City is in the depths of the bitterest, most bone-gnawingly icy winter... This morning was cold enough to freeze the whiskers of a walrus. And just looking at the inadequately clad trendy young teenagers gave me an almost terminal case of shivers. “Aren’t you a bit chilly in what you don’t seem to have on? I asked through clattering teeth. “Oh no not at all. It’s nice and breezy' one of them replied replied with trilling laugh like a tinkle of ice-cubes skittering down a glacier. After all those years I have finally come to realize the real difference between the young and the not-so-young!. There I’ll be like a mobile garment factory wearing from the inside out, thermals, thick kurta, woollen sweater, jacket, muffler, and still thinking wistfully of roaring log fires; and there’ll be my young friends apparelled in loose shirtsleeves over a skin hugging jersey and assuring me that they find winters just divine !They seem to possess an in-built climate control system which renders them impervious to the frostbite. And it’s got everything to do with fashion. Apparently, feeling cold is very unfashionable; in which case I’m the most unfashionable individual going, with my winter-time resemblance to something that’s fallen off a washer-man’s donkey. Huddled in my jacket, which is turning perceptibly shabby, as I have hardly taken it off for the past couple of weeks, I wish I could be a little more fashionable so as not to go about buried under more layers than a Mohenjo-Daro excavation site. Then I read the weather report which predicts temperatures nose-diving like a Siberian bungee-jumper and decide to postpone fashion for a bit; like may be till mid March or something. In the mean time, can I take cold comfort from the thought that my grungy jacket is likely to send a subversive shudder through the fashionable world of haute uncouture? Abs-olutely!
- inspired by an old article by Jug Suraiya
