as the tracer glides...

sometimes when you throw a piece of paper out a window...it doesnt get very far.

that was one of the many lessons i learnt living in SAFCO.
which was the name of this bubble that we lived in while in saudi arabia.

welcome to...
(cue intro music)…The spectrum A to Z (part II)

i was a mithun chakraborty fan when i was growing up.
i like to think it had something to do with the fact that he played a rockstar named Jimmy in disco dancer.
but i think it was more to do with the fact that he had an all white wardrobe.
like me. (including the shoes)

in any case.

although music and religion came relatively easy to me, i left major fashion decisions up to my mom.
which really wasn’t a very good idea.

to accompany my all white ensemble …i also had an all red and an all green.

this means that i had a red shirt. which i wore with my red pants.
and a green shirt. which i wore with my green pants. (this helped immensely on st. patricks day)

and then we could always mix and match. (which helped on christmas)
obviously.

and i always had my trusted white shoes which really went so well with everything.

i also had a black vest.
we here in pakistan call it a “kotee”. made of corduroy.
which i wore all summer long. black corduroy.
in the desert.

i feel its important to talk of these things to let you, loyal readers, understand that its okay… its ok to not wear cool clothes.
im a perfect example of how bad clothing really makes the man.

but what really makes a man is how creative you can get with showing your love for indian film actors with white pants.

when youre growing up in an expat colony in saudi arabia there are some things that only you know:

you know theres a world outside your community that is nowhere as nice as yours. so you really don’t bother with anything happening beyond the gates. as far as you’re concerned…there is nothing outside the gates.
and then after the nothing-ness there was aramco. (another expat colony).

you know that the filipino handy-man is a cannibal. as are all asian people in the community. except duane and his sister denise, who i was in love with when i was in pre-school. i could never confess my love though. being that i was friends with her brother.
and i knew it wouldn’t go down well with her parents. i was muslim. she was, i’m assuming, an atheist.
and i was 4.

another thing you know when growing up in an expat colony in saudi arabia is that the locals are all wild uncouth savages. we don’t talk to them, we don’t look at them.
and its ok to be scared of them.

you also know that the entire world revolves around you.

which is why when i sent out my declaration of love to mithun, by cutting up my moms stardust magazine and pasting a picture of mithunda onto a paper and writing “i love mithun” below it, i surely expected big things to happen.

i completed my work of art.
and decided to not let the traditional audience (mom, dad, sister, filipino handy-man) limit my viewership.
i knew i had to do something big, something that would create an impact far too great to ignore.
so i threw it out my bedroom window.

here were the possibilities in my head:
1) mithun would find it and come and save me from my life of boredom. maybe appreciate my sense of clothing.
2) some relative of mithuns would find it. (since there was an indian family living down the block) and they would then forward it to the man himself and then possibility (1) would happen.
3) and number three obviously was a worst case scenario which really could never happen since the first two possibilities were so totally fool proof... that the kids in the compound would find it and i would be recognized for my cool taste in… uh… men.

i found the paper stuck in the cement grill outside my window a couple of months later.
apparently mithun had sent it back, I thought to myself.

but by then i had other things to worry about.
this man was on the cover of time magazine and the world thought he was cool!
he too had a great sense of dressing.
so i got my mom to buy me a red jacket just like his.
and i got gloves. although mine were black (his was silver) i never let that deter me.
this was to be my uniform for the next couple of years.
my gloves and my red jacket. in the desert.