When 140 million people got a flash of Janet Jackson?s right breast on TV a couple of years ago, many Americans got very angry. The federal communications commission ordered an investigation. And Justin Timberlake ? Jackson?s partner in crime on that occasion ? coined a phrase and told a silly lie. Timberlake?s echt American euphemism, ?wardrobe malfunction?, was declared ?Hollywood?s Top Word or Phrase for Impact on the English Language? by the United States Global Language Monitor. His lie ? that the baring was an accident ? was exposed as such by Jackson herself. The whole thing, by her own confession, was rehearsed, and she apologized. The fuss died out, but Timberlake?s phrase caught on and proved to be very useful for those covering this year?s Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai. Quite incredibly, not only bosom, but also behind flashed into view on the ramp, twice on two successive days. Obviously, high fashion has a life of its own that is quite at odds with the higher moral standards of the Maharashtrian police and Shiv Sena.

The ridiculous fuss being made by both ? talking about shame and brandishing obscenity laws ? may be countered by two ideas. First, a scenario that is somehow much more suggestive, perhaps even obscene, is that of several policemen and Shiv Sainiks going over, repeatedly and possibly in slow motion, video footage of the models trying to keep themselves covered in order to find out whether these accidents were engineered. And all this to protect the young from ?bad influence?. Besides, fashion shows were always considered bad for Bharat. (If the acts are deemed to be punishable offences, who are going to be punished?) Second, in a country that leaves its scantily clad poor to live out their bodily lives on the streets of every big city, it might be too late in the day to protect minors from exposed body parts. Their eyes see worse every day. It is, indeed, strange that only two small sections of sighted adult Indians ? Maharashtrian policemen and the Hindu right ? feel the need to shield the rest of the nation from what they consider obscene. The others simply get on with things, perhaps after a quiet snigger. The trouble is that these are precisely the two kinds of people who have the power to change things in the state ? as Mumbai?s bar girls have recently come to know.