Whatever may be the opinion about shopping mall clothes, I never fail to be moved by them. At a big department store, they enchant me, those dazzling arrays of kurtis, kurtas, short tops, sequinned, embroidered, labelled, shapely and slim, pure of form, flowing gracefully from the hangers or rising like foam from the floor, enveloped in a glow that comes not only from the fabrics and designs, but also from the desire a piece of clothing is imbued with when a woman goes for it. (Men usually don’t reserve this kind of passion for things that don’t move.)

So here I was, on a day of a grand discount sale in a huge clothes chain outlet, speechless in front of the rows of delicate pink, pale peach and pristine white salwar kurtas, gently feeling the fabric of one. Around me milling about were a hundred other women -- and a few men. At such times you feel a strange compassion for the other shoppers. All of you are waiting for the moment of illumination when you suddenly know what is yours. You go ahead and claim it.

Then a terrible thought struck me.

I loved my clothes. But did they love me back?

My brain steamed up and I saw all the past years go by me again. There was no evidence at all about my clothes feeling for me the way I did for them. What if all this while they had resented me? What if, at this very moment, the lacy red top with the generous neckline that I was trying out was squirming at my touch? What if it felt that my fingers were podgy? They were intrusive? What if the top, while I was trying to pull it down my ample body, dreaded the prospect of being forcefully united with my wide, wide waist?

And what if my clothes had always laughed at my back, which cascaded down? What is worse, being a tyrant or a laughing stock?

I suddenly felt the clothes were staring right back at me, all of them. One truth about clothes is that the most beautiful, from the gods of various mythologies to Tarzan, do not need clothes. I do. And some others I know do so too.

And what if the beauteous clothes, tired of being tied down to people they did not want, left us? If they just took off from the stores, from the malls, from the markets, from the rooftops, from the verandahs, from the wardrobes, and flew away, looking for beauty, truth and freedom? The shops would be empty, the malls deserted, the parties lacklustre, the fashion magazines bereft. The economy will crumble.

If my best clothes left me, I would never venture out, for I would be tried for ugliness in public. Meanwhile my clothes would find their way to a country peopled only with Carla Brunis and surrender themselves at the feet of perfection. Truth and freedom would hopefully follow.

I wish them all the best. I will be more restrained about clothes from now.

chandrima.bhattacharya@abp.in