popular response to women magazine8217;s mail order offers of clothes, especially from small town India, where choice is limited and the ladies of the house want to dress in style.

Concurrently with the shift to blue jeans, tee shirts, fashion styled suits8217; salwar kameez, as they were once called baba frocks and kiddie outfits, there has been a subtle yet apparent change in personal grooming. The scraggily, unshaven look is out fr men: Gillette amp; Co must be mighty pleased! The plain Jane, bhenji look is equally out for women; thank goodness for all the beauty tips and product offers from the many cosmetic companies. I certainly have never seen so many good looking and smartly turned out women as you come across the country today.

While it is said that clothes maketh the man and woman, too, I would like to add another thought to these words of wisdom: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Let me explain. For long I have wondered as to how people, whose ancestors created such great works of art and built such amazing cities, could have debased their sense of surroundings. Every city and town provides graphic testimony to this rotten state of affairs. Various excuses are made: pressure of population, failure of local government, corruption at every level, of course, and the list goes on in tiresome familiarity. However, little mention is made of individual social behaviour that not only condones these lapses but also adds to the problem. Tossing out unbagged garbage, littering with gay abandon, all over the place. Have parents forgotten to teach themselves and their kids any good habits? Have communities surrendered their power to demand adequate services and abdicated their rights and obligations to outsider NGOs? Or is it that noone really sees the dirt, decay and absolute horror of their surroundings? Have we become so conditioned to living with this mess around us that we accept it as normal? I suggest that the answer to all these questions is, yes.

A possible shift in this attitude should occur as people start to see things in a more discerning and judgmental manner. This change in the nature of how they see things has already begun: people are taking a greater interest in how they look 8230; in how their homes look, including bathrooms and kitchens8230; in how their workplaces look, especially shops and other locations where people come and go. The contrast between these changing elements and civic surroundings, that stay as they are, will grow and hopefully annoy, distress and disgust. Such awakened vision must be encouraged to lead to pressures for change 8212; change starting from the way we behave extending to how we expect others to behave. Only when people see will they react and act. We have to appreciate that the only force to make a change lies in us 8212; this is the readymade solution we must pursue.