Jeans - Indian And American

Travel writer (or travelling writer as he prefers to be called) Paul Theroux says "In Iran, in 1973, if you had blue jeans and a watch, people would follow you down the street, saying 'Please, sir, sell me your watch, sell me your jeans.' In Mashhad, I sold a pair of jeans for $15, quite a lot of money, because they were real American blue jeans and everyone wanted American blue jeans. It was cool. Hippies would go, and bring three or four pairs and sell them in Iran, in Afghanistan." All this, he observes, was "pre China and India making clothes. The price of clothes has gone down in the world. Clothes are cheaper everywhere. No one's naked any more."

I remember that during the mid seventies original second hand Levi and Wrangler jeans (made in U.S.A) sold in Bara Bazaar Shillong for around Rs 350 to Rs. 450. My father's salary as a senior major of the Indian Army was around Rs. 1500 per month. I was sixteen then. To be really hep in the westernised town of Shillong one had to wear American jeans. Indian ones just wouldn't do. "Don't eat food but save money and buy a pair of American jeans," a Naga classmate told me. A Mizo classmate also agreed. Thanks to the cold and damp, England like climate of Shillong one didn't have to wash one's jeans too. At least not for a month. And there was no question of ironing them. Shillong contributes immensely towards lessening global warming.

No self respecting son of an Indian Army officer wore American jeans in those days. We were more British than the British. Terrycotton bellbottoms, Corduroy trousers and Indian denim (neatly ironed) were supposed to be our uniform. No wonder we looked so odd in Shillong. I told Dad about the rates of second hand jeans in Bara Bazaar. I didn't ask him to buy me a pair. He laughed loudly. "Only a fool would buy worn clothes for such exorbitant prices," he said. I completed my Pre University Science in St. Edmunds' College Shillong wearing Indian terrycot and denim. Dad was against corduroy most probably because the British Army Officers whose dress code the Indian Army followed associated it with artists and bohemians in Paris and had frowned on its use by servicemen. Sigh. Maybe thats why that pretty girl in Nongrim Hills rejected me.

The pre-liberalisation (pre-1992 Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh years) created its own brand of deprivation and mental poverty. Indians died for anything remotely phoren. I remember reading an article about the auctions of household goods by foreign diplomats living in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi when they were posted out of India. They sold everything. Everything included used undergarments. There were enough affluent Indians willing to cough up good money to buy used undies. Make that used foreign undies.

Nowadays I see retired generals in Mhow wearing denim jeans. But then the denim is made in India. And the shock value is provided not by denim but by the low slung jeans worn by the daughters and young wives of army officers.

p.s. Click here to read the article on Theroux by Tunku Varadarajan in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal.