To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Friday, March 08, 2019
 

I have been grappling with a deadline since I got back to the UK. Now that that is ‘out of my system’ as we used to say in my corporate days, I feel a bit peaceful and at rest. The trouble is I seem to have more ideas to share when I am in a state of ‘busy-ness’ than when I am at rest but guess it’s only my mind trying to tempt me with other thoughts when I should be focusing on one thing alone.
One of the things that I have been meaning to talk about for a while is the ‘charity shop’ concept that I discovered here. Basically shops affiliated to large charities that accept and then sell second hand-clothing at low prices. This concept seems to have existed here for very long but it seems to be gaining in mainstream popularity now what with the emphasis on sustainable living and the ‘Marie Kondo’ effect (that reminds me I had something to say on the topic of Marie Kondo too). I found the whole idea of charity shop shopping extremely surprising when first I heard of it. I remember in my early days here chatting with two friends (one of them more of an acquaintance) and this acquaintance from Spain had a wedding to attend soon so she said rather nonchalantly, “Let’s visit the charity shops over the weekend for a dress”. That’s when I realised that most ordinary people shopped at charity shops here and not necessarily those who couldn’t afford to shop elsewhere.
I guess this came as a surprise to me from an Indian cultural perspective. There is something of a ‘stigma’ attached to wearing second-hand clothes (here they are called ‘pre-loved’) in India unless it belongs to a close or distant relative. Generally one gives away one’s clothes to siblings or cousins or other relatives if they’re in great condition but if you don’t know anyone whom they might fit or have a use for them or if they’re a bit too old, you would give them away to maids or anyone else you know who would ‘accept charity’ or in short, the ‘poor’. You could even donate them at the local church from where it is again distributed amongst the poor. One could always argue that charities also exist to ultimately help some or the other section of society so instead of focusing on some specific cause one is generally helping those in need. And it wouldn’t be a completely invalid argument except that I am at present interested in the perception surrounding ‘second-hand clothes’ rather than the purpose of charity.
It seems that in India because clothes are generally donated to the ‘poor’ there is a sort of discomfort about the idea of ‘second-hand’ or ‘used’ clothes’ as it is automatically associated with financial distress. Here comes another peculiar aspect of Indian culture. Middle class folks in India lay so much store by success that being poor is seen as something to be ashamed of or a personal failure of some sort. When you look at it like that… it seems rather natural that second-hand clothing has never had much acceptance. On the other hand, donating second hand clothes to those beneath one’s status is quite common no doubt because it helps elevate one’s status as well as moral profile into the bargain.
I find the concept of the ‘charity shop’ in the UK far more democratic in this sense—it brings together everyone, rich or poor, in the collective mission of contributing to some particular cause while also getting people to think about the value of things in a more conscious way (apart from giving access to a wide variety of well-preserved quality clothes at cheap prices). It also doesn’t create or engender class distinctions between ‘givers’ or ‘patrons’ and ‘takers’ or ‘receivers of benevolence’. To me just the idea that I as an ordinary person may give away something to a charity shop and I as an ordinary person could buy something from a charity shop as I would buy from anywhere else (while helping a cause) involved a shift in thinking about myself as a ‘class of person’ who is in a position to give or a position to receive. It made me think about ‘things’ in a more collective sense and how we could maximise the use of such ‘things’ rather than adding to the collective waste. Made me think of the phrase ‘circle of virtuosity’…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 1:02 am 0 comments
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