There was a time in India when it was cheaper to get an item of clothing stitched than to buy it in a ‘readymade garments’ store. One handed in a model shirt or pair of jeans (always imported) and the tailor — king of ditto — would do a fabulous job of copying it.I have nothing against tailors. I love sewing machines. I was my mother’s COO when it came to her non-electric Singer. My grandmother owned the real thing — the one with a foot pedal, which allowed one to pretend to be a rock drummer. The rapid-fire action of the needle was mesmerising.I use the word ‘tailor’ as a metaphor. As a society, we are excellent at churning out copies, but not photocopies. China is much better at that — their counterfeits market overtook India’s a while back.From ideas to objects, we tailor everything to our needs. The underlying presumption is a favourite Indian line: This works there. It won’t work in India. At times, we copy from each other. We are not copycats, but cats at copying. There are thousands of Hasty Tasty outlets across the country, but are not part of any chain. It’s just that the name became shorthand for Punjabi Chinese food. Similarly, we went through a phase where adding an ‘n’ in the middle became the cool thing to do: Lip’n’Sip, Ginger’n’Grape, Ferns’n’Petals….England cricket’s Barmy Army becomes Bharat Army. Unlike the former, we can’t come up with original songs and slogans. Bharat Army remains stuck at ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai.’ IMFL, or Indian Made Foreign Liquor, is another classic example. On Swiggy, while searching for Domino’s Pizza, one finds Dominik Pizza. One Indian version of Twitter was named Tooter. When someone tried to come up with an original, it was Gutr goo, which even the pigeons didn’t buy.The India version of TikTok is called TakaTak, also the name of a Kurkure variant. Coca-Cola’s offshoot was Campa Cola. When Maruti 800 was all the rage, everything from slippers to local potato wafers was called Maruti. I stopped buying Lux soap once Lux Baniyan entered the market. I found the cognitive dissonance hard to handle.Hindi cinema soundtracks have copied everything from Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ to Gloria Estefan’s ‘Rhythm is Gonna Get You’. The latest addition to the list is the fake vaccine. It looks like Covishield, but is in fact a jab of Kinley and Bisleri. Or it could be Kent RO and Aquaguard for all one knows.Post the arrival of The Big Chill café in South Delhi, the 1950s Hollywood stars decor was replicated in café after café, until it entered the homes of upwardly mobile Indians and one just couldn’t tell where home began and café ended.It’s not that different when it comes to The Big Idea. Arvind Kejriwal’s odd even scheme, the panacea to everything from Covid to pollution, is also imported.The PM’s thaali-banging thanksgiving routine during the first Covid wave has, a bit ironically, Italian origins. Also imported was the Congress government’s doomed bus rapid transit in Delhi. As is RSS’s brand of ethno-nationalism.And yet, India, the nation of tailors, still harbours the fantasy of being Master Darzee to the world. Uttarakhand CM Tirath Singh Rawat recently said, ‘Modi model is popular in the US and the entire West.’ This should come as news to the hapless inhabitants of the Rust Belt, Cornwall and Limerick.Not to say that we haven’t produced any non-traditional originals at all. By non-traditional, I mean anything that is not yoga, bharatnatyam or dowry/honour killings. We have Old Monk, Chetan Bhagat, the twins separated at Kumbh Mela film formula (what Manmohan Desai charmingly called ‘lots and found’) and Mother Dairy.Actual tailors themselves are far more original. In Dehradun, there is one called Rehab Tailors. Every time I pass it, I itch to climb on a ladder and paint on the signboard the legend: ‘Bespoke tailoring for those in recovery.’(The writer is author of The Butterfly Generation)
from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3dIgKbJ
No comments:
Post a Comment