It is an occupation fraught with grave and nameless perils, the least of it being the ever present possibility of being brusquely collared by Bangalore’s assiduous cops and appearing shame-faced before the awful majesty of the mobile court in Mayo Hall and getting juggled, proper and good for a 14-day spell in the cooler accompanied by some string remarks from the bench about the menace of eve-teasers.
My usual beat is along Bangalore’s fashionable Mahatma Gandhi Road and most balmy evenings will find me on station propping up a doorway as though to prevent it from collapsing like a building just certified ‘Fit’ by the Public Works Dept., and with quick, darting eyes drink in the passing jeans while keeping a sharp lookout, port and starboard, for any approaching cop.
I wish to claim, if I may, that I have logged almost 200 hours of Jeans Watching and I can confidently assert that the scene has never been brighter. There are jeans to drape practically every body shape and contour.
Old fogies may shake their heads dolefully and mutter that the younger generation is going to the dogs, but with my superior professional expertise, I wish to squarely contradict these disapproving old codgers and assert that the younger generation is, in fact, going to Jeans.
No doubt we have all been upbraided by our peers over our sartorial inelegance, but with jeans, it is altogether a different scene. The dirtier they are and looking more like hessian jute sacking used to mop cow dung floors, the higher one’s standing in the world of jeans.
Let the disillusioned senior citizens be put on adequate notice—-jeans are here to stay and with them the patches. Let me quote for your scholarly edification the following patch, I spied on a faded stonewash denim as it turned the corner into Brigade Road. It read simply I DIG ZEN proving my point to the hilt that the supposedly frivolous and coke and ipod hungry younger generation actually understand and loves Zen. When I challenged my old man about Zen, he shuffled and mumbled rather uncertainly, “Is it the brand name of a new ballpoint pen being test-marketed?”
Watching jeans has been a deeply soul-satisfying and spiritually ennobling pastime and for added measure, it has enabled me to come up with an original definition of middle-aged spread-living beyond one’s jeans.
