Kishore Singh: Riches to rags

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Some time last week, a fellow hack who is also my wife's occasional best friend summoned her home, which is within hailing distance from ours. A seeker-outer of bargains, she was thrilled with her day's spoils, and persuaded my wife to join her in their peregrinations the next day to the same bargain spot.

I knew nothing of this until the two, bursting with pride, literally spilled their wares in the evening.

From plastic bags filled to the brim, they pulled out rags, swatches and bits of fabric that were crushed beyond any hope of resuscitation "" or so I thought. There were brocades and silks, beaded bands and embroidered swathes, ribboned, sheared or cut into patches.

"Aren't they brilliant?" said the hack, preening over her finds. "But what are they?" her husband queried in dismay, the very question I might have asked if I hadn't been afraid of my wife's sharp put-down. "Fabrics for my next winter wardrobe," she scolded her husband; "aren't they beautiful?"

Truth to say, they looked like the kind of rags you might want to throw out, but apparently we had it all wrong for these were "designer" pickings with which the two enterprising women wanted to embellish their wardrobes. "You might want to use them for cushions perhaps," I hazarded, but was shouted down about my lack of aesthetic sensibility.

On Saturday morning they opened their bags of rags all over again, this time to look for matches before setting out once more to their bargain store, to search for lengths of fabrics to which their previous spoils could be added, to make their stylish togs. In the evening, they sat surrounded by enough fabric to create a wedding trousseau. Printed silks were matched with zardozi, chiffons were complemented with brocades; they haggled over bits and pieces, and argued about who could carry off what, so I had an extra drink and slunk into bed.

The following day, my wife decided to sulk because her friend, instead of joining us for lunch, had decided to run off to the store on her own, thereby stealing a march on my wife. So my wife then went off to the shop in the evening, but since her friend accompanied her, she still had a headstart on the quantities of distressed fabric she had managed to hoard up.

So, my wife sneaked off on her own on Monday to the store and returned with lengths she insisted were sarees, and her friend decided to go it alone on Tuesday and came back with even more jumbled up materials that she said were styled and cut as skirts and jackets, and on Wednesday they went off together once again. By now, there was no more room to even house their spoils. "Here," said my wife to her friend, "you can take this cloth for a shirt." "Not my kind at all," dismissed her friend, "besides, I had something similar that I've given away to my sister-in-law." And so the rest of the day was taken up with sorting through the mess to see what could be saved, drycleaned and gifted away, other piles were sent off to the tailors to run up as dresses, still more was ironed and put away as future giveaways, and because there was still lots left over, they decided they were sick of so many rags, and needed to pick up some tailored garments instead.

So, on Thursday, they set off once more, looking now not for bargains but for designer readymades "" alas, to be foiled by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi that had sealed the store. Last heard, the two were joining the traders protest asking for the ban on retail outlets to be lifted with immediate effect.