Relatable Indian Stories. Parents! Always in a Different World

Recently, not lacking in filial piety, I had bought a shirt for my father. Now any decent shirt in today’s times costs about Rs 2500 or so onwards and a decent shirt is what I went with. The same was presented to my father with great fanfare. Father looked at the shirt and was ecstatic. Felt the fabric approvingly, admired the colour and found the fit perfect. Then he added, rather needlessly to my mind – “bahut accha shirt hai, lekin kaafi mehenga lag raha hai. Kam se kam 300 ka to hoga”. Translated, it would mean something like “excellent shirt, looks very expensive, must be at least Rs 300”.

If you think I was stumped, you would only be partially right. I was, as Barney Stimson of “How I Met Your Mother Fame” would say, flabber-wait-for-it–gasted.  I turned towards The Wife, said nothing, but my expressive face was saying it all very clearly, viz – “which era are these oldies living in?”.

Yes, parents, or at least mine, are a different kettle of fish. They are thrifty: the kinds that will flatten the toothpaste tube till even a Lijjat papad gets a complex. They are remarkably loyal customers and care little for new fangled capitalist consumer items such as Dove soaps, or Tresemme shampoo, or even Pepsodent toothpaste. No Sir. They still yearn for that orange tubed toothpaste (yes the one whose makers didn’t seem to agree that a toothpaste needed to be foamy), that pink soap with the distinct smell of hospitals; which they used quite cheerfully in lieu of shampoo too.

But reverting to clothes………We have all needed periodic replacement of our school uniforms in our formative years. Well, my parents used to really come into their own on such occasions.  Being practical people, they always thought, as stock market gurus would advise, long term. I mean reeaaally long term. Which implied that the increasing height of a growing boy needed to be factored in. So there I would be, with the waist of the trousers around my nipples, staring glumly at the mirror to the ooh and aahs of my satisfied mother. Her plan was clear in her mind. I could wear them for the next 3-4 years by the simple expedient of wearing them lower every year till one year in the yonder, they would reach the, well, waist. And a new nipple hugger would only be bought/stitched when at least one inch of clear sock could be seen above the shoes! Thrifty remember?

That catered for height.  But what about the waist you ask?  Some Kendriya Vidyalaya (we yanks called them Central Schools) types may recall that we used to wear navy blue trousers. Well my navy blue trousers had to have adequate margins around the waist, so that they could be ‘opened up’ a little bit every year to cater for my increasing girth. All very practical I will admit. But you know how it is with navy blue. Constant friction/contact with the hard wooden benches would give them a nice silvery sheen on the backside. Therefore, each inch opened at the rear every year would give a sharply contrasting V on my butt. The same exercise the next year would add another hue and by the fourth year, I would have a rainbow of navy blues on my backside. I kid you not when I say that strutting peacocks would look admiringly at my plumage.  On the plus side, rather like the growth rings on tress, the number of hues could easily define the age of the trousers. Useful info? Perhaps not.

Ever tried out the Indian jugaad of re-treaded tyres for cars? Now this procedure gives the go bye to all safety standards, but does give Indians the pleasure of squeezing a couple of extra years out of the wheels. My parents applied the general philosophy of re-treading, not to tyres, but my shoes. The infernal shoes we had then had a rather sorry inclination towards developing holes on the soles. So, when the square area of the holes started competing with that of the remaining sole, off would the shoes go to our neighbourhood cobbler. I am not sure what rubber he used but my keen powers of deduction point towards discarded truck tyres. The tyre having spent its life curved into a circle, borrowing the philosophy of ‘kutte ki dum’, maintained its form even when reappropriated for shoes. Hence the shoes would have a concave shape (or convex if you so prefer) such that the toes never touched the ground.

I could expound further on the peculiarities of middle class India of the seventies/eighties, but I guess most of us have had similar experiences – the steel tumblers (glass was only for special guests), Rasna (roohafza was again, only for said special guests), clothes under the mattress in lieu of an iron, storing wrapping paper (kabhi na kabhi toh kaam aayega), the Lambretta with an additional carrier over the stepney to cater for the full family, chitrageet/chayageet on black and white TV, etc.

On the whole however, despite a life of shortages, I think we all turned out reasonably well. Those long past days are difficult to explain to our kids, but we, the born in the 60s generation, hold a shared past of embarrassments, deprivations, gilly danda, chewing ganna, pithu, Atlas cycles, Charms cigarettes, Doordarshan, Fauji Bhaiyyon ka rangarang karyakram, Weston TV, Nirma, Binaca geet mala, Karen Lunel (the Liril ad), Lalitaji (Surf ad), damn nylon shorts (half pants/knickers), etc

 And of course rainbow hued trousers……