I am horrified by the latest moves by college managements to monitor and control how students dress to class. Not least because Madras Christian College is my Alma Pater, Alma Mater being Stella Maris.

Things were certainly quite different in the 1970s. Students dressed as they pleased: frayed jeans were the fashion and girls wearing pants were considered the height of haute couture, literally. We couldn’t get ready-mades for money – or for money. You had to have relatives visiting from the US, or at least Doha, and you had to be in their good books, to receive a gift of denims. And, they had to fit. My friend’s aunt got her a pair of Levi’s, or was it Wrangler, studded with stars of different sizes that was the envy of the entire campus!

When I visited my mater the other day, I was told by an alumna who is also a lecturer there that if I were a student, I would be pulled up for the lack of length of my kurta. I swear I wore shorter shirts when I was a student, and nobody ever pulled me up for that nor pulled my shirt down over my derriere, which apparently they do in this millennium.

So many girls in our time wore their shirts tucked into their trousers – it was a style statement, it was an act of defiance mostly aimed at the folks at home, maybe it was also symbolic of feminist stirrings and explorations of sexuality. Others experimented with their saris or whatever was their chosen attire. The boys grew their hair long, sported straggly beards, smoked stuff, wore hawai chappals. It was a time to experiment, experience. It was a time to be and we were let be.

May I remind teachers of the English band Pink Floyd that provided our anthem and that we sang along with at every inter-collegiate cultural: We don’t need no education / We don’t need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom / Teacher leave them kids alone.

They rocked and we rocked. We can still rock.

(Sandhya graduated from Madras University.)

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