By Tony Sebastian who thinks the most stylish Malayalam actor of all time is "A la mode-an "

When my Dad decided to repaint our house earlier this year, he chose a colour that was like a siren. I don't mean a seductive woman who can knock you off your feet with one look, I mean the kind of siren your mom uses to wake you up when it's time for church if you (fake) sleep like me. Very loud. Very unpleasant. This was the kind of colour that circus clowns would think twice about when choosing their attire.

If you decide to put a very jarring violet on your house and walls, you had better have a good reason for it. So upon seeing my home in this condition for the first time and after identifying which the earth was and which my jaw, I collected the latter and put it in its proper place - it is essential to have one's jaws in the right place when one wants to articulate - and said "What in the world happened to our house?" And mom replied "You look thinner, don't you eat anything at all?"

After surviving the initial shock I managed to regain my calm - my upper lip was stiff, not just because I fell flat on my face. My dad is a man of great wisdom. His genius is unsurpassed in all of God's own country and elsewhere (Not really but he does read my blog and I do want to go back home and taste mom's chicken.). There had to be a purpose behind this chromatic crime, one that eluded my eyes. I was blinded by my short-sight (and also by the colour of the wall).

"Dad" I asked "why did you choose this colour?"

"What do you mean why? It looks good."

"Um... so there is no purpose behind this chromatic crime, one that eludes my eyes?"

"What?"

"I am not blinded by my short sight?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You actually chose this colour because it "looks good"?"

"Yes"

"Looks good?"

"Yes"

"Looks?"

"Yes"

"Good?"

"Yes"

"Oh"

"It's awesome. Most people who come home now are rendered speechless by it."

"I am sure. So you picked it out on your own?"

"No our contractor suggested it. It's called violet rage"

"Violent rage?"

"Violet rage"

"Let me guess, you asked him what the latest rage was?"

"Yes how did you know?"

"Vague guess. Are you sure he understood what you meant?"

"...."

"So this "colour" is purely because you think it looks good? Sure? Or did you want to make our house the second man-made structure, visible from the moon?"

We Kochukudys - Wait. I see that some of you are thinking up wisecracks along the lines of Kochu-Kudy and Small Drinkers, before I continue I'd like to dampen your spirits by pointing out that my classmates in IInd grade came up with that joke. This in turn led to the axing of my lineage from my name. This may seem shocking to most of us in this generation, but there actually existed a time when the single most important criterion for naming your kid was not the availability of a GMail id in his/her full name. I, unlike a lot of you lucky ones out there, am a self made man - while the Shashi Tharoors and Manoj Night Shyamalans got there without doing anything, I had to earn my name's Search Engine Optimisation.

Where were we? Ah yes. We Kochukudys may be a lot of things, but fashionable is not one of them. Among the adjectives which people use to describe me, stylish would rank in the lowest tier, sandwiched between neat and vegetarian (This might be the only time I have used vegetarian and sandwich in the same sentence. My stomach has excused me only because it thinks neat was a typo of meat). As my friends will readily agree "Tony" is one of the most ironic names I could have been given.

Right from the time I was in school, I have always been ridiculed for my choice of clothes - my white shirt with frills which I wore for my holy communion, my colourful, very pleasing to the eye shirt, my soft coloured T shirt which my friends alleged was pink in colour, my trendy Kurta upon wearing which my cousins nicknamed me Mallika Sherawat, my hairstyle and anything remotely related to fashion. I was late to sprout facial hair, so after repeatedly chanting the Lord's prayer modified thus "Give us this day our daily beard.." I finally got it and then people started laughing at my experiments with that too. Over the years the surest way for a person to decide between two sets of clothes has been to ask me which one I like and then pick the other. You will understand how bad my fashion sense is when I tell you that I was ridiculed even in Andhra Pradesh - Tollywoodland for crying out loud!

Imagine my surprise then, when I got this mail from the Spring Spree core committee "Spring spree brings you the glam, panache and vogue with Allure '10. Some couture, a dash of fashion, a sprinkle of glamour and a dose of avant garde, NITW's Annual Fashion Competition comes your way, a smidgen of everything and a mix of it all........... We request your esteemed presence for this function as one of the three guest judges....." My juniors had told me that they had some high profile professional team picking out judges for events, but little did I know that it would be the same team that picked the Nobel peace prize judging panel. I also hadn't realised until this point that the term arbiter was the comparative form of the college slang term arbit.

But that, as they say is how cookie crumbles. A Bihari villager ends up correcting your English board exam paper, Mayawati gets statues erected in her honour, Lalit Modi claims that a Twenty20 league is his brainchild, I judge fashion shows. So in case you are one of the hot girl participants preparing for this event, you know who you will have to sleep with look good in front of, to win this event. Do not hesitate to get in touch (heh) with me and seek suggestions. I may criticise you, I may give you a dressing down (heh heh), but remember it is all going to help you do well and win this event. And to you fashion foxes who hounded me to no end, I say ha! Bow down to your new God - The little master of the fashion world, - Such in Trendulkar.

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