Essay: My offline Life at the Designer Shop

In this essay, Richa Sharma captures the refreshing change an offline encounter can bring in after spending years managing things online.

I am as online dependent as anyone else. A few years back, I wouldn’t have thought of an online or an offline life, but now I do live these lives. Recently my offline life had an interesting interjection. The focal point being the tailor I recently went to. Nothing extraordinary if one was to label it. An everyday occurrence, a common way of living a few years back, but now it felt like an activity worth-noticing.

I went to a local tailoring shop, designer to be specific, no pre or post fix. A major part of my visit went in locating the shop, for I was searching with his name. After a few unanswered calls, he told me the shop’s name. And then came the arrival of designer and its owner in my life.

Buying online often and restricting myself to exclusive showrooms and boutiques if need arises, I had almost lost the touch of interacting at a personal level. Corrupted by taking things off the shelves, with or without minor alterations, walking past dresses and deciding if they were meant for me or not, I had forgotten the involvement one might require getting even a tunic stitched.

As I saw him walking towards the shop, I greeted him with a smile but for a response I was not expecting him to tell me about his personal life. Don’t we save the everyday details of our lives like it was a secret of national importance, while sharing pre-decided and pre-defined versions.

“Madam sorry jara late ho gaya. Wo bike ka tyre puncture ho gaya, yeh dekho keechke laarun mein.”

Apologizing for the delay, he explained that his bike’s tyre got punctured. He then went ahead and showed me his bike and its tyre. Such honesty, such ease in sharing. I was impressed. So, I smiled and was fine even after waiting for half an hour, which in any other case would have created havoc in me and then outside me (by me).

He hopped on to the steps in front of his shop and then removed a wooden slab, an inefficient substitute for a lock. The slab which was balanced between the wall and his desk marked a symbolic gate to the shop, which by the way was left open all throughout, even when he ventured out for hours together. He has protective neighbours, I assumed. I stood outside with an unstitched cloth. A wooden platform cum desk stood in front of me.

He then welcomed me inside the shop where the measurements began and the suggestions for designs poured in. He promised me a date and I left. And then began the journey of getting my tunics stitched, several since the first one.

It wasn’t all about the measurements and fittings, it was about understanding each other’s schedules, adjusting to the shortcomings and letting them pass by. Accepting each other’s choices, without judgements and a touch of warmth. In essence, a touch of everyday life centered around a tailor shop.

Refusal to make a deep neck, altering it thrice till tunic’s neck reached the depth I wanted. Sewing the neck and its depth promptly from next time. Polite suggestions on the length and fitting, but agreeing to my suggestions with an honest smile. And finally, a subtle acknowledgment of my designs by stitching a dress exactly as mine for his daughter. Sharing the information and showing it to me as well.

For pickups, I coordinated with his timings. 3 PM to 3.30 PM, weekdays, it’s his time to pick up his daughter. Sometimes when the school bus arrives late, he would appear back around 3.45 pm. During namaaz timings, five times a day, he won’t take any call. Fridays are off limits too. Saturdays and Sundays he opens early but often closes early too, for he has to take his family out at least once a week. Last week, they went to the heart-shaped Hussain Sagar Lake as his daughter wanted to take a ferry ride. His wife, who is expecting their second child, also likes to sit there. He had told me while folding a pile of unstitched clothes.

Recently I met his daughter too, for he and her school bus both were running late. So instead of making me late for my dinner too, they both arrived at the shop. As always, I stepped out of my car as soon as I saw his bike approaching. Although she had just returned from school, she had no traces of being tired. She jumped out of the bike and ran inside the shop, from under the wooden slab. She was, the way we were and I guess most of the children still are, which I would know if I were to step out and notice them. At first shy, she eventually started speaking in my presence, not to me but to her father. Ice cream for tonight and about her Diwali dress when she saw my embroidered set, assuming it was for the coming Diwali.

Sometimes, his holidays would extend to weeks. His visit to hometown, which would invariably come with updates on his mother’s health. She has her cataract surgery the next Tuesday, when the doctor from Hyderabad visits their village. So soon, he would be off again. We eventually graduated from news about families to letters from his daughter’s school and my replies to them representing (impersonating) him.

Getting a new dress stitched soon became a pleasant intermingling of my life with the aspects of his lives, his daughter’s and mother’s. Lives which are otherwise set far apart. Those intersections felt so humane, and so reviving that I willingly accepted the hassle of repeated alterations and trips to his shop. After all, the not-so-perfect stitching comes with a touch of humanity. So, whether I like it or not, I will end up wearing and of course keeping the dresses he would stitch.

Author’s Bio

Richa Sharma is the author of Finding Home Again (Our Quest to Belong). Her debut novel, published by Nu Voice Press with distribution by Penguin India, is set in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, and focuses on intergenerational mobility, identity and displacement. Her writings have been published in literary magazine eFiction India, Contemporary Literary Review India (CLRI), Storizen and the Hans India. She has a Masters in Mass Communication from the University of Hyderabad and is currently working on her poetry collection.

And that’s how life happened in full circle at a tailor shop, life which until now stayed still even when fingers scroll up and down on the phone.