Tag: Outside In

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Outside In

Pop kaun?

What’s most annoying about going to the movies? Having to hear people crunch popcorn. Why don’t they eat samosas instead?
Shweytaby Shweyta Mudgal

I’m an avid cinema-goer; you’d find me at the movies at least once a week. To be a small speck in a large motion picture-loving audience that delights in watching the magic unfold on celluloid gives me a high like none other!

There is more to cinema-going than just seeing the film – it’s more than just going out with friends, family or alone; than surrendering oneself for the next few hours to on-screen characters and being transported into an alternate world through their lives and, of course, of snacking along as the story unfolds.

Cinema-going is usually conducted with another leisure activity, either pre- or post – such as having dinner or going out for a drink. Whether one plans to do either or both along with going to the movies or not, what is deemed mandatory is the indispensable bag of popcorn that one must devour while the movie is on.

But this was not always the case. As strange as it sounds, there used to be a time when the movie-going experience was devoid of its present-popcorn and moviesday lead player – popcorn! Earlier, cinema-halls had no snack bars and eating or drinking in theatres was unheard of for two reasons –

1. Munching and crunching during ‘silent movies’ was considered inappropriate during the film, and

2. Spillage of food/drink would result in a high cost of maintenance of the grand lobbies and the gorgeous rugs laid out in the theatres of that time.

It was not until the Great Depression hit the United States in 1929 that popcorn emerged as a shining star, rather a saviour for the cinema-hall owners of those times. Cinema became an escape from reality, and popcorn, with its high profit margins and affordable prices – as low as five cents a bag – became the ideal snack for movie-goers. Any spillage was easy to clean, it was easy to eat in the dark and its easy portability helped give it the iconic status that it enjoys today – of being the quintessential, global accompaniment to the movie-going experience.

Popcorn at the movies Yet to me, popcorn is not the ultimate cinema snack. Here’s why – this munchie, on account of its crispy, dry nature makes for a noisy snack, thus making its eaters add their own unwanted background score to the movie. The only sound you’re supposed to hear in a cinema is the one coming from the speakers, one would think. It is bad enough that in the theatre, I am almost always seated right behind two long-lost friends playing loud verbal catch-up sessions or next to a frequent text-addict. And in the case of Indian films, there are the little kids, with their many questions, energetic acrobatics and frequent jabs during the movie. Add to this, 500-odd viewers chomping away popped kernels and my experience can truly be described as ‘movie-going going gone’!

Fine, call me a grumpy movie-goer who demands complete silence during film screenings. But I have nothing against what you eat, who you make out with in the back seats or your kids whom you’ve sneaked into the theatre. All I want to do is watch in silence what I have paid for and be spared of your unnecessary background noise, especially the food orchestra.

India’s all-time preferred equivalent to this American movie-munchie has been the Samosa. This ‘triangular slice of heaven’, in my opinion, is the ideal movie-time snack. What’s not to love? It is compact and easy to hold, it fits perfectly in the palm of the hand, it doesn’t spill easily and it is delightfully satiating. Besides, as crusty as it is on the outside, it is soft on the inside, so it is easy on the ears of devoted movie-watchers like me.

samosaSo the next time you’re up for spending some time in a dark room with strangers, chuck that tub of popcorn and opt for the humble, desi samosa instead. If you live in India, you’ll be lucky enough to see it right up there with the other snack options on the menu. If you live outside India, like I do, you might have to sneak it into the theatre. So, whether the main protagonist of your movie is Sean Penn or Shah Rukh Khan, at least you’re not grating on the eardrums of your neighbour with your crunching and munching. If anything, the fragrance of the samosa might just tempt him into asking you where you bought it, so he can make a run for it during intermission!

Alfred Hitchcock once said, “If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.” Clearly, he too believed in ditching the popcorn for a samosa or two!

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and on principle, buys her samosas BEFORE she buys her movie tickets.

 (Pictures courtesy screencrush.com, www.guardian.co.uk, thevillagegranny.com, www.livemint.com)

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Outside In

The touchy-feet(y) syndrome

We respect our elders by touching their feet – but time constraints have modified this feet-touching act down the ages.
Shweytaby Shweyta Mudgal

All of us desis have done this. Stooped low – sometimes hesitantly, sometimes willingly, stretched our hands out and touched the pair of feet standing before us. The ‘touchy feet(y)’ syndrome, as I like to call it, has existed in India since time immemorial.

In spite of its Hindu origins, this custom has traversed multiple faiths. To find a young Indian of any religion touching the feet of an older one  to signify reverence and seek blessings is commonplace.

Believers in this act have acclaimed it for its many virtues, humility and respect being the foremost among them. Apparently, on touching someone’s feet, one creates a powerful energy circuit of sorts, supplementing an easy flow of positive energy derived from the ‘touchee’ who completes the ‘circuit’ by placing his hands on the head of the blessing seeker, i.e the ‘toucher’.

For many Indians, touching feet is as second nature as drinking chai, perhaps! Indian streets, shops, malls, wedding halls, restaurants, Little child touches a priest's feettheaters, cinema halls (on and off celluloid), TV screens and homes are replete with the back-bending-foot-touching exercise. Most children, especially those living in joint families, are taught to touch their elders’ feet. In many households even today, the ideal son or daughter-in-law may perhaps leave home without their daily essentials such as wallets or lunch boxes, but dare they leave without some ‘touchy-feet(y)’?

Like most other aspects of our modern-day lives, the gradual, metamorphic adaptation of this age-old tradition too, has been inevitable, as seen below:

Original version: Both feet of the elderly person (the ‘touchee’) were touched with both hands and massaged gently for about half a minute by the ‘toucher’, as the former would shower blessings upon the latter.

Version 1.0: A few years later, the ‘toucher’ would bend down to touch both the feet of the ‘touchee’ sans the massage, thereby saving some time.

half bentVersion 1.1: Time constraints and faster lifestyles further altered the modus operandi. Now, in a matter of a few seconds, the feet toucher would bend, touch one foot with just one hand and straighten up.

Version 1.2: Further compaction occurred when the ‘toucher’ would just half-bend to lightly graze the ‘touchee’s’ shin or knee; all in a jiffy.

Version 2 a.k.a The ‘Bluetooth’ Version: This is further ‘instantification’ of the act, without any physical contact between either parties. Now the ‘toucher’ merely fakes a knee bend with one hand pointing towards the ‘touchee’s’ feet. The ‘touchee’ delivers the blessing by a casual positioning of the hand held over the ‘toucher’s’ head.

A ‘flying-kiss’ equivalent of the ‘touching-feet’ exercise; in this last version the act is carried out without actually being carried out at all. It justifies itself and maintains its sole intention, yet adapts a stylistic approach, thus becoming a hilarious irony on the Indian social etiquette scene today!

I was brought up to do the exact opposite of this otherwise sacrosanct act – NOT to touch anyone’s feet! This refrainment was on account of the general North Indian belief that little girls are avatars of Hindu goddesses, thus causing their apotheosis to divinity. A giggly goddess in my growing years, I was notorious in the family for seeking cheeky thrills at seeing all the elders, including my grandparents, trying to touch my feet as I happily swung my legs around, dodging their hands and rendering their attempts futile.

Even as a child, I did not understand this strange podiatric obsession! Or why my family was reversing its pecking order when it came to this one foot-touching practice?

I don’t know about other ‘touchee’s’, but I for one, certainly didn’t like others reaching for my feet. For starters, my feet were really ticklish. Besides my toenails (or the lack thereof) traditional feet touchingmay not always have been the best sight. Furthermore, I’d jump (quite literally) when someone suddenly ducked in front of me, a la mavaali style, in those days!

I also didn’t like being the ‘toucher’. The only ‘feet-touching’ I really knew back then, was the one executed under the table, playing ‘footsie’ with a love interest. Or the kind of ‘feet-touching-the-ground’ over the head, that I’d indulge in during yoga class, if at all.

Even today – I don’t know, I am just not your traditional feet-toucher. I am more of a hugger, I think! Besides I figured I’d rather pull people’s legs instead of touch their feet. It makes them laugh more, saves me the exercise and most importantly, thrills to bits the giggly goddess inside me! After all, it is her blessing that really counts, doesn’t it?

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and has her feet on the ground all the time. Perhaps, that’s what makes them so dirty, she believes!

(Pictures courtesy ucscabroad.com, hemanth.net, gorigirl.blogspot.com, www.arcticphoto.co.uk)

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Outside In

Aunties and uncles

Why do we call our elders ‘uncle’ or ‘aunty’? What is behind this habit of addressing unknown elders with respect?
Shweytaby Shweyta Mudgal

Over the phone earlier this week, Mom announced “Uncle and aunty came home for dinner last night.” To my response – “Which uncle and aunty?” she clarified with their first names, which is when I knew. Not just who came to dinner, but what my column this week would be about – the Asian obsession with christening everyone ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunty’!

Being part of a nuclear family in Mumbai with all our kin living in other cities ensured that most of the relationships my parents and I made were non-familial. Add to these, the other hundred-odd ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ that I accumulated in the colony, just by virtue of having spent a childhood there!

So when it came to referring to any of these – the rude middle-aged man who sold me school stationary every year; the annoying building resident who quizzed me on my life each time our paths crossed; the old tailor to whom I’d accompany Mom as a child, but later abandoned because of his judgmental issues over my ‘plunging neckline’ requests or Dad’s endearingly nice colleague – the term ‘Uncle’ was used uniformly for all of them, no questions asked! Whether or not they were ‘Uncle-worthy’ in commanding my respect (the first three certainly weren’t), they still had to be called ‘Uncle’.

Similarly, Mom’s best friend, female colleagues, the neighbourhood gossipmonger or the saleswoman in the saree store were all ‘aunties’ – a term now universally applied to every middle-aged woman across Asia.

The entire Asian continent believes that first names are not enough to refer to strangers by. Here, family names are employed to refer to people from a certain gender and age group. Chinese sistersSomeone roughly your age is either your younger or elder brother or sister, while people that are roughly your parents’ age are your Aunt or Uncle. Anyone older is a Grandparent.

Family terms in Korean are the most complex. ‘Emo’ and ‘Gomo’ are the ‘Maasi’ and ‘Bua’ equivalents in Korean, both meaning ‘Aunt’, but depending on which parent’s sister one is talking about. Yet, ‘Emo’ is also used to refer to one’s mother’s close female friend or an older female server at a restaurant.

In China, children are taught to give each other a ‘title’ as well. ‘Ge ge’ and ‘di di’ mean older and younger brother while ‘jie jie’ and ‘mei mei’ mean older and younger sister, reminiscent of the Hindi ‘Bhaiya’ and ‘Didi’ reference made in India.

In Japan, societal mores are highly defined on the parameters of social address. First-name basis relationships exist only between good friends and those that are comfortable in each other’s company. Everyone else is referred with a ‘- San’ or ‘- Chan’ appended to their last names, with the latter being used strictly only for close friends, children or youth under the age of 20.

Filipinos are very family-oriented too, referring to older men or women as ‘Kuya’ or ‘Aate’ (Brother or Sister) or ‘Tito’ or ‘Tita’ (Uncle or Aunt) while anyone aged is referred to as ‘Lolo’ and ‘Lola’ (Grandpa and Granny).

With Asian immigration, some of this title practice has reached the US, too. In Hawaii, for instance, it is normal to call anyone ‘Anake’ or ‘Anakala’ (Aunt or Uncle) or ‘Tutu’ or ‘Tutu Kane’ (Grandma or Grandpa) even if they are strangers. And in heavily-populated Asian communities within the US, ‘Uncle’ and ‘Aunty’ terms still abound, practiced by first-generation Indian-American children, much to the surprise of their other classmates, who must wonder how large an average Indian family is, for a child to have so many Aunties and Uncles.

Most of North America is more or less on a first-name basis with each other – be it your 70-year-old boss, your salt-and-pepper haired landlord, your elderly next door neighbour, the dean of your graduate school and even your mother or father-in-law. Simply put, if you’re not family, you’re not Aunty or Uncle here!

Americans and eldersThis Western practice of calling someone by their first name irrespective of their age has often been acclaimed on account of it’s ‘equalising’ temperament. Here, unlike in the East, old age or experience does not warrant new social callouts and ‘respect’ is not calibrated as per how one addresses another. An American in general is not a relative of a stranger and hence unknown to the ‘younger than me, older than me’ game that Asians love to play on a daily basis with everyone they interact.

Yet, my theory is that it is the sharp Asians that have this one all figured out! With their ever-increasing population and common aspirations to look perfectly alike, telling people apart from each other is becoming an increasingly arduous task. Adding to that confusion are their alliterative names. In such a scenario, all-encompassing terms such as ‘Aunty’ or ‘Uncle’ come to the rescue; not just by being contextually appropriate but if you’re like me, by being your saving grace – when you can’t tell one person from the other or worse still, have forgotten someone’s name!

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and hopes she hasn’t upset the countless ‘Aunties’ and ‘Uncles’ reading this!

(Pictures courtesy articles.mercola.com, www.lds.org, marlameanslit349.blogspot.com)

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Outside In

Of graffiti/Street Art

Is graffiti mere vandalism of public property, or does it serve a more social, satirical purpose, the way art should?
Shweytaby Shweyta Mudgal

Mostly seen across such forgotten urban elements as derelict buildings, roadside walls, bus shelters and hoardings of cities across the world, graffiti or Street Art is a diverse, constantly evolving art form.

This art form has marked urban settings around the world and has developed its own flourishing sub-culture. Its element of ‘unsanctioned-ness’ brings to its creator a spirit of excitement and adventure; the kind of thrill that can only be experienced when one knowingly breaks a rule. Its intent to question the existing environment while putting a point across on a visual, public platform is it’s raison d’etre – an attribute rarely found among other forms of art.

Batman-and-Robin-kissing.-By-memeIRL-in-France-2Considered a crime by some and an art form by others, Street Art veers between being considered vandalism, malicious mischief, trespass and intentional destruction of property, among others. Yet, it has been approvingly heralded by some as a form of bottom-up social activism and subversion.

Thoughtful and attractive Street Art has also had regenerative effects on derelict neighbourhoods, transforming them into hip hubs drawing middle class yuppies. But this is a double-edged sword – artists who graffiti poor neighborhoods unknowingly transform them into trendy, ‘cool’ hoods. This makes real estate prices soar, thereby pushing out the original inhabitants of the area – the low-income families.

When I think of graffiti/Street Art in Mumbai, three interesting examples come to mind:

1. Gods on walls – Street Art, originally conceived by ‘rebels with a cause’, ironically operates in the exact opposite way in Mumbai. Here it is a catalyst used by home owners, holy wallshopowners or the local municipality to ward off public urinators or spitters.

A few decades ago, divinity popped up on walls lining Mumbai’s pavements. This simple gesture was meant to spring mind games on unsuspecting men who would come to any roadside wall to relieve themselves or spit on. On finding the wall embellished with a picture of their favourite deity, they would pause, zip up their pants or withhold their ‘spit’, and folding their hands in prayer instead, vamoose off to find the nearest dumpster or public toilet.

An effective strategy at first, it soon lost its charm and has been unsuccessful in completely eradicating these acts off the streets of the city.

2. Graffiti to gratify – In Bandra, a recent modest graffiti revolution launched by Dhanya Pilo – called ‘The Wall Project’, started Michael-Jackson-Mumbai-Wallbetween 2007 and 2008 on Chapel Road – distinctly differs from the original definition of graffiti/Street Art by not necessarily provoking authority. Here, it has been perceived as a gesture of embellishment and good will, while effectively bringing neighbours together. The Wall Project took on its most popular and inclusive endeavour yet, when it was given complete creative control by the BMC to use a 2.4 km long wall along the Tulsi Pipe Road as its canvas. With over 400 enthusiastic artists and citizens participating, the entire wall was converted into a large mural – an unheard-of artistic collaboration with municipal authorities.

3. The Amul Ad Campaign – Amul advertises its butter via witty, satirical commentary on issues of the day. Instead of on street walls, it is found on billboards through an alternative form of art, i.e cartooning, to make its point.

The Amul Ad campaign has, for the past almost-50 years of its existence, looked for creative fodder in controversies big and small – mining scams, labour strikes, sporting feuds, corruption protests, collapsing infrastructure, et al. Unlike real ‘street art’ it may not aggressively rally for issues. But with a supportive client backing it, this campaign has revolutionised the face of advertising in the country with their constant tongue-in-cheek look at the current socio-political climate.

An act of vandalism to some, a means of rebellious expression to some others – to me, Street Art is the most democratic form of popular public expression. It is art with an agenda, best understood by seeing in-situ. It is publicly owned, and remains unavailable for collection or possession by art connoisseurs, who may want to turn it into a trophy. It works as much on an ‘Art for all’ level as it does for an ‘All for art’ one!

My personal all-time favourite street artist, the British-born Banksy is, apart from being an anonymous graffiti artist, a political activist, painter, social prankster, filmmaker and an all-Banksy_Looters_New_Orleanspurpose provocateur, to name a few. His metaphoric epigrams, whether stencilled on the streets, sold in exhibitions or hung in museums on the sly, have been indicative of his humorous wit and fearless satire.

His idea of what art is resonates with how I think it should be – vehement, intelligent, accessible and communicative to anyone who looks at it.

Because as he puts it in his own words, “Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty, you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.”

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and confesses to having had a massive secret crush on Banksy ever since she learnt of him. She thinks he is the Superhero of our times!

 

(Pictures courtesy Shweyta Mudgal, Bollywood Art Project, banksy.co.uk)

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Outside In

Take out, take away, parcel, to go!

We’re no longer sitting down and eating – and our willingness to eat on the move has sparked interesting innovations.
Shweytaby Shweyta Mudgal

Mommy always brought me up to believe that one should stay put in a place while eating or drinking. Little did she know that the world I’d grow up in would believe the exact opposite – to eat and drink on the go!

‘Take out’, ‘Take away’, ‘Parcel’, ‘To go’ are the buzzwords of our times. Depending on which part of the world we are in, we use one of these terms whenever we order food or drink. They all mean the same thing – that one intends to take their meal or drink to some ‘other place’ to consume – may be at home, one’s office or a park.

Our eating and drinking habits have come a long way from the days when there was a more formal, stationary sanctity associated with the act. Today, shortage of time has expedited the process and eating on the go has become a routine part of our fast-paced lives.

Global eating-on-the-go is a growing market and a key consumer trend that has shaped the food, and more importantly, the drink industry. Accordingly, interesting innovations have been made to incorporate and accommodate this modern lifestyle trend.

In the West, for example, coffee to-go is served in paper cups. At most cafes in New York City, coffee is always served in a to-go cup, as nine out of 10 customers prefer to drink it on the  new york iconic paper cupmove. Thus, innovations such as the ‘coffee sleeve’ and the ‘cardboard drink carrier’ came about – the former to insulate the drinker’s hands from the hot coffee, and the latter to facilitate the carrying around of multiple cups of hot coffee.

In Asia – Singapore, for example – coffee to-go is a popular yet relatively new trend. Here, on ordering a coffee at a global cafe chain such as Starbucks, the barista still poses the question, “To have here or take away?” If opted to “have here”, coffee is served in a ceramic mug that one need not even clear up oneself, as there is an entourage of cleaning-and-clearing staff that makes a living doing just that. On opting to “take away”, the coffee is served in the usual ‘paper cup’ with a lid.

drinks to go to go bagAt local Singaporean cafes a.k.a Kopitiams, though, the take-away experience differs. Here, a drink taken to-go gets poured into a clear plastic bag tied with lanyard, and stuffed with a straw. Freshly-squeezed fruit juices, soft drinks and coffees can all be slung on one’s arm while being sipped (see pics above). The design of these to-go bags is intelligent, making for an easy hands-free operation. The lanyard can be hooked onto car-door knobs, motorbike or bicycle handles as well.

If one is not open to the idea of sipping from a plastic bag, one can opt for the conventional paper or singapore-loop around lid by shweyta mudgalStyrofoam cup to carry one’s drink in. Here too, is an interesting contraption at work – in the form of a simple plastic loop placed around the lid of the cup (see pic on right), converting the ‘hand-held’ into a ‘hangingly-held’ device, again enabling hands-free mobility.

Closer home, in North India, the use of age-old beverage containers such as the terracotta cup aka the kulhad has seen a heavy decline. Higher procurement costs in comparison to plastic cups have not helped its sustenance. Besides, firing the clay at higher temperatures to manufacture them causes the formation of a glassy substance that takes up to a decade to degrade, rendering the kulhad eco-unfriendly.

In cities like Mumbai, one can find chai stalls serving ‘cuttings’ in glass containers or flimsy plastic cups. Here too, the concept of ‘take away’ is fairly recent, due to the available labour pool of chai boys that provide a prompt ‘delivery service’, bringing glasses of chai to the customer (usually an Wire rack for tea glassesoffice worker or shop owner) in their smartly-designed wire-rack holders that can hold up to six glasses at a time.

Some of these daily innovations have now been iconised as collectibles – the classic New York paper coffee cup that read “We are happy to serve you” and now duplicated in a ceramic version has been sold in countless online and physical stores. The desi chaiwallah‘s indispensable wire rack with six glass holders is another example of a traditional keepsake item that has now turned kitsch.

The cardboard ‘coffee sleeve’ and ‘drink carrier’ (see pic on right) are both examples of contemporary utility items being transformed into creative fashion, art and architecture cardboard drink carrierprojects. And the Singaporean plastic to-go bags and ‘loops-around-lids’ have proved themselves as true icons of our changing times and habits.

So every morning when I get myself a ‘take out’ coffee, I make sure I ‘take away’ something more from it. I breathe, savour, smile, sip and ‘parcel’ up the moment, to transcend myself onto newer horizons – where I’ve never been before. So that at the end of my day, like my morning coffee then, I too deserve a “Way (to go)”!

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and can’t seem to go anywhere without her daily coffee to-go! 

(Pictures courtesy Shweyta Mudgal, fortyredbangles.wordpress.com, www.flickr.com, www.perpetualkid.com, bigthink.com, media.cmgdigital.com, www.telegraph.co.uk, corbis.com) 

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On the subject of school uniforms

What do school uniforms mean for children and parents? Are they levellers or do they set children up for difficulties?
Shweytaby Shweyta Mudgal

This week I’ve had to buy my daughter her first ever school uniform. Slightly shy of being all of two, she is already required by her pre-school to wear a uniform every day to class, starting next month. This recent occurence took me aback on two levels – the first, a melodramatic, mush-filled ‘What?!’ followed by an in-denial-that-my-baby-is-now-grown-up sort of a feeling, and the second, the more ethos-laden, question-the-rule level: Isn’t it too soon to cage her whimsy and regulate this aspect of her life?

Or is it?

I decided to ask the question to her very surprised teacher. The teacher replied that she’d never been asked this question before, as most parents just went with the flow. She further clarified that as per her reasoning, this was the right age to institute an aspect of communality in the school kids; a sense of belonging to their school, and that the uniform was a tool merely implemented to do just that. Also, with an increase in outdoor excursions and play activities, this ‘uniform-isation’ of the toddlers she said, was to make it easy for the teachers to identify them among crowds outside the classroom.

Fair enough! I bought both – the practical side of her rationale and the uniform as well. But as I folded away at the latter, my mind refused to let go of this issue just yet – this issue of whether to uniform or un-uniform.

For most people like me who had their primary/secondary education in India, school uniforms have always been an easily accepted, unchallenged and mandatory aspect of growing school uniforms up. A normal, mundane ritual of practice – to don a standardised dress code while going to school, similar to packing one’s bag with books as per the day’s time table.

In fact, at schools like mine, students had varieties in uniforms too – there was the regular school uniform, to be worn on a majority of the school days, the ‘colour classified’ ones (based on which ‘House’ one belonged to) to be worn on the days we had Physical Training class (usually Wednesdays) and the ‘Girl guide’ uniforms to be worn the days we had ‘Guiding Class’ (usually Fridays). There were a few exception days a.k.a the ‘colour dress’ days, like on one’s birthday, or on a ‘feast’ day, typical of convent schools such as mine, when we could go ‘un-uniformed’ to school, wearing our regular clothes for a change. Yet, by and large, one wore the uniform to school every day, making it practically the one piece of clothing to have spent the majority of their childhood in!

Cut to the Western part of the world, the United States of America, for instance. Here, school uniforms have been hotbeds of controversy, bringing forth issues that some say endanger their ‘First Ammendment’ rights. This heavily-questioned and dissected aspect of schoolgoing has largely divided up this part of the world in two distinct schools of thought – those ‘pro’ and those ‘against’ the idea of wearing uniforms to school.

Those that espouse the ‘When in school, wear a uniform’ theory, do so because of the following reasons:

– Students experience less pressure in deciding what to wear each morning, thus taking less time to get ready before school (making parents’ lives easier in the process)

school uniforms 1– Economically, uniforms cost less overall and make up for a larger part of a child’s wardrobe (again putting parents’ pockets at ease).

– There is an evident reduction in social conflict in the classroom, as uniforms act as great levellers, providing an even playing field. In uniform, all students are reduced to being integral units of one organisation, fostering a sense of belonging to their institution and a team spirit, where their all-for-one-and-one-for-all camaraderie is boosted as all are dressed alike.

– In today’s age of higher ‘brand’ consciousness in general, schools have the potential of becoming breeding grounds for fashion trends and ‘status-symbol definitive clothing’. One garb for all creates less chances of causing rifts in students about what one should wear and what one shouldn’t. A standard uniform diminishes the focus towards fashion and veers it more towards learning, which is the real purpose of schooling in the first place.

Those that are against the school uniform code of conduct, believe the following –

– Schools should celebrate individuality and diversity among its pupils and school uniforms work against that effort, coercing students into conformity. This results in the transformation of school corridors into seas of blandly outfitted, think-alike robots. Or as Pink Floyd would like to call them “….just another brick in the wall.”

– The homogeneity that school uniforms impose, limits kids from expressing themselves freely, which in turn might lead them to other forms of expression such as tattooing and body-piercing. (Not particularly favoured by many parents.)

– School uniforms are expensive affairs, especially for families with more than one child as hand-me-downs are not looked upon favourably by younger siblings.

– While they might assuage the fashion parades in classrooms, uniforms do create another contest in school: the best-body competition. When every student is wearing the same uniform, everyone fills it out differently making it easier to identify who’s fat and who’s thin, who’s tall and who’s short – image issues that regular clothes might be able to keep under wraps better.

school uniforms as fashionAnd so on and so forth….the global debate over school uniforms continues, hinging itself clearly on their effectiveness in practice. There may not be a clear winner so far as everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Yet, what undoubtedly emerges on the surface from this debate is the importance we associate with the school uniform (or the lack of it thereof). It ceases to be just a simple garb any more, having transcended into a modern-day metaphor of a ‘supposed lack of freedom of expression’ or a ‘leveller that evens out the playing field’, depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting on.

Its evolution into a bone of contention has spiralled its worth – alleviating it onto a pedestal of sorts – where it readily sits, with its purpose being subjected to our analyses and comprehension, our discourse and apprehension. Perhaps it laughs to itself, looking down at us from there, as we argue away about it’s pros and cons in today’s times. Surely it revisits it’s past and goes back to the uncomplicated, simpler times, that it was first invented in – in the mid 1500’s, at a charity school in England, which gave children from poorer backgrounds the chance to have a better education for free. And in handing out simple, cheaply-dyed blue coats, gave them their first ever chance at calling a pair of clothes, their very own!

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and sheepishly confesses to having sentimentally held on to her school-uniform from over two decades ago, even today.

(Pictures courtesy www.projectcarousel.org, globalgoodgroup.com, www.fotopedia.com, reliefprojects.blogspot.com. All images are used for representational purpose only)

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