EFFUSIVE DIFFUSIVE

There are some sights that transport you back to a decade when you walked around observing life from a lofty height of four foot.The other day me and my trusted shaky and vibrating with music transport were doing an intercity loop between the parents house and mine.

The road less travelled by vehicles of courtesy,but more so by vehicles of might is right.Amidst all this gay chaos and cacophony,which I obviously battle with music,I happened to stop for a lady with a raised hand on my windshield, almost down my throat.

The lady was accompanied by a four footer drowned in a typical open box pleated neglected faded blue skirt,a favourite with many government schools in India,which swished around her ankles and  a shirt which was faithfully accompanying her from the three footed age,obviously meant to be enjoying a retired life but being dragged along,strengthened by Robin Blue and Nirma( a whitener and a magic washing powder, which could make you resemble an emitting orb of shiny white ,delivering your neighbours to jealousy and blindness)

But coming back to the young girl,fresh on her way to school,was the fact that she had probably stood under her mother’s hurried ministrations in the morning and  been drowned in Ponds( a scented Talcum powder).So up from this little tykes collar till her chin it was almost impossible to tell the colour of her neck or skin ,and with white socks that vanished under her skirt,the only colour indicative parts were her face and hands.The perfect “White Neck”

I know we are a country obsessed with the colour white,I wonder if that is one of the reasons that after camouflaging our neck and bodies,some smear it over their faces??

I mean nothing can reflect light better than white,and it was hard to miss even by my untrained child eyes,the caky self assured countenances.

If my idle mind were to span the reason for powder smearing tactics which had the whole nation in its shroud of loose talcum till at least the eighties,where a lot of white necks conferred in business meetings with other white necks,(a sure shot sign of early morning ritual completion)(though I’m sure even in the eighties there existed kindred people who hoodwinked the system, like me today in my car,keep guessing how!!!),the most plausible and non condescending, probably based on truth,reason is,for its cooling effects on a Hot almost equatorial country.

How from an invisible aroma that was meant to be just a personal signature,the white out spread to massive proportions of the body,peeping shyly out of collars in some and proudly stating its presence on others? Maybe the fact that the neck sports some bands of skin that get highly uncomfortable in the heat could be a remitting truth.

Initially the ‘thanda thanda dermicool’(an advertising slogan)was a towering product that cooled,and vanished off  shop shelves,directly onto ready,sweaty bodies.

So to combat the sweltering heat that grips the nation, the citizen’s wielded their powder boxes, empowered in their knowledge passed down from their parents and theirs before them,plus fueled by the ‘thanda’ (cool)   campaign.

But what happened to the white neck species? Why is it now not a generalization rather than my Barging down the road regardless of traffic, anomaly? They seem to have become suddenly extinct, probably hiding behind the air-conditioned doors, they exist only in need bound people who still refill their Desert Coolers every night.

They are also probably lost in the Dolce and Gabbanas of the world that enveloped the free trade India, Invading the bathroom space that muscled out the Talcum Powder, with a powerful spray, that Lasts and Lasts and Lasts; It was not a fair battle. It was Armageddon.

However some psychological factors will always trigger a reaction of my system that is entrenched in childhood memories. So the perfume which has won victories in different percentages over the Indian populace’s washroom stands, in my mother’s home it is a fifty -fifty partner, and every time she bathes and comes out swathed in all white dust, which is a precursor to the perfume in her beauty regimen, I feel Cool just looking at her.

And with that feeling some things never change,the perfume can pretty the air up but it doesn't usher the 'cool' in, however much we open up to free international porous markets. At least my generation will still love the white necks, the next, is a generation in transition, and this is just my interpretation.