Frayed and Fulfilled

"There is a tiny bug on your tshirt near the neck" she said.

My finger felt a tiny hole.  A hole in the tshirt that looked like a bug from a distance.

"It is a hole.  Another well-worn and frayed tshirt."

We laughed.

A few days ago, I noticed that a pair of shorts had a huge gaping hole.  The threads had just given up.  Over the decades, I have worn plenty of upper and lower garments to the very end of their lives.  Especially shorts and pants.  I am always reminded of my grandmother joking: "துணிய கிழிக்க சந்துல ஆணி இருக்கா?" (Do you have nails in your butt to tear the cloth?)

I haven't outgrown the habits formed from growing up in a time and place that now come across practically as an alien planet.  It was a time when new clothes were not purchased on whim, but only for special occasions like birthdays and Deepavali.  And for the weddings of very close relatives.  

Those were also the days when shirts and pants were not bought "ready-made" but were custom made every single time.  We bought the cloth and took it to the tailor.  He--Shanmugam in Neyveli, and Aadhi in Sengottai--took the needed measurements and then told us when it would be ready. 

My parents and the tailor went through the same routine every time:

Parent: "We need it by that date.  It is very important."

Tailor: "Of course.  You don't worry."

But, my parents and I knew that it wouldn't be ready by the promised date.  The tailor too, I am sure, knew that he couldn't deliver.  Yet, people said their respective dialogues and carried on.  Now when I visit the old country, because I have gotten used to the American way of deadlines in any kind of a transaction, I end up being fooled over and over when it turns out that deadlines are merely theatrical devices in negotiations.  My father laughs at my gullibility.

The day would finally arrive well after the negotiated deadline.  In Sengottai the clothes were delivered to grandma's home, and in Neyveli we picked them up from Shanmugam.  It was magical to smell and feel the new clothes.

We couldn't wear the new clothes without getting blessed by the gods.  A parent, invariably my mother, would apply a little bit of kungumam to the shirt collar or the waist of the pant, and then we could wear them.

Clothes were precious.  Well, everything was precious back then.  In the contemporary life, if blue is the new red, then we get the blue by simply clicking a button at a favorite online store.  We know the price of clothes and things but we have no idea about their value.  We simply do not care.

We do not care because billions of us now live in a world of plenty, in contrast to life a mere couple of decades ago.  Walk-in closets are the pride and joy of many.  Wardrobe closets are a lot more spacious than even many kitchens are, and are perhaps bigger than the square footage that hundreds of millions around the world claim as their sleeping space. 

However, choosing from plenty is a problem to most humans because we have not been wired for that.  The tyranny of choice leads to decision fatigue, and we end up using a few clothes over and over again, while condemning a bunch of clothes to being locked up in the closet forever.

Meanwhile, the world of fashion demands that we put aside clothes from two years ago lest we come across as fuddy-duddy.

There are many questions that we can raise about the long-term impacts of such a consumer behavior.  And, many questions like the following two about the changes that we need to initiate:

How can consumers be persuaded to slow down—to purchase fewer clothes of more enduring quality? And what measures can be taken to encourage the industry to favor quality over quantity?

I used to engage students and compel them to think through such issues.  I don't imagine that I made any difference in their thinking and behavior.  At the very least, I can rest assured that I tried.

I don't pretend that this blog-post will make any difference either.  But, the fact that this post or I don't make any difference to this world does not make the problem disappear.  The elephant is still there in the middle of the room, and the elephant is clearly unhappy.