The Anatomy of Pants

The biggest trial in my life is shopping for pants. I avoid it like the plague and i dread having to go buy jeans, linen pants or even formal trousers. Why? Because they don't make them for normal women anymore. And while people may have doubts about the normalcy of my mental state, i'd like to believe that physically, i could be categorized as normal. Whatever normal is. 

So i'm neither thin nor obese. I'm what they call *khaate peete ghar ki* or *healthy* (in the most euphemistic way). That, coupled with the curse of the Indian body type (which was designed, i think, only for sarees), makes it nigh impossible to find that perfect pair of pants. Why?

Because pants have a mind of their own. Which is as messed up as the people designing them.

Pants today look good only on the mannequins wearing them. Which means, that for those same pants to look good on a human, she needs to have proportions like that - extra long legs, almost no ass, a tiny waist. And what do I have? Neither of the above. Suffice to say, it's sheer torture inside the dressing room.

With formal trousers i never know what i'm supposed to look like. Maybe because i still haven't managed to find a good pair in all these years. There seems to be nothing out there that doesnt make me look like a short dumpling with a giant bottom. And if my derriere does look good in a pair, the thunder thighs grab your attention. No, don't visualise it. I can't afford your therapy. 

And don't even get me started on jeans. The problem starts much before the trial rooms. For some reason that i seem to have too much sense to understand, people manufacturing jeans have all decided that wanting a pair of jeans that actually reaches the waist is like asking for the moon and a couple of stars. No really. Try looking for  a pair of jeans that is mid-waist. The sales people will look at you with pity. Almost everything out there (at least in the women's section) is low waist. Straight leg, slim leg, boot cut, all in low waist. And pardon me if i'm being difficult, but i really have no interest in joining the group of women who make you cringe every time they sit, bend or do anything but stand ramrod straight. You know *exactly* what i'm talking about don't you? Yes. That.

So yeah, i hate shopping for pants. They just don't respect fat. Or being healthy as i'd like to call it. And if you're a skinny female reading this, please to not try and disagree with me. I might decide to sit on you and you know you will break. 

Of Sweaters and Scarves

I'm a Bombay girl. Winters for us mean a much awaited reprise from the stiffling heat and humidity, without it being cold in the true sense. So convinced we are that it doesn't get cold cold in Bombay,  that even when it did go sub 15 deg Celsius one year, no one really understood how to dress warm, wearing more fashion appropriate winter wear as opposed to functional ones. What? You know it's true. Those flimsy things arent really jackets you know. 

Then i got married to a Shimla boy. And learnt, for the first time, how to dress warm. I also finally figured out how women wear sweaters over kurtas and sarees  - when it's really cold, you stop caring about how you look and just want to stay warm. And then, as if the universe was making up for the all the time i spent in Bombay with fake winters, i got to experience two winters in Rajasthan - the cold making up for the terrible summers there. And suddenly, a whole new section in apparel was open to me now - winter wear. Heavy coats, jackets, sweaters, mufflers, wraps. I could buy them without any guilt and questions of where would i get to wear them (an important consideration, the guilt). I even (finally) bought a pair of boots that i could wear without worrying about the heat rotting my feet (as is very likely to happen in the mugginess of Bombay). 

Anyway. We're in Pune now, where the winters are moderate. Definitely no need for heavy winter coats and brightly coloured mufflers knotted in place. But does that stop the winter shopping? For anyone else, maybe. Not for me. I can still go into a shop and browse through silk scarves and brightly coloured sweaters, knowing that, wherever the fauj might send us, we'll always have Shimla. 

I've been here a day, and even with my extremities already cold (its a condition i shall discuss soon), i'm smug.