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Yesterday, in its ample wisdom, my government in Telangana ruled that henceforth all school children in all schools here will wear the same uniforms.
That of course drove me all nostalgic about my own schooling in our village Muthukur in the 1950s. We had no uniforms, nor any footwear at all which was scowled upon by everyone as bluff and bluster.
Nowadays in Hyderabad I see anything up to a couple of scores of uniforms worn by kids boarding their respective buses which fortunately are all yellow in color. Some variety there despite the fact that quite a few wear neckties and all wear pinching shoes and carry massive school bags and all rush out like so many released doves from their cages.
When I was fetching Ishani from her school last year, I had a tough time identifying her...everyone wore the same uniform and all had 'boy-cuts'...and I had a blinding cataract in both my eyes. Luckily, the neighboring school had a different dress code.
Take a look at the Raam, Laxman, Sita pic above. The males are bare-bodied above their waists and have dhotis round their legs and wear no footwear...although I am told that Sri Raamjee gave away his sandals to Bharat as a headgear. Ayodhya must be pretty cold and hot in different seasons and this pic must have been taken at the height of summer.
Sitajee on the other hand is fully covered with a sari-blouse combine and of course all of them are crowned. I have seen many pics of Sitajee without the crown but none of them show her covering her head with a veil (unlike our Congress President for now):
Some historical anomaly there...
If you want to see real jet-black veils from head to foot you should come to the old city of my Hyderabad:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/02/streets-of-hyderabad.html
Nor does Radha (or is it Rukmini?) wear a veil:
And of course Krishna is as bare-bodied as Sri Raamjee.
When I reached KGP and made friends with a couple of folks from UP who sometimes invited me to their house, I, a deserving bachelor then with roving eyes, was met with a smile by the young lady of the house who fed me welcome tea and snacks with a well-worn sari. But as soon as her old father-in-law entered their drawing room, the lady of the house pulled a veil over her head like the Congress President above. All this was new to me since neither Hindu nor Muslim ladies in my village wore a veil, come fathers or fathers-in-law or brothers-in-law.
Of course I wore a bush shirt and a pair of pants with a hemmed-in fold at the bottom. But as soon as I was scheduled to get married, my would-be wife sent a message that I have to wear what were called 'bell-bottoms' on the wedding day. And I had to buy cloth for four trousers and get them belled.
Pretty soon male fashions turned to 'elephant bottom', and then to 'parallel pipes' and last of all to skin-hugging jeans which I never wore.
But my wife stuck to her saris till I told her that in Bengal ladies wear 'nighties' at night. And I had to convince her that they were much more convenient than saris at night. After a decade of my preaching she let me buy her a nightie and then on she had a couple of dozen of them bought and worn day in and day out.
And she even convinced my mom and hers own that nighties are nice for oldies who found it tough to wear saris in their 80s.
Gandhi, the original, hardly wore anything worthwhile even when he met the King in London, a cat can wink at a king:
But I am told that he stubbornly refused to have his hair cut:
I am one with our rocket scientist on my hair-wear although no one asked me to wear a Bandh-gala. A couple of years back when I met a taxi-driver who was to carry me and my son to Srisailam on the sad occasion of immersion of my wife's ashes in the River Krishna there, the cabbie took a look at me and exclaimed:
"Sir, you look like our past president!"
And I took it as a compliment.
*******************************************************************************************************************************
Yesterday, in its ample wisdom, my government in Telangana ruled that henceforth all school children in all schools here will wear the same uniforms.
That of course drove me all nostalgic about my own schooling in our village Muthukur in the 1950s. We had no uniforms, nor any footwear at all which was scowled upon by everyone as bluff and bluster.
Nowadays in Hyderabad I see anything up to a couple of scores of uniforms worn by kids boarding their respective buses which fortunately are all yellow in color. Some variety there despite the fact that quite a few wear neckties and all wear pinching shoes and carry massive school bags and all rush out like so many released doves from their cages.
When I was fetching Ishani from her school last year, I had a tough time identifying her...everyone wore the same uniform and all had 'boy-cuts'...and I had a blinding cataract in both my eyes. Luckily, the neighboring school had a different dress code.
Take a look at the Raam, Laxman, Sita pic above. The males are bare-bodied above their waists and have dhotis round their legs and wear no footwear...although I am told that Sri Raamjee gave away his sandals to Bharat as a headgear. Ayodhya must be pretty cold and hot in different seasons and this pic must have been taken at the height of summer.
Sitajee on the other hand is fully covered with a sari-blouse combine and of course all of them are crowned. I have seen many pics of Sitajee without the crown but none of them show her covering her head with a veil (unlike our Congress President for now):
Some historical anomaly there...
If you want to see real jet-black veils from head to foot you should come to the old city of my Hyderabad:
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Nor does Radha (or is it Rukmini?) wear a veil:
And of course Krishna is as bare-bodied as Sri Raamjee.
When I reached KGP and made friends with a couple of folks from UP who sometimes invited me to their house, I, a deserving bachelor then with roving eyes, was met with a smile by the young lady of the house who fed me welcome tea and snacks with a well-worn sari. But as soon as her old father-in-law entered their drawing room, the lady of the house pulled a veil over her head like the Congress President above. All this was new to me since neither Hindu nor Muslim ladies in my village wore a veil, come fathers or fathers-in-law or brothers-in-law.
Of course I wore a bush shirt and a pair of pants with a hemmed-in fold at the bottom. But as soon as I was scheduled to get married, my would-be wife sent a message that I have to wear what were called 'bell-bottoms' on the wedding day. And I had to buy cloth for four trousers and get them belled.
Pretty soon male fashions turned to 'elephant bottom', and then to 'parallel pipes' and last of all to skin-hugging jeans which I never wore.
But my wife stuck to her saris till I told her that in Bengal ladies wear 'nighties' at night. And I had to convince her that they were much more convenient than saris at night. After a decade of my preaching she let me buy her a nightie and then on she had a couple of dozen of them bought and worn day in and day out.
And she even convinced my mom and hers own that nighties are nice for oldies who found it tough to wear saris in their 80s.
Gandhi, the original, hardly wore anything worthwhile even when he met the King in London, a cat can wink at a king:
...What I found significant about the photograph was that the elegant Indira Gandhi was wearing a fur coat — a symbol of considerable opulence...the significance was that at a time the Indian government was forever going with a begging bowl in hand to the US to make up for the country’s food deficit, Indira Gandhi didn’t feel any trace of embarrassment displaying her fur coat...
But I am told that he stubbornly refused to have his hair cut:
...According to a former colleague in the Defence Research and Development Organisation, which Mr Kalam was head of for more than a decade, the new president is vain about his mane.
"He preens himself before the mirror before venturing out and often pulls a comb from his pocket and runs it lovingly through his hair."...
I am one with our rocket scientist on my hair-wear although no one asked me to wear a Bandh-gala. A couple of years back when I met a taxi-driver who was to carry me and my son to Srisailam on the sad occasion of immersion of my wife's ashes in the River Krishna there, the cabbie took a look at me and exclaimed:
"Sir, you look like our past president!"
And I took it as a compliment.
Of course, much more stubborn was my southie lawyer who declined to contest in the recent Lok Sabha elections shrewdly. He always wore his white and well-starched lungi to our Parliament (no lungi-dance there but):
Much brouhaha was made recently by the unkind opposition folks when our PM met and bowled his US counterpart in a pin-stripe suit:
But of course they don't appreciate that unlike our past PMs, this one never clung to his costly suit...on the other hand he donated it for auction which fetched a whopping $690,000 all of which went to the cleaning of Gangajee...a speck in her polluted waters.
