I have a drop-everything-this-instant alert on my phone. It’s for whenever TMK, John Abraham, or above all, Baba Ramdev makes an announcement. When I’m yet to recover from the delirious joy of the Patanjali SIM and a desi messaging service, see what he goes and does.
The Shuddh Bharat Desi Jeans (under the brand name Patanjali Paridhan) will be available from December 2018!
How much joy can one take? Stop it, you rockstar, stop it.
Then comes some more super-good news. I speak of the primary aim of this apparel brand.
Apparently, Patanjali Paridhan will be mainly targeting women. Isn’t that wonderful? Targeting women. That’s really what we are about, aren’t we?
Patanjali says it will be concentrating on making special, thoughtfully designed jeans for the devotion-worthy sisters and mothers of this ancient land. Speaking about the USP (unique shuddh prastaav ) of their product, Acharya Balakrishna, that ubiquitous Judy to Baba Ramdev’s irrepressible Punch, said, “Our jeans for women will be loose so that they comply with Indian cultural norms, and are also comfortable for them. Indian families will find our swadeshi jeans concept very comfortable.”
Cultural comfort. Now that is the operative phrase.
See, this is where they will score over foreign brands. Baba ji has figured what a mahila wears is not just about her comfort. But the entire family’s, the colony’s, why, even the country’s comfort, dammit.
Say no more, Baba ji . Being your undying (hopefully) admirer, I will guess the rest.
As a first step, I think the inner-side of the jeans will have portraits of Alok Nath, Sambit Patra and Pahlaj Nihalani, sporting their most disapprovingly sanskari expressions. So that the female wearer is reminded of our ancient culture and the strict code of conduct she has to adhere to, even as she steps into the garment.
Two, considering that the latest technology is as familiar to Patanjali as panchgavya (ref: electricity from bulls), I predict this innovation in the garment. At the first sign of a father, father-in-law or village headman, the shuddh Bharat jeans will eject a serpentine pallu from the back pocket, with which the wearer- beti can cover her head. Quickly. And get into the prescribed demure position to serve tea or thandai (depending on taste).
Three, the jeans, being thoughtfully loose, will be equipped with special pockets that come pre-fitted with the must-haves for the Indian woman: a handy rolling pin to make perfectly circular rotis for the husband, a nifty three-pack of Patanjali noodles for when he is in a hurry, say, to attend Anti-Romeo Squad briefing. But Patanjali realises being a woman isn’t only about duty. So, I suspect, there will be dandiyas , too, in case the beti feels a need to participate in a family-approved flash garbha .
Since Baba ji and yoga cannot be separated, even with industrial forceps, I see this feature clearly. The jeans will have a kapalbhati app. The Patanjali SIM will activate this feature once every three hours or so, making the wearer spontaneously break into the swachh -Bharat-health-promoting-paroxysmic-ab move in trains, at public parks and funerals.
Next, this might appear minor but it’s not: the label. Unlike the diabolical labels of Levi’s and Wrangler, ours won’t be made of – heaven forbid – leather. It will be made of sacred gobar , flattened into strips.
Finally, the sizes. I see the Shuddh Desi Nari Jeans coming in these sizes: beti, bahu, saas, and XX-saas-bhi-kabhi-bahu.
If you ask me, there can be only one brand ambassador for this product. Who, you ask? Mrs Funnybones, duh. Her husband, after all, is the ultimate upholder of Indian values. (So what if he’s a Canadian citizen?) Wouldn’t it be the appropriate prayaschit for opening his disgusting fly in public while he endorsed an evil brand of non- shuddh jeans?
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a satirist. He has written four books, and edited an anthology.