Thinking about Fashion
I grew up watching my father donning a Gandhi topi (cap).. It was a fashion then as it has been with the members of the Indian National Congress party. This fashion was revived during the very popular Anna Hazare's recent anshan (hunger strike) at Delhi's Ramlila Grounds, among many young India's youth who became a member of phenomenal crows in support. Today, as I think about fashion, this is the thought that popped up in my mind. I start thinking with a few questions:
What is fashion? Is it limited to attire?
The Wikipedia article on Fashion, seem to limit it to attire, I do not really think so. There can be various kinds of fashion, fashion for using a particular kind of device to communicate, say the smart phone, to be on a social networking site, say facebook, fashion to make on-line friends- the more the merrier. To tag 'friends' with images or notes whether the friend likes or not; then fashion to eat particular kind of food at particular places, to play music that is the current craze and so on and on drive a particular kind of automobile, or harbor habits, like being carefree etc. While following a fashion one becomes a member of a crowd, the crowd that is fashionable.
Now, I start thinking about myself. I ask:
Whether I was fashionable at any time in my life so far? Do I still follow some fashion nowadays?
Yes, I feel no shame to confess, that I was a part of some fashion brigades, while I was young. I liked to don jeans and later bell bottomed trousers, i wore shoes with pointed toes; that hurt the health of my feet and legs and as i consequence i cannot walk comfortably now. But, i never knew, never cared for that then. But they have all faded away as I grow old, now i only wear simple, inexpensive cotton khadi kurta and pyjamas, that are anti fashion now. I engage myself in contemplation and writing most of the time. I do not think that they have been a fashion ever.
Let me then quote a few poems that I read after a bit of Net search, the first one is of an obscure poet, epigramman:
When consuming the persona of an existing state;
the chameleon tread lightly in order to equate;
the delicate balance and approximation of fame;
but even a moth gets burnt by the flame!
Then from a poem of famous T. S. Eliot, that I adore:
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Rakesh Mohan Hallen