A few weeks ago, for Shivaji Jayanti actually, one of our building helpers, Mangal, was looking for a child’s white shirt. Her 8-year old son had been selected for a dance that was going to be a part of the birth anniversary celebrations, and white shirt with white dhoti / pyjama was the costume specified.
Our neighbourhood Lokhandwala Foundation School’s uniform has a white shirt so getting one of the right size was not difficult. I just needed to ask around. The only problem was that the pocket of the shirt is customised, with the school name and logo. This wouldn’t look good in the dance, so we decided that the pocket had to come off. The seam ripper is a really useful tool to have, but it still took a while to take out the stitches without damaging the fabric. Now the shirt was just right for the dance, and Mangal was happy that she didn’t have to shell out a hundred bucks to buy a new one.
I was wondering what to do with the pocket. I definitely couldn’t put it with the rest of the clothes and cloth that gets recycled. Who knows where it would reach. LFS is where my children Siddharth and Gautam completed Std X, just two-three years ago, so the school is close to my heart. The shirt with logo was introduced just about the time the boys were finishing, so they had just one logo shirt each, which they’ve kept. Put the pocket onto a cloth bag maybe. Or just keep it with the many keepsakes we have.
When my son Gautam saw the pocket among my work papers, he smiled. “Nice. We should frame it.” Within no time I’d found a frame, paper for the background cut to size, and tadang! It currently takes pride of place on his study table.
arathimy 