|
The rise of the red string
Whenever I turn the TV on or log on to the
Internet, I can't help being bombarded by the latest news on Madonna and Kabbalah. How she has found the light and has made it possible for some of her friends too to do the same. You can see a bevy of celebs sporting the red thread on their wrist - to ward off evil, no less! - such as the likes of Demi Moore, Britney Spears, Wynona Ryder and so on.
 Thanks to them, the piece of string has reached giddying heights of stardom. In the beginning it was just an innocent piece of string. Now you can find it interlaced with silver beads, fully encased in silver and pretty soon, they will go our route and end up in 22K gold.
Now, what harm did our poor black thread do? We have been wearing them for centuries but they remain obscure as ever! How come our celebs never sported them and made sure their friends followed suit too? Aren't they scared of the evil eye?
Imagine how it will be if Superstar
Rajinikant started wearing a thread tomorrow and expounded its merits. Pretty soon, we can see his friends wear one too -
Kamal Hassan, K S
Ravikumar, Dhanush (?!) and, of course, his fans worldwide. Won't this elevate the position of our humble black thread?
I'm sure we can give Madonna and her red string a run for her money. After all, one can only find more
Chinese than us Indians. And good old Superstar has fans among the Japs too. So I'm thinking our base will be a lot wider than Madonna's. Pretty soon, we will be written about in national newspapers. Khushboo wearing a funky black thread to go with her cool blouse on 'Jackpot' (Jaya
TV game show) will swell the numbers nicely. And 'cool folks' like Shoba De and the rest of the Mumbai glitterati will start wearing one too - after all, they have to fear the evil eye too, don't they?
Let's not stop with the black thread then. While we are on a roll, let's glamourise some of the other Indian symbols too. The bindi (pottu) was made cool by Gwen Stefani. Glittering dots on the female half's foreheads will be a good place to start, I think. Not many of us seem to favour this quintessentially Indian trademark anymore. After all, it doesn't go well with jeans, does it?
Then there is the ever-popular 'thali'. We shall not leave it hanging in front of the mirror anymore, a la Shalini in 'Alaipayudhey'. We shall take it one step further and wear it midway between our shoulder blades like Khush does in Kalki. Similarly, we can jazz up the nose rings as well. We don't want it to disappear with our grandmas now, do we?
Our salwar kameezes have got an overhaul in the form of kurtis which can be worn with jeans as well as salwars. Maybe we could do something for the sarees too. How about a cool version of the madisaar? Now that will be absolutely super!! Who knows, one day we will even find Madge dancing to 'Music' with the red string on her wrist, mehendi on her hands (after all, she loves all things Indian!) and a cool version of the madisaar!
Stranger things have been known to happen!
Lavanya
|
