A fitting REPLY

“The world is changing. Who wants the behenji look? We didn’t wear jeans until Class 10 here. But in 2006 when Kareena Kapoor wore bell bottoms in Mujhse Dosti Karoge,I had to get a pair of my own,” says Nancy who was the first to wear the “dreaded” apparel in Shastri Nagar.
Her tight-fighting midnight-blue jeans,says Nancy,helps her get her message across. She wants her jeans to say that she is someone with disposable income,a modern,liberated young woman,and one who knows that other women will envy her style. She says,“It just says that we have evolved. We are getting there.”

Denim’s association with “sexy rebelliousness” started almost half a century ago across the globe when the hippies took to it and made it a symbol of protest and anti-establishment. Through the years,jeans became more mainstream,alternating between comfort wear and fashion wear. Closer home,in the last couple of years,the sale of western clothes in Tier II and III cities has been phenomenal,according to industry experts.

“The rise in sale of western clothes is less than 20 per cent but that’s still huge. Most of the demand is from the smaller cities. Kanpur is one of the fastest-growing cities in terms of western clothing,including jeans,” says Rakesh Vaid,chairman of the Apparel Export Promotion Council.
But then,as with any change,denim’s entry in small-town India hasn’t been without hitches. It was frowned upon,dismissed as a symbol of warped mentality,and denounced as being against the Indian culture. And the women,dreamy-eyed and totally in love with what denim promised,were pitched in a battle with those who guarded “culture” fiercely.

Neighbours asked Nancy’s mother,Mandeep Kaur,to tell her daughters to be “decent” and give up on jeans. Those things don’t look like nice in this area,they had said.
Mandeep,who has never worn jeans but buys them for her daughters,came up with a solution. “She told us to wear long kurtas with capris. We did. But that became a trend too,” says Nancy,who has her own “denim treasure” that she wants us to see. She takes us to the family’s modest quarters. From a cupboard,squeezed in between the living room and the kitchen,she pulls out her first pair—a pair of bell-bottoms with trappings and buckles. She was in Class 6 when she bought them. Those were in vogue then—high-waist,snug-fit and elephant flares. She gently tosses a greyish,slim-fit jeans on to the chair and turns to a hippie-style jeans with embroidery and a torn finish. These jeans were inducted into the collection just three years ago.

And they get bolder with the years. When Nancy joined college,she bought a pair of black low-waist jeans from Fade Out,a shop known in those days as the most up-to-date when it came to stocking denim wear. It cost her much of her savings.
Nancy invests in her jeans most of the Rs 7,000 she earns every month at a diamond store’s back office where she works part-time.
She frequents Chandu’s Western Wear for Women near Swaroop Nagar where she can get what she wants for a cheaper sum.

HEM AND HAW
Chand Alam resists from lecturing his customers on modesty. When women push fashion magazines in front of him,asking him to stitch ultra low-waist jeans that barely have an inch-long zip,he tries keeping a straight face. No point convincing the girls who want to look like poster girls to dress modestly,he says.
“If you try to impose a certain length, customers won’t like it. They want to look like filmstars. Girls here can’t do without jeans,” he says. “Ban or no ban,jeans will still sell.” A year ago,Alam didn’t have any such dilemmas. He used to stitch men’s trousers then. But when he saw women wearing jeans everywhere,he decided to switch from tailoring trousers for men to cutting out denim for women. A year after this switchover,jeans fashion underwent a transformation. “The waist just gets lower,” says Alam.

When Alam betrayed his kind to tailor jeans for the fairer sex,he was the first tailor in Kanpur to take the plunge. And it was worth the risk. He and Abdul Rauf,the other tailor at the shop,have a deluge of orders.
“We get at least five orders a day,”says Rauf,as Nancy walks into the store,a fashion magazine in her hand. “There’s no time to relax,” he says. Clearly,a ban on jeans has not given Alam and Rauf a break.

UNDER WRAPS
In the old parts of the city,where the azaan is heard five times a day and veiled women disappear into narrow lanes,the “dreaded” jeans—a symbol of western decadence for most old-timers—are not welcome. However,in Colonelganj,tucked-away from sight are jean manufacturing units where emaciated men bend over sewing machines.

In these cramped quarters,signs of change aren’t hard to find. A tailor shop advertises its skills in making the most trendy,western wear for women,including jeans. It is called “Naughty Girl”. Yet another shop is called “A Touch of New Feeling”.
Across the street,on a clothesline,a pair of woman’s jeans is hung to dry. In another quarter of the city called Chamanganj,where women drift in and out of shops selling henna and bangles,their burqas swishing around them,a shopkeeper,Javed Ahmed says he has seen denim,not salwars,underneath some of those long-flowing veils.
The popularity of jeans often meets stiff opposition. Ijaz Ahmed,a driver,can go on and on about the side effects of jeans. A resident of Baconganj in Kanpur,Ahmed says jeans is the biggest vice in the city of his ancestors. “This is destroying our society. But what can one do. Even in Muslim areas,women are wearing jeans,” he says. “Recently,some women eloped with men. They were the jeans-wearing type.”

THE JEAN POOL
In June,when four colleges banned jeans on campus in the city,women protested the move,demanding the authorities to scrap the “unreasonable” order that victimised them. College principals,drafted guidelines saying it was the need of the hour. They then tried to justify the ban saying that when girls wore tight-fitting jeans,men taunted them. According to the college principals,the women had to be modest,and wear clothes that wouldn’t get them in trouble.
Ajanta Chadha,principal of SN Sen Balika PG College where jeans have been banned for the last six years,says it wasn’t as if Kanpur suddenly took notice of jeans. They wore it in their time,too,but not in college,she says.

But denim,which was once an elite garment,has transcended class barriers. These young women of today travel in rickshaws and not in cars,and live in conservative neighborhoods.
“The spirit nowadays is all about asserting identity. Hum barabar hai. But jeans don’t liberate you. The change has to be slowed down,” says Chadha.
While the ban was lifted in the colleges after the Mayawati government issued a statement saying she would take action if the colleges didn’t turn around,principals are now considering another alternative.

“We are thinking about introducing uniform in colleges,” another principal (name witheld on request) says. “Let’s just root out the problem. I have seen men leching at women wearing jeans. On television,they say we have issued a Taliban-like diktat. But we are moral guardians.”
Outside PPN College in Kanpur,a bunch of young men help newcomers with forms. Satish Kumar Gupta,22,a student,says,“Banning jeans in colleges is no solution to social ills like rape and molestation. Women can’t be reined in just because men are titillated by their dress.”

“What if someone asked us to wear dhotis? This is outrageous. We wouldn’t agree,” he adds.
The day the ban was lifted,defiance was evident in students’ attitude. Most came to the colleges to see the admissions list wearing jeans,and teachers frowned. But stayed mum.
Dr Kshama Tripathy,of the Dayanand Girls College,which was the first among the four colleges to ban the jeans,sat in the administrative office looking at the women who queued up to submit forms. “These days,they wear vulgar tops. The tops are going up and up,and the jeans are getting lower and lower,” she says. “We can’t be America.”

Outside the hall,on the notice board,the order that prohibited girls to wear jeans on campus hadn’t been taken off. But,of course,the girls knew that the ban had been lifted.
Sonika,21,originally from Fatehpur,started wearing jeans when she came to Kanpur around four years ago. Her new attire symbolised freedom from the past. “I don’t wear it in when I am in my village. We have to follow rules there. But here I am free,” she says.

As Nancy moves from the hip parts of the city to the stares and taunts of her neigbours,she is definitely not alone. This story really goes back to 1972 when jeans first hit Kanpur. Keshav Jashnani,a businessman whose shop was the first shop in the city and the state to sell denim,says,“Only fashion-conscious women used to visit the store then. Slowly,the jeans started catching up in Kanpur,” he says. “Girls came to us from Etawah,Kalpi,even far-flung villages to buy jeans. Jeans is everywhere now. There’s no stopping it.”