Disoriented Patterns

More than a month ago, it was Diwali and we (me & husband) saw this Marathi movie Katyar Kaljat Ghusli – a musical masterstroke as it has been reviewed. Indeed a beautiful movie. Many said that if one has seen the original theatrical play then he/she won’t enjoy the movie as much. Thankfully I have not seen the play and I liked the movie. It rarely happens that I like something, especially movies!

The last scene; the final jugalbandi of melody at its very peak has grasped all the viewers to the core; who is going to win and how, is what everyone is thinking but me. What I am doing in this climax situation? I am looking at what Khan saab is wearing. Rather, my eye and mind were forced to look at it. Something was wrong, something was visually disturbing. And exactly that was taking away all my attention from the musical pinnacle to a pattern that had gone wrong!  

Collage of screen shot images from You Tube

Khan saab was wearing a beautiful waist coast brocaded in silk and gold, patterned with bold lotus motifs spread all over on a turquoise blue background. This would have been more beautiful only if the lotuses were oriented in a right direction.

Khan saab being one of the key characters in this scene, it was important to get his jacket made rightly with lotuses oriented in the right direction i.e. straight and upwards. I have never seen lotuses floating horizontally, have you?

I am sure many of us have encountered this kind of pattern disorientation and some have gone unnoticed, especially with local “ladies” tailors who think they know the world or with some cheap garment brands where the front side of your kurta has paisley motifs running upwards and on the back side the paisleys are running downwards. I bet on this!

Then post Diwali, my brother wanted me to accompany him for shopping for his soon approaching wedding day. This is the first time I enter the brand shop called Manyavar – well known for traditional menswear, and we select two sets of chudidar kurta, none of my choice though. I had suggested FabIndia… but….!

Images by Apurva sent via WhatsApp

One of our selections was a gold damask patterned waist coat woven in 100% polyester (not mentioned on the label) I noticed that the maple leaf motifs that composed the damask pattern were disoriented, they were upside down! I know that it is alright for foliage to have any direction, but not in a damask pattern. Okay, maybe this disorientation was a stitching mistake so I asked for another piece of the same kind, but no luck! So my brother had to wear a disoriented maple leaf damask pattern for his pre-wedding ceremony.

Further to this I was thinking that why did an Indian traditional menswear brand make garments with maple leaf damask pattern? What has maple leaves to do with India? Except if you are living in Kashmir and choose to wear this maple damask instead of beautiful traditional hand embroidered Kashmiri pheran on your wedding day!