The Year Of The Slipper

Personally I’m not a big fan of chappals. if there is a guy wearing a pair of sneakers on a beach, I’m that guy. Plus, there’s always been a little bit of a gray area between what is ‘adequately groomed’ and what is too much. And the worse bit is that you can’t wear socks with them chappals. But then something changed.

Anyone who writes “deep stories’ for intellectual magazines will tell you India is going through a regional awakening. Designers are hopelessly obsessed with autorickshaws, we at FHM increasingly abuse in Hindi (both on and outside the page), blokes in Chandigarh wear ‘Pure Punjabi’ tshirts and fellas in Lucknow throw chappals at Arvind Kejriwal. They miss, but then so do the footballers, the gymnasts and the tennis fellas on occasion. But one thing’s for certain – they no longer hurl shoes like the journalist who hurled one at Chidambram.

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If this was a fashion mag, we would have talked about how this trend underwent a resurgance and started like everything else in India – with an American connect, when a shoe was hurled at Mr Bush Junior, but it’s not. India is no longer flinging Oxfords, Converses or Harley Davidson boots (though those have the potential to do some real damage). Instead, India is wearing and hurling Indian. Even if it is at the follower of a man at the head of the social movement of the good ‘ol Indian Middle class.

Earlier last month, chappals were flung at the offices of assorted parties accused of a fabulously large number of scams and groups of girls (undoubtedly after having seen the CV-booming effects that the slut walk had for its organisers) have come up with their own ‘Chappal Marungi’ morcha. Unlike the fella who flung his at Kejriwal, their concerns weren’t as far reaching as India’s big book, but something much closer to home, i.e., eve teasing. The girls, unlike the previously mentioned gent seemed to have a different battleplan – They would have slipped their colourful Kolhapuris off their happily painted feet, smacked the leachy offender once or twice and casually slipped them back on as if nothing was amiss. Bet the guy who threw his now feels stupid having to walk to the waiting unmarked car wearing only one chappal.

India’s chappal moment though had been a long time in the pipeline. The candle marches with Ms De at the helm were suddenly too passive and India had tasted the blood of politicians. It needed something to throw in anger. Something small, always at hand, and something that could be launched at a moment’s notice, but above all something intrinsically Indian. Since you couldn’t throw autos, Sardars, Sachin Tendulkar or anything else Nida Mahmood puts on her clothes and because Anna Hazare’s Nehru topi came with more baggage than a needy lover – the chappal fitted the bill.

And it’s no small feat in a country where you can’t even find a common street food, language, abuse, or clothing regardless of where you drink your beer or which side of the autorickshaw partition you are on. But yet you can never really be far from a chappal.

NOTE: By Indian we are not referring to the Freida Pinto variety. Miss Pinto remains the only exception to “India celebrating its people after they win acclaim abroad” trend.

Movies and the art of ruining hot chicas

Over the last year we’ve grown disturbingly obsessed with the pointy breasted, red haired, happy derriere-d Joan from Mad Men, so Drive that boasted of her in the line-up was an obvious choice for a Sunday night movie. The idea was that no matter how bad the movie, she’d be like the purple ganji wearing blonde in Paranormal Activity I, or Milla Jovovitch in Resident Evil, or well it’ll be another movie you see in the hope of the ladies in question bending over, taking their tops off or other such allied activities.

In Drive she does nothing of the sort. She looks tired, her derriere in a pair of tight jeans look out of shape, her usual red glamorous lips off colour, the Madonna-esque breasts hidden under a jumper and her flaming red hair tied up messily. Rather than celebrate the woman who made secretaries the sexiest stereotype in half a decade, the filmmakers deemed it fit to give Miss Hendricks five speaking lines and then orchestrate her being shot in the face in the fifth minute of being onscreen.

Some months ago, X-Men: First Class meted out the same treatment to Miss January Jones – even though they did do her the courtesy of arranging a more flattering, letch-friendly wardrobe, but we’d be lying if we said she was given substantial talking or acting parts or that her icy cold décolleté outshone the sexual tension between Xavier and Professor X. True Miss Jones has never been on the top of our Mad Men list, plus now rumours of her having Mr Kutcher’s spawn in her stomach haven’t helped her case either, but atleast we’ve managed to see past that and remain deeply concerned about her career choices.

P.S. We at FHM are also deeply concerned about the movie choices Peggy from Mad Men and Karen from Californication make going forward.

From the November 2011 issue of FHM India.