Come Out In The Open

I am sitting on a chair outside a shopping mall. I see people - some well dressed, others not so - moving in and out of the mall. I hear them talking, laughing, walking in silence. One thing that I have grown up doing is observing people.

And I see a pregnant lady walking towards me, she sits on the chair and makes a call to her friend. "There is nothing in this whole goddamn city that I can wear and look nice," she says. I, who was just going through my Facebook wall with posts with headlines like 'From Blake Lively To Kareena Kapoor, we bring you the best of pregnancy style, get confused.' Is it really the case? Sadly, it is. At least in India. 

Almost a week later I read that Sonia Rykiel, the French fashion designer has died. Rykiel was not just a fashion designer. She was a fashion designer who changed the rules of the game.

When Rykiel was carrying her second child, she could barely find maternity clothing that she would like. All she saw was clothes that screamed shame and apology. So Rykiel designed her own outfit. Needless to say, it was not even remotely apologetic.

“I wanted to show the world how happy I was,” she said. “My mother-in-law was scandalized, but my friends asked how they could find one like it.”

So, there you go. Someone simply  needs to start it. Others will follow suit, sooner or later. May Rykiel's soul rest in peace. And may, we, as a generation, too realise that it is time we stop hiding and come out in the open and celebrate, wearing good clothes, of course.

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Stop Texting

I am aware of the fact that the headline may have caught you off-guard. I know. It has got nothing to do with fashion. But since this blog is the only place where I, at times, get to write what I want to write, I would take this opportunity to talk about something that is nothing less than an epidemic.

I have come across Facebook statuses wherein people have shared pictures or animated creatives saying, please don't call me. Text me instead. At times there are pictures of a scared person with words, "Why are they calling me!" What is worse is that people take pride in posting such pictures.

There are a few things in this world that scare me more than anything else. Texting while driving is one of them. And this habit of only texting is another. I know. Readers may think, what's the big deal in that. Texting or calling, or meeting in person, it is the communication that matters. But is that the case?

How do you know who is texting you? Well, you may know so from the way they usually text, the pauses, the way they use or not use smileys when they get surprised or sad or bored. After a while, we know how our friends text us. But what happened to the good old talking? What happened to that warmth that came with the sound of your loved one's voice? The way someone's voice changed when they were happy or sad or excited or not excited...it brought two people close like nothing else did. It still does.

I find the whole texting phenomenon scary because it gives people an eerily comfortable hallway to just run and escape, tools for the shrewd people to manipulate and the naives to get manipulated. More often than not, no one really knows who is lying, or is expressing more or less than what they feel.

And I am not exaggerating when I say that I hardly find people who can talk now. People sit with their friends  but  are texting others. When they sit with others, they text their friends with who they met last weekend. Do you see a pattern? Talking - a once upon a time activity - is getting more and more difficult with every passing day, and this, my good readers, is indeed scary.
  

Outfit details: t-shirt: Forever 21, Shorts: Done by None (Old), Bag: Lino Perros, Sandals: Ginger, Bracelets: Gifted by Mehak Mann