Dress Code

All my life, people have told me that I have no dress sense. :-) So, I know how it feels when someone tells anyone that.

Once upon a time, I never used to care much (I still don't, but act like I do!) about my attire just like our Indian cinema heroes. I always found these guys beating me to it though.

I never wore a pink pair of trousers with an equally pink shirt and pink shoes, pink socks and pink gloves to match etc. Seeing their enthusiasm, I always believed they had matching pink undergarments too. However, my critics never noticed it I think and put me on an equal pedestal with them.

When I got married, my wife also started telling me this and I decided to learn what this was all about. Day by day, I changed my wardrobe to "neat", "cool" shirts and trousers. I discarded all my so called "gaudy" coloured attire and replaced them with "neatly" striped, plain and small checked light coloured shirts and dark matching trousers.

Last year, in August or so, cable tv got regulated in Madras. Before that, I used to watch National Geographic, Discovery Channel and a myriad other interesting channels and was learning better dress code and other things by the day.

After this regulation, these channels along with other watchable channels became paid channels and anyone wanting to see them had to buy a set-top box and pay extra money for them.

The cable tv operator near our house actively dissuaded me from buying a set-top box saying that the concept will fail and this clamp will be released soon. So, I believed and haven't gone for this technology at home yet. The same is the case with 99.999999% of people in Madras. We don't get any watchable channel within city limits.

The streets beyond the city limits are exempt and enjoy all the channels for free at our expense. This CAS was clamped on Delhi too and it was promptly lifted. The guys there lack patience I think. Why did they have to agitate to have it lifted and succeed in their attempt too? See us here. How patiently we are waiting for it to be lifted like good citizens.

You might be wondering why I am giving you all this crap. I will come to the point shortly.
So, in the absence of any watchable channels, I am having to contend with the singaporean news (sometimes read in Chinese). I have picked up some chinese by the way. The chinese don't like being picked up like that though. The big news I always get to see is if someone is caught in a lift in some southeast asian country for twenty minutes etc and so on. I assume here that you have a fertile imagination.

Another channel that caught my attention was FTV. This is a free channel. This is being aired for the past four or five years I think without any inhibition. Some righteous members of our government in the centre at that time made some noises about banning it. I don't know what happened. Their malady would have been cured after they were made to watch it for a couple of hours I think.

Whatever it is, it was an alternative channel. After watching it for half an hour, the dress code that I so painstakingly learnt in the last few years got dismantled brick by brick.

The attires were so nice that you could tell the marital status of the women models and the religion of the male models from a distance if you had the discerning eye.

These people who are attired in such divine garments come walking down what is called a ramp slowly but surely, stop at its edge, look at the camera in a tantalising way and walk back equally slowly and surely. On both sides of this "ramp", there are about a few hundred sane looking people people seated with great interest showing on their faces. They might be enthusiasts, but don't wear any of these divine dresses. Instead, they mostly wear glasses (do they double as
binoculars?) and sit with a notebook and pen in their hands.

First of all, I never understood why or how these guys got to sit there of all the places, and what the hell the notebook was doing there, and what in the world they were noting down.

I then learnt that the models who were gliding on the aisle were making 21st century unisexual fashion statements in their birthday clothes.

Such fashion shows have become the norm in Indian cities too. Calcutta found an interesting way to get rid of this. A couple of years ago, after their maiden show in Calcutta, the models came back to Bombay swearing that they will never attend another show there.

The sane hundred or so that usually sit on either side of the ramp with note books in hand resorted to some pinching etc. it seems. People can take a clue here on how to cure it, if they think this is a problem.

I also don't know why the above is a free channel in India and why Discovery and National Geographic Channels are paid channels. I think this channel would have been paid for in the right sums at the right places. What do you think?

I am willing to shift to the code that the above channel prescribes, but I am wondering where I will keep my hand-kerchief, my car keys, my credit cards, my wallet, my cell phone, my comb etc.. if I do. After that half hour of watching that channel, I decided that I had enough tv for one life and joined some internet forums. Now, I come here to enjoy the WWF fights that take place every evening. I am quite confused. Should I put on my recently gifted "red" shirt or not?