perils the least of it being the ever present possibility of being brusquely collaredby the assiduous cops of Bangalore’s eve teasing flying squad, appearing shame-faced before the awful majesty of the mobile court in Mayo Hall and getting judged, proper and good for a 14 day spell in the cooler, coupled with a hefty fine and some strong remarks from the bench.

“Is it the brand name of a new ballpoint pen being test marketed?”

My usual beat is along Bangalore’s fashionable promenades—Mahatma Gandhi road and Brigade Road and most balmy evenings, you will find me on station propping up a doorway as though to prevent it from collapsing like a building just certified ‘Fit’ by the Public Works Dept., and quick darting eyes drink in the passing jeans while keeping a sharp lookout, port and starboard for any approaching cop.

I wish to claim, if I may that I have logged almost 250 hours of Jeans Watching and I can confidently assert that the scene has never been brighter.

Doddering old fogies may shake their heads censoriously and growl dangerously that the younger generation is going to the dogs. With my superior professional experience and track record, I want to squarely counter and contradict the old codgers and assert that the younger generation is in actual fact going to jeans.

There are jeans to drape practically every body shape and contour and psst…. Some of the contours are very alluring.
No doubt, we have all been upbraided by our peers over our sartorial inelegance, with jeans it’s altogether a different scene. The dirtier they are and looking more like hessian jute sacking used to swab cow-dung floor the higher one’s status in the pecking order of the world of jeans.

Let the disapproving senior citizens be put on notice—jeans are here to stay and with them the patches. Let me quote for your scholarly edification the following patch I spied on faded stonewash dungarees jeans as it turned the corner into Brigade Road. It simply read ‘I DIG ZEN’, proving my point to the hilt that the supposedly frivolous coke and CD hungry younger generation actually understands and loves Zen. When I challenged my old man about Zen he shuffled and mumbled uncertainly “Is it the brand name of a new ballpoint pen being test marketed?”

Watching jeans has been a deeply soul satisfying and spiritually ennobling pastime and as a value add on bonus for a perilous enterprise, it has enabled me to come up with a original definition of middle-age spread living beyond one’s jeans.