My fashionable friend, Jeroo, can get pretty emotionally attached to certain items in her wardrobe even if she knows that she is not likely to wear them for the next twenty years. Hence it bugs her terribly when hubby Jhangoo tells her anything about her favourite pair of jeans. Last time was the limit when the husband said, “Just throw away these jeans or at least don’t wear them when you’re with me. People will think we are going through a bad time financially. That we are down and out, that I can’t afford to buy a new pair of jeans for my wife. Besides, they are too old!”

“Too old? Too old? Will you throw me away when I am too old?” This shuts him up every time.

You see, Jeroo uses these jeans as a measure-tape. When she is bursting out of them and can’t zip them up, she promptly loses two kilos and lives on green-tea until she gets into them. She even washes them by hand in case they fall apart in the washing-machine. “If I lost them to a washing-machine, it would be like losing an old friend” she told Jungoo, who retorted “But darling, such very old friends must be discarded.”

“Fine” said Jeroo, “First discard all your very old friends like Faramji-fossil and Darabshaw- dinosaur. Then I’ll discard my jeans.”

Actually, old clothes are like old friends. They have seen you through good times and bad, the high-highs and the low-lows of life. My other friend, Naju puts every garment in a plastic bag and hangs those bags in a line in her wardrobe (like those dead-bodies in the film, ‘Coma’). “They are all expensive designerwear,” says she.

Me?? I don’t care for designer-clothes. Clothes don’t make me,I make them. They look like designerwear even if they are from Fashion Street. I truly believe that a woman, any woman, should have the confidence that even if she wears a gunny-bag, she looks sexy!! It’s attitude baby, not clothes that define you. I gave this gyan to Jeroo and she asked me where can she buy a gunny-bag? “Designer goonpaat kya malshey?” “How would I know?” I asked. “I don’t wear gunny-bags”. “Then why do you give your gyan to others? Practice what you preach and don’t advise me to throw away my jeans. Old friends cannot be just discarded. When we are old, will our loved ones discard us??” I couldn’t understand this logic.

As in any marriage, Jerroo and Jhangoo had a love-hate relationship since she loved her jeans and he hated them. Jeroo loved them not because they were bought in Paris with her precious foreign-exchange but simply because whenever she wore them, something good happened. “They also alter my mood and make me cheerful. When I wear them, I don’t feel seventy two but twenty seven. They are ‘saganwanti’ jeans, happy-vibration jeans. They have travelled all over the world with me, never letting me down.”

Purely by chance, the very next day, Jeroo and I were watching the Oprah Winfrey show on TV, wherein Oprah revealed how discarding old clothes made her feel liberated. In fact, her four guests on the show had discarded a thousand garments between them in the last few years and one guest quipped “I already feel liberated and light-hearted.” Another guest described it as a “totally mind-blowing experience”. A few days later, I showed Jeroo a FengShui article which advised that very old garments and also old house-hold articles create clutter and hence negative-energy, so they must be discarded to create positive CHI energy in your life.

Just do it, I told her sounding like the Nike shoe advert.

She avoided me after this for a few days but when our group met at the Rippon Club one Wednesday, Jeroo burst into tears raving and ranting, “I threw them away. I also gave away twenty pieces of garments from my wardrobe. They were not just garments. They were more like old friends who saw me through ups and downs, in happiness as well as set-backs. And I discarded them. I don’t feel liberated like Oprah’s guests. I feel rotten. What’s more, Jhangoo has not spoken to me ever since I discarded those old friends”

But I thought Jhangoo always wanted you to throw away those old jeans”.

That’s true, but by mistake, I threw away Jhangoo’s favourite brand-new, expensive, designer jeans in that lot!!

Poor Wives!! (You and me, silly)! We never seem to do anything right!!