Would you dare to call yourself a woman if you opened your wardrobe and didn’t feel helpless or like a pauper because guess what, you found nothing to wear? And this yearning for that perfect dress keeps you wanting to shop more when in fact, there are pieces hiding in the corner biting dust. Pieces your memory has given upon. Pieces you won’t ever fit into but are sure will stir up a storm on the street if only you were 14 sizes smaller. Pieces that have no place in your wardrobe, but sit in your imagination, nevertheless. And the sole reason the garment business still runs! Women, and their lust for new and more and never going out of style or ceasing to look drop dead gorgeous!

If your feeling with my experiences are an exact match, bravo, we have saved jobs and economies from seeing doomsday. And this is the only surest way to certify you a woman or identify as one.

Some things never change, like how we make babies, how boys bond over physical fights and girls love dress ups. I know I have placed myself at the risk of being called a stereotype and getting cancelled. Nevertheless, blame my generation and its influences for touting such opinions. 

Well, moving on, I am glad to state, the two girls, ahem ahem, young women that represent my flesh and blood have no other choice but to identify as women too. Before the upcoming school holidays, I ask around if anybody needs new clothes, shoes, etc.

By evening, I have the younger damsel in distress hugging me for no good reason. The act presents itself as reason enough to be worried about the upcoming credit card bill. 

I ask her, “Why the sullen face?”

She just nods.

I hug her tight and check if she needs something.

Her eyes look up to me, her eyelids doing the slow dance, while her grim features slowly take cue from the eyelids and grow a bit pleasant like turning the pages on a fliporama. As my eyebrows engage in further communication, my ears hear a revelation – “I don’t have a jacket with a zip!”

It is in that exact moment that I wish to present to her a count of the number of jackets my family has been hoarding, only in the hope that while global warming is heating up the globe, it is going to miraculously cool Singapore down and jacket prices shall rise beyond fuel prices, the Strait of Hormuz will be open once again, gold will collapse while jackets rise to stardom. People from all over the world, presidents included, will run and fly and swim and send robots to the Deshpandes, the sole owners of these prized possessions. We shall sign autographs and auction all jackets, hoodies and cardigans we have so painstakingly amassed over decades. Of course, foreigners could be subject to levies.

The collection will be enough for the family to sit on a Noah’s arc and paddle away to a new world far, far away. A world where it snows, where we shall start our new collection of swimsuits, and go on until such time where the natural temperatures skyrocket, and just like Singapore, we have an exit plan!

Gosh, I have digressed. Out of habit. But here’s the thing. There is no wining an argument or not giving into the whim of the youngest member of the pack. Hence, Sunday even was spent doing exactly as she desired. We now have a knitted blue jacket, with a zip!

P.S. For some reason best known to her school, the older one wasn’t aware of the happenings since the sullen face drama that quietly unfolded in the confines of my bedroom. She stayed home under the pretext of work. You should have seen the shock on her face when she discovered the blue jacket at 10pm.

Sonu – “I offered her mine but she refused to take it”, she goes with a biggest eye roll I have ever witnessed.

Monu – “It was pink… that doesn’t match anything I have”, she shuns any accusations with the greatest poker face ever.

Me – feeling cheated and ripped off, all in the name of love, like nobody’s business. Love is a two edged sword. I wonder how the man of the house feels about this. He has three to deal with.