Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The curious case of socks Indian men wear to office

The variety of socks Indian men wear to office is so wide that I really don’t know where to begin. Or if I should really start with socks at all.

Guess I should start with the two most common varieties, but between them is a stiff fight again; sports socks and white socks.

White socks: No, they don’t mean to display or declare that they are gays, which they may or may not be. I wonder if boys genetically imbibed a preference from the school days of wearing white socks early in the morning before catching their rickshaws/buses or being dropped: because it comes to them naturally to pick a white pair, sometimes drenched blue with robin, when they have to pick one in the morning.
Or should I say instinctively instead of naturally? That also explains why many men pick up white socks at stores. Multinational socks brands better take a marketing cue to stock more white socks after understanding this ‘psyche’ of a spectrum of the Indian market.

Sports socks: They often are white, generally with the elastic trying its best to expose the ankles. Just remind yourself we are not talking about Priyanka Chopra’s shin. I don’t think Indian men play so much that their sports socks are worn out. They are worn out because they don’t want to spend money buying another pair of (sports) socks. There are other colors, but wearing sports socks seems to be widely accepted, sometimes more like as if it is the norm.

Brown socks: Mostly worn with black trousers and black shoes.

Black socks: While some men are in dilemma whether to match the socks with the trousers or the shoes, most really do not bother or are blissfully ignorant. Well, it’s also a fact that many men also are not clear what shoes they can wear to office. But that’s another point. What to match them with is common sense. Most (sane) people frequently wear black formal shoes, so why do manufacturers make non-black socks? Because they have to match the trouser and not the shoes! Black socks are sometimes worn with brown shoes or brown trousers.

There is a general color-blindness when it comes to black and brown. This leads to delightful combinations of brown and black trousers, shoes, socks and belts.
Colorful socks: In some cases the color-blindness stretches across blue, grey, purple, green and other colors in and not in a rainbow. In some wild cases, this applies to the shoes too.

Sports shoes: Shoes are not socks, but I had to include this because of the role shoes play in choosing a pair of socks. Sharukh can be forgiven for wearing sports shoes with formals going to Punjab Power office because the director/storywriter asked Anushka to fall in love with him anyway. But not those who in their absolute lack of capability to feel embarrassment wear mud-browned or new bright white sports shoes bought at discount factory outlets to office as a brazen display of their sport-iveness. It is even worse when a ‘consultant’ fresh out of the frog-well wears them abroad to client office on-site. Not to mention that the guard stopped him (guards at that place are so educated, they happen to have facebook accounts too...now for those of you pseudo-intelligents who plan to leave a comment, this is my disclaimer clause that I do not believe that the number of facebook accounts is a measure of literacy in a country)

Finally, not to forget the icing on the cake.

Stinking socks: Need I say anything more?

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