A stitch in time

Tailors are another breed. With readymades and Pret being easier to handle a good tailor is getting harder to find


I should know because like hairdressers ( that is another story!!) tailors somehow have the knack of not exactly delivering what you want. Of course the problem begins when the tailors show you these glossy design magazines with perfect people with perfect figures displaying perfect garments.

That is where the problem starts. Despite looking at the mirror every day and perhaps glancing at any other reflective source every other moment, I still find it hard to reconcile myself to the fact that the not so perfect person looking back at me is who I really am and not what I would like to perceive I am.

Then, the fabric that I give for tailoring is vastly different in both design and texture- another fact that I choose to ignore when selecting a pattern for myself.

And lastly, the tailor in question is no graduate of an Ecole d' Haute Couture but an urbanised rustic craftsman who is a tailor only because he happens to be descended from a glorious lineage of tailors.

And of course , I, being me, still insist on giving him my cloth expecting him to make me into a glamorous clothes horse.

Which brings me back to my original refrain - good tailors are hard to find. Especially one who can make everything from sari blouses to trousers to salvar kameezes and jackets.

As with every profession, tailors have their specialities and a sari blouse tailor can only make a good sari blouse and only a fool like me would insist that the sari blouse specialist can deliver a good if not excellent trouser. Well........ at least a salvar kameez??????????

Of course he can't but the ever optimistic me still plods on hoping that one day he will dazzle with a perfect creation.

So I continue going to my good old Navinbhai , the sari blouse specialist with the most annoying trait of following his own unique calender which obviously does not see next Monday as next Monday but can mean any other Monday or any other day for that matter! This obviously makes his delivery schedule completely out of whack! This also leaves me completely confused with the accounts and the tally of garments given/ to be given and received!!!!

But yet...........

I still go to him.

He of the poky shop in the hole in the wall.
He of the unreliable delivery time.
He of the unreliable size and fit ( if four of us in the family give four different garments to be made, he is quite capable of mixing up the sizes and you can land up with a garment either too big or too small).

Why oh why do I persist?

Only because he is an old devil and better than the unknown one. Also there is a certain innocence about him, an old world charm that makes me go back to him in my oversized salvar suit time after time comfortable in the knowledge that he knows me just as I know him.