Sunday, June 18, 2006

Generalisations

This Post is a wild generalisation based on my experience with gujjus in gujjuland. Ofcourse this is where you insert standard disclaimers.

Almost all people here consume some form of tobbacco - take your pick from gutkha, paan, maava, beedis or cigs and you are sure to find one form at the very least with any gujju worth his salt. Ofcourse, the first three varieties are more popular - which ensures that everyone gets enough and more opportunities to spit on the road. This then makes, watching ur step very important as you never know when an unintended spit missile may just land on a clean pair of trousers. This event becomes even more plausible when you are getting out of a shuttle-auto (which incidentally runs on kerosene - 20 bucks cheaper a litre as opposed to petrol). Both the shuttle stopping at the side of the road and the spitting are sudden acts and one never knows when the clean trouser and missile might just collide. Thankfully i havent been at the wrong end of this episode, but i have come close. Anyway with my company saying "Daag Acche Hain na" - I shouldnt really be fretting.

So while tobacco is one business that thrives in here - also pan shops as an effect of the same - the other one that is rocking equally is the hair colouring business. Again almost every person here, regardless of age has his hair coloured. The most popular colour is burgundy it seems. While you would argue that older people would have mehndi to cover their white hair - even they seem to favor burgundy. This hair coloring also cuts across all social barriers - thereby making it a equally likely phenomenon for a pseud dude riding an expensive bike and the dude driving the shuttle auto across the city.

This is fast becoming a boring post - so this is where it will have to end!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hehehe...makes me feel like Bhubaneswar is the height of sophistication....Yennyway, yenjoi ur time thr n look fwd to much much better times :-)