Monday, October 8, 2018

Four Shirts from my Father


Start here
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For the last few people who would have visited my blog. Apologies. I had promised to write about my Love in detail. I wrote my first part and then the second part is pending.  No, the love still remains the same. Just that we got our second baby recently and I have been terribly quoting that as a reason to procrastinate on almost everything. So, do wait and I will get the right mindset to write about my Love journey again.

Meanwhile, something interesting happened in Life. I thought I will better share it with you all. I know all your ears are already ears to know about this cover picture and the article title. But you got to listen to the seven year old pre-story to come to the present-story.

Shirt starts
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Ever since this word called “sustainability” hit me I have been behaving a different animal. I have been watching what I consume day in and out. Not very seriously judging my lifestyle, but seriously observing what I am consuming. Thanks to videos like this by the Story of stuff guys (to quote one of the many who influenced me). I limited the number of cloth I use. While at Chennai, I spent three years with three jeans and half a dozen T-shirts. I got tired of jeans and those jeans understood me well. They also tore apart, mainly in the knees and the buttocks. I rested them in peace.

Then I moved to three pairs of Dhoti and two pairs of cotton pants. The T-shirts didn’t went very well with the Dhoti and pants. So, slowly I accumulated half a dozen shirts. All these were never bought in a day. All are accumulations over a slow period of time, generally one in 4 months or more.

Some months I would iron my shirts, some months I would question my logic of wasting energy in ironing and won’t iron. Three years passed and my shirts kept losing confidence in me. Some shirts attracted serious unwanted attention from friends and well-wishers. May be I was way too beautiful in my dresses. In the lower end, I was rich with too many dhotis. But the cotton pants aren’t good companions. They tore off their knees very soon. I kept them all in Khakhi colors so that I don’t have to think much on my color selection everyday. It is better to keep something fixed everyday. Anyways, there are way too variables in life. Why add a variable in pant color selection.

Birth of our second baby gave a good opportunity for my family to intervene in my dresses. They took away all my dhotis citing the need for good used cotton fabric for the baby. Well they were really well-used for long and were totally soft and safe for the baby. The shirts decided to part away on their own. Ya, I missed to add about the colors I get added to my shirts every now and then. We have this screen printing setup in our office to print on our cloth bags. Every time I cross that area, surprisingly a new color gets added to my shirt. So, some of my multicolored shirts and pants got torn away.

Shirt ends
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After long years of living separately, our family lived with dad and mom for two month. You are right. We need more people when a small baby is born. May be when I was deeply in love with my baby girl, my Dad was seriously concerned about his baby boy(me!!). He advised me to get dressed well. Well, I have given away that well-looking man to the logic of inner beauty and satisfaction. A dress was more of a trouble to maintain for most days except for few days where I wanted to look well. So, Dad went to shop, picked up four fabric which matches the colors that I have been using all these years. He should have observed my shirts for the last six years. Gave the fabric to a tailor along with a sample of a good looking shirt I gifted myself 6 months back. Thus..giving birth to four nice new shirts to me.

I already have three good shirts which my screen printing colleagues are yet to connect with. So, now I have I guess more than half a dozen shirt. I have reserved one for Diwali. Too many shirts now. Don’t want to gift it to anyone as they are gifted with loads of expectation from my dear Dad.

So, no matter we talk minimalism, no matter we talk conscious consumerism, we all get over consumed by the abundance of Love in this earth.

That’s the story of my four new shirts. Happy relationships to you all folks!

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