Tailor made for change

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.

Curated For You

My brand is justice, not movies: Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa on becoming first lawyer to have personality rights protected

School jobs scam: ED attaches Rs 57.78 cr assets of TMC MLA, two others

Twist in Vaishno Devi medical college case, state board tells govt: Adjusting students not our mandate, do it yourself