Dress Codes

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In our Village School in the charming 1950s there was no dress code.

Indeed there was not much of a dress. None of us students had any footwear. And none wore full-pants. Well, we did wear half-pants but no undergarments...it was too warm.

Then this cute kid Raghu from the city joined our class. He was the son of the newly arrived doctor in what passed as our Hospital. He came with a full pant, full shirt and chappals. And felt so isolated and embarrassed that he skipped classes for a week till his mom had half pants and 'bush' shirts stitched for him. And he stopped wearing chappals, poor kid.

That in a nutshell is the moral of a dress code...conform!

Much later in the 1980s I read a news item: This town kid pestered his mom to buy him a jeans pant. And as soon as it arrived, he tore it up in a few places with scissors, had patchworks done by his mom, took his new pants to the bathroom and spent hours brushing them with coconut fiber, sand, and grime till they looked 'faded'...this guy (and his friends) would have been warmly received in our Village School as 'one of us'....

But our girl classmates were different.

They wore just a blouse with puffed up 'shoulders' and a printed skirt...full...not knee-length till about Class VIII.

Then they took leave for 3 days at a stretch. And when they returned to school, they were metamorphosed. They were in a pleated skirt, an arm-length blouse and a cute mini-sari covering them. And started blushing, refusing to join our games, sitting apart in our Class Room, 'friending' our lone Lady Teacher, Rani,...in short putting on the dog (sorry for the male gender).

It was all mystifying. We felt hoodwinked; and forlorn.

Nowadays it is the precise opposite...no girl takes 3 days leave at a stretch, nor start wearing mini-saris, nor sitting apart; it is all the other way round. Instead of covering up themselves they try to cover up their sudden 'difference'.

In Nehrujee's secular socialist free India, purohits as a profession started becoming an extinct species. Our own purohit's son who was our classmate was advised by his father to join the Territorial Army for a living.

When I returned to Hyderabad from KGP in 2005, I was stunned to see a phalanx of purohits, well-fed, riding scooters and power bikes, with their heads tonsured but for a blowing tuft, demanding entry into Apartment Complexes and getting it, to bless the unwary by the dozen with a vedic chant or two and pocketing wads of currency notes that would make my father blush...he having been advised by 'his' purohit uncles to take up English Education in the Christian College, Madras, becoming an English Teacher with pomp and prestige but a famished 'living'.

I discovered the secret of this transformation over half a century from Nehru's AP to Manmohan's.

I guess most folks here perhaps make too much money of a different color nowadays, and are afraid.

Fear seems to be the key to showy religion...at least in our AP.

Ha!

Ishani is retuning tomorrow early morning with her mom and dad...what a lark!

I am driving my jalopy 30 km to receive her at the Secunderabad Railway Station.

And sleeping early tonight.


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