A BROAD RIMMED PEAK AT GLAMSVILLE....

If you’re from Mars-no, that’s too close for this planet-if you’re from Jupiter or saturn or somewhere thereabouts, and landed up a few seconds ago on this planet as an 18-something youngster, you’re excused. Otherwise, if you still are an 18-something youngster-rather, dump the 18, if you’re anywhere between 10 and 70 and you are NOT deaf and dumb and blind at the same time- and you haven’t heard of the terms “fashion”, ‘glamour’, ‘style’, ‘trendy’ and ‘cooooool’, and you do not manage to update yourself within 15 minutes about the latest trend in town- you’re a totally useless, outdated, antique (no not antique, even antiques become trendy in some seasons) freak, and you’re well-advised to book your ticket back to Saturn ASAP!!!!

That’s the message that flashed in front of my colour-blinded eyes and humbled mind the last time I visited a few college campuses in Delhi!

I was wondering why Jassi took all the pains of going to Mauritius and spent on expert advice from expert advisors all over the world when our own GenNext here could’ve flooded her with expert tips on the trendiest overnight transformations! The most shocking example I personally witnessed was my “friend”, whom I’d gone to meet in her college. She was so unrecognizable that I almost walked past her, and had I not heard her familiar voice (thank God she still retains that!) call me out, I’d have never got to meet her! All this when she’s the same girl I spent almost every minute of the last two years of my school with! But that’s exactly the point-she wasn’t the ‘same’ friend. Something had transformed the simple, sweet, straight hair-salwar-suit girl (mmm….what was the term she said…yeah…”behenji” type of a girl) into this cooool, aggressive, permed-plus-streaked-hair, torn jeans kinda creature!! (If you ARE from another planet, voila, you might just be reminded of someone back home!!!)

I’d have probably stared at her with dis-belief and a half-open-mouth forever, had I not been distracted by the tinkling bells in the long beaded hair of her friend standing next to her who was trying to (as I realized later) give me a “Hi-fi”. At that moment I guess I was too overcome with emotion to manage anything more than a plain general Hello! Her friend gave me a disgusted snigger and walked away(in a strange kind of walk I later learnt is called ‘moon-walking’) but my friend was quick to explain..

“Oh! Don’t mind him…He’s just….”
“Him!!!!!” I thought that was a……Forget it!
“Gee,,,look at you. Two years and still the same boring hairstyle. And for Heavens’ sake, why do you still wear these huge awful black spectacles!! Get a life, dude! What HAVE you been doing in this college all this time?”

And then I looked around. It wasn’t her who was different-she was just one among a whole population of tattooed “colorful” students around us- it was actually ‘me’ who was different. Yeah, probably I belonged, and do belong, to another world altogether, for wherever I went that day, I was greeted with the kind of stares normally reserved for someone who’d walked in to attend a top-level Board meeting with his bathrobe on!!!!

Never before had I realized that my disinterest in the Page-3 and Fashion segments of the newspaper, in FTV and MTV-style on the TV, my lack of recall for the fashion-designer of everybody-who’s-somebody in bollywood/modeling world, and my disinclination to spend any more than a day on getting dressed up was such a big deal!! You can’t imagine how much I learnt in the two hours- lotsa words, oops lingo, like cooool, hip, happening, yo, etc; that I could actually wear my favourite jeans that I’d sadly kept aside because it got torn; that wearing T-shirts and tops with unequal sleeve lengths(or no sleeves/ spaghetti straps) is happening; that all the redheads and blondes that I saw around weren’t actually redheads and blondes, and so on and so forth!

I was astounded when I did a quick mental estimate of the amount those people must be spending only on cosmetics and tattoos and haircuts and bleaches and clothes and accessories, but thankfully figured out soon enough where the money came from- the students around me carried less than one book per person in their Rs. 899/- only embellished Ebony bags!I had a few more practical queries to shoot, like didn’t their heads and ears and waist hurt with the headbands, huge danglings and ulta tight jeans, but I was quickly labeled a 16th-century-nerd and made to shut up.

And I realized shut up I must, because I suddenly realized that the bug has bitten not just the college going youth, but EVERYONE- be it the aunties who watch other aunties on television who wear full makeup even when they sleep, or the so-called metrosexual men, or the Versace-stuck uncles…

Back now from the enlightening trip, I think I’m gonna book my tickets for Saturn s soon as I finish writing this one. Anybody willing to give me company?