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What! Me use an umbrella?
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Why is it that our cool crowd refuses to carry an umbrella? BHUMIKA K. catches up with them through the sun and the rain
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FREE SPIRIT Young people would rather get wet than sport an umbrella. —Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
Cooling drops of rain are always welcome in a city that seems to grow hotter by the day. Sudden showers sending motorists scrabbling for that roofed bus stop or the awning near an office building is a common sight. School children walking back home in the rain, partially drenched in their raincoats, is nostalgia. And seeing a whole lot of thoroughly soaked college goers walk as if it wasn't raining at all is this generation's attitude. As cool as the rain.
Parents would have given up on trying to persuade their teenaged kids to carry an umbrella with them, no matter how sunny or rainy it is. Try reasoning with those raging hormones and all you get is a withered look followed by an about-turn. If the young thing is the arguing kind, then "How can I carry an umbrella?" is a common squeal of incomprehension.
While there are designer houses creating designer umbrellas in other parts of the branded fashionable world, our younger generation seems to loathe this shield against the elements. They will willingly slap on some sun-control goo, bring out their dazzling designer shades, empty your pockets to buy themselves a sports jacket, swathe a dupatta on themselves, or pull a hood over the head. But, sporting an umbrella is infra dig. Even if it has snazzy designs printed or a designer handle.
Not folded up completely
As Kaushal S., a technical writer puts it: "It's just too much of a hassle carrying an umbrella. Once it gets wet and finishes its function, you don't know what to do with it. It occupies a lot of place in a handbag and adds to the weight as well."
Of course, umbrella companies manufacture all sorts of lightweight, collapsible, telescopic umbrellas that you can tuck away conveniently, but still...
People who walk a lot tend to carry umbrellas whether to endure rain or sun. But try walking on MGs or Commercial Street with a brolly in hand and you send fellow pavement users ducking and greeting you with curses. And there's no sillier feeling than getting crammed between two other umbrellas.
Many women working late nights have carried it as a handy weapon, as a kind of security blanket sometimes. It was at one time the classic look — book in one hand, an umbrella in the other — for college kids as well as the retired man on an evening walk.
Whatever happened to the umbrella then? Blame its disappearance on two-wheeler riders who ushered in the jackets and windcheaters, banishing raincoats to uncooldom. You can't possibly, and better not, be riding with an umbrella in hand though occasional one does find a pillion rider (usually a coiffed woman) with an open umbrella flailing about in the downpour.
And when it comes to guys, it's a chee thing or a disease to carry umbrellas, akin to carrying tiffin boxes.
Liju Sam Rajeev is a PG student at Bangalore University who hails from Kerala, though he's never lived there. "Back home in Kerala, umbrellas are lined up at the door at all times during the rainy season for people going out to pick up. I may have used an umbrella once or twice when I had to attend functions while I was on a holiday there. Come to think of it, I can't remember any male friend of mine using an umbrella ever. I guess it's a guy thing!"
Not for me
"No way," Ashwini Rajiv, a degree student, ripostes when asked if she would carry an umbrella. "I'm so forgetful, I might just lose one the day I use it! Moreover if it's raining, I avoid going out, and if the rain catches me by surprise I don't mind standing in front of some building watching the rain fall on the pavement!" she laughs.
Most young people fear the sniggering they could invite sporting an umbrella. Ruhi S., a college-going 17-year-old, bluntly says: "It's not hip to carry an umbrella. It's something older people carry."
"I hate the umbrella... it looks so pansyish," declares Louis Zac Cherian, a degree student. He does perhaps paraphrase all young sentiments when he says: "I hate the rain but I would rather get wet than carry an umbrella." The last time he used one was perhaps in third standard, when his mum forced him to, he recalls laughing.
"Umbrellas are seen as something that someone from the older generation would carry," says Shrivani. S.P., framing her words carefully so as to not hurt sentiments. "I guess it's just a matter of different perspectives. It's representative of a generation that believed in safety, security and being prepared, I guess, unlike us."
And if you read positively into Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, in this context, here goes: "Into each life a little rain must fall."
But then, don't entirely dismiss the brolly
An umbrella, with its four-millennia history, is more than something that protects you from rain or shine
What can you possibly write about umbrellas that one half of the world doesn't know? That's assuming the other half moves around in Stetsons or sombreros in summer and trench coats when it pours.
But there's more to an umbrella than meets the eye. So many generation will remember that mushy moment when Raj Kapoor and Nargis get close and personal under an umbrella in Shree 420, only simmer down just when everybody thought it was fireworks time.
Never mind Bollywood's current obsession with rain songs that drip sleaze — there has always been romance under the drab black canvas, style in the parasol and safety in the pound of steel that comes with the contraption.
Romantic walks in the rain may not be up everyone's alley. However, umbrellas often cater to other needs of the heart and ego, if making a fashion statement can be put that way.
Most fashionistas may sneer at the thought of lugging the load around. For all you know, the thing might flip inside out in the wind and mess up the mascara.
The dictionary says an umbrella is "a device for protection from the weather consisting of a collapsible, usually circular canopy mounted on a central rod". Don't go by it folks!
The umbrella was invented over 4,000 years ago. Pictorial representations of umbrellas have been found in ancient artefacts of Egypt and China. The first umbrellas were used to shield a person from the sun's blazing heat.
It was the Chinese, who later used wax and lac parasols to keep away the rain. The word is derived from Latin (umbra, meaning shadow).
It was during the 16th Century that umbrellas became popular in the West.
In the beginning, umbrellas were deemed fit for use only by women. Later, even the men took to carrying them around.
The first umbrellas were made of wood or whalebone and covered with oiled canvas. The steel framework version, which largely remains unchanged, was invented by Samuel Fox in 1852.
Almost a century-and-a-half later, the first collapsible umbrellas made an entry.
K.SACHIDANAND MENON
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