Skip to main content

Dress to Impress?





There are so many parameters that decide which strata of society you belong to or deserve to be. This must have been the most abrupt or random start to any piece that your read recently. But the thought process that is being referred here isn’t random at all. The society has devised a systematic algorithm to judge people based on how they dress, among many other parameters. And just like every other computer program, claims do exist that this algorithm is bug free.  

So, when the Delhi Golf Club decided to not let one of their guests enter their premises because the lady was dressed in a traditional Khasi attire; which the prestigious club believed resembled to what is worn by servants. It was obvious that this societal algorithm is totally bug free.  

Then again, as I write this, a news has emerged at that a man was denied entry into a mall in Kolkata because he was wearing dhoti. At a time when gau rakshaks are lynching people in the name of culture, a person was denied entry into a mall because he was wearing something very traditional and natural to the culture of India.


Surely, these societal norms never fail to surprise me. I have been very weak with spellings, but I am sure some of the wisest ones who governs us or sets these norms, fail to spell the word ‘logic’.

Many my colleagues have vehemently reminded me about the shabby dressing sense that I have. I have often been advised to dress better for people to take me seriously. Well, one I thought it was my work that decided that and two I dress to please myself, not others. But my colleagues are not wrong either.

So, one afternoon I attended a lunch were the buffet manager refused to serve me dessert as they had limited stock and he believed that I was not important enough. Now, he clearly wasn’t someone who studied and understood society as I do. But he followed a norm which he learnt with experience. Where did he acquire this understanding? What made him classify that I am not important enough to not get access to the limited reserved stock of dessert? Clearly my dressing style and body language. And for sure it’s impossible to wear an ID tag as to who I am everywhere that I go.

But what we wear is basically the default ID that we carry. And as I said earlier, only few of us exactly know how to spell the word ‘logic’, let alone understand the meaning of it.

This racial profiling of people based on what they wear has been a latent cancer within our society for a long time. From an effluent eatery in Kolkata to this mall incident, there must have been so many other incidents that gets away unnoticed. To my understanding this also is a residue of the Britishers, which we Indians proudly incorporated into our list of traditions.  And dare I question Indian culture and tradition. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Note To My Abandoned Blog!

I have been writing for over a decade now. In 2012, I started a blog and went on to garner a lakh page views by 2015. Social media wasn’t as big then as to what it is now, the internet wasn’t a necessity, but rather an accessory and attention span surely was more than what we have today. So I believe I can get a little pat on my back for what I achieved.   Come 2016, my blog reached the 200k mark, and then like the abandoned Paper Factory in Jagiroad, Assam, I abandoned my blog. I did write a couple of pieces up until 2021, but that was probably the flickering flame of a dying lamp.   So, did I stop writing after 2016? Hell no, in fact, I have been writing an unimaginable volume of work. From academic papers, news stories, features for magazines, websites, academic papers, dissertations, press releases, scripts, concept notes and my favourite pass time, emails, I have been churning out words after words .  But what I absolutely stopped doing is, writing for myself. Personal writing a
Post a Comment
Read more

Wish I could 'FLIRT'

I was in class VII, when I first came across the word ‘flirting’. (This apparently proves my weakness in vocabulary). Anyways, it was my friend Jyotirmoy who was talking about him flirting with a girl. As usual, an innocent me, asked, “ এই flirting মানে কি? ” Which apparently meant, ‘What does flirting mean? What an apt description he gave, he said, it is an act of conveying someone that you love him/her verbally, though you hold no feelings for him/her by heart. Mind it, class VII we were, and we were already discussing how to fake love. That was good old 7 years back, in a phase of time, where at least love was not merely a matter of one night stand. Over the time, Jyotirmoy did excel in the art of flirting on screen, no wonder, he is yet to score a girl, but he has surely excelled. This is an art, an art probably all of the cool dude modern guys surely have good hands on. But what I am more concerned about is actually described in the last part of the last line of th
20 comments
Read more

Nostalgia, Life and Growing Up

One of the greatest fears one can have is to be a stranger to someone or a place, that was once very close to you. Often in our lives, we cross paths with so many places and people, that for a period they become an integral part of our lives. While some remain with us forever, others are as good as strangers.   We often walk into places knowing it’s temporary, yet when we move out, pain engulfs us knowing that things will never be the same again.   One of the biggest fallacies in our 20s is that we often claim a space, area or city to be our own. As a university student, your life revolves around the campus and everything in and around the campus becomes the comfort zone that we reside in. Every second person is a familiar face, and your sense of belonging is rooted around them. But just in a matter of few years, everything changes, and the most known place of yours becomes as good as the new city which you moved in, completely unknown. (This of course is not true for everyone)   I
Post a Comment
Read more