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Return of the necktie
The cake was broken when, the other day, Satish, my PA, came to office dressed to the neck. Giving me a shock of pleasurable surprise, he greeted me in English and took his position adjusting his knot. I noticed that although every item of apparel on Satish was old, but the knot was new. But the necktie is not entirely new. Some 50 years ago, a retired Minnesota clothier had invented it and called it ‘Shelby’. The secret of this neckware was, that it starts with the seams out, knocking down the core of ‘Englishry’. The spectacle brought back a vanished era when many decades ago, six to be precise, my mother tied the Oxford School necktie around my neck. The process caused me so much pain that I forgot the existence of my neck. But I had to suffer the pain for 12 long years till I shifted to the college where I experienced a new pain in my legs because I had to wear trousers instead of nickers. My mother had to press both the trousers and the necktie every morning and ‘depress’ them every evening. This Oxford tie which my mother tied round my neck was loose, lumpy and lukewarm. Accordingly, I longed for a firm, symmetrical tie, not the light blue school uniform tie but of some exciting colour of the spectrum. ‘Shelby’ was a thing after my heart. Its principal feature was that it flows down the shirt as softly as flowers from our Champak tree. It was simple to tie and worked much better than the childhood tie which hung across my neck like an albatross. I am sure if Thomas Carlyle had seen or worn that tie he would have revised his Sartor Resartus (Tailor Re-tailored). The new knot was trend-setting. In that necktie nostalgia I suddenly remembered an incident when one fine morning when I had to go for an important lecture and I was already late, my wife decided to fix the knot on my neck obviously to save time. It was almost a torture because she was doing it rather crudely. When I pleaded for a soft touch she said: ‘Look, I am not tying a Rakhi on your wrist. It’s a neckware about which you know nothing’. A tie round my ‘bloody’ neck that day looked like a bell round the neck of a monkey. Needless to say that my lecture was flop and I emerged a joker. With that background on my mind and realising that the fashion pendulum has swung back, I asked Satish: ‘Tell me who is at the back of your necktie’? Satish hesitated, tried to squeeze. ‘Come on, tell me truly’. I asked firmly. ‘Sir, you are my boss, you write my CR’s, nothing is hidden from you, you are all-knowing’. ‘Speak out’. ‘Sir, my wife! I had not doubt that the necktie has not only staged its cyclical come-back but it has also stage-managed. I had no option but to crook my thumb to the rear. |
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THE
necktie has staged a comeback. Till yesterday, this great relic of the
Raj was confined to the hotel bearers, plaza salesman, unwilling public
schoolchildren and indeed some car-washers. But look and behold, ties
have reappeared. Work of the decades by some fashion designers has borne
fruit. Ties are on the pavements, in the weekly bazaars and very soon we
can expect to see them in Kendriya Bhandar mobile vans.