RIP

Sitting on my armchair, looking over the balcony of a crowded apartment complex in a Mumbai on a Thursday evening, I found myself wondering (among other things, of course) about how times have changed. Well, yes its the economy, stupid and yes, sure the green cover has depleted and of course urban congestion needs to be addressed right away, but I held our collective social horses on these weighty issues and settled down to think about how boys and girls have changed in our lovely country. More specifically, the relationship between boys and girls in India, or to drill a hole in it, about the sheer lack of sexual tension between boys and girls in India.

Now before you get all agitated and start throwing statistics and hyperlinks (damn! how I hate it when someone sends me a link like its supposed to be the answer to everything - imagine a sage looking all inscrutable and handing you a leaf with hieroglyphics in response to a complex question about directions to the loo - god! I even got a link on SMS yesterday) about fall in average age of people "getting some" for the first time and percentage of teenage abortions ad neveryoumindum, am not talking about actual sexual incidence here -I mean, that was bound to increase with global warming (another story) but am talking more about the utter sexual tension in a teenage environment. Remember, for instance, going into brain freeze when a that sweet girl from E&E rubbed shoulders with you in rush to get to the lab, or if she leaned close to ask you which class was going on and leaving behind a teasing peek that straightaway clogged your brain. Well, anyways, I think that's all over now.

Platonic relationships are on the rise, poisoning young minds, subverting them into weird relationships which men and women were never supposed to engage in. We have buddies, pals, unisex clothing (the nerve!) and even room-mates, for heaven's sake.

And, as far as I can see, the real cause for this is the Bra.

No, really, I mean this. Think about it - especially you bro-folk growing up on "how I met your mother" ( I feel a little like Ted here), there used to be a time where the bra used to be less an item of clothing and more a weapon of mass seduction. I recall the days (and i have to say, those were the days!) where the bra used to a flimsy piece of clothing held together by no more than a couple of pins and a fraying thread. While dismaying engineering this might be, it made for fabulous viewing pleasure - though, offering the wearer little protection, and doing charmingly little to hold things together.

Girls walking on campus would try to add support by folding their arms in front of them at every given opportunity but it did get a bit limiting and while I have no way of knowing this for sure, I think they stopped caring (especially after the first semester). Leaving us boyfolk with untold joy in viewing unrestrained staircase jiggles, brain-whooshing wobbles and of course the soft, pliant hug - the 'give' was unmistakably inviting, leaving the lingering hug as more a sign of sexual invitation than the disgusting symbol of bro-dom that it went on to become. Even as you got to base, all you had to do was wave your fingers in the air behind said pliant chick, and the bra would drop off from her body out of sheer fatigue, leaving you looking a like a hero.

All this changed irrevocably, with the grand entry of the bloody Tee-Shirt bra.

I think its known by a few other names as well, but I think (and I choke up with emotion when I do) this invention is solely to blame of the rise of bro-chick buddydom. The bra underwent a transformation from a peeky nothing to a heavy-duty, multi-component, full fledged garment padded up with what feels like (quite literally) layers of Kevlar -the same material used to block bullets and other metal-laden shrapnel, leaving women traveling in what looks like elevators around their lissome bodies, utterly impervious to cold weather (sigh!) and the titillating (how I love the English language) Dave Barry breeze. A hug that's now more GI Joe than Pam Anderson, with a sameness and uniformity to the most titillating of body-motion combinations, which we so scientifically call cleavage, that makes the eyes glaze over.

Parents world over sleep a lot easier, knowing how well protected their teenage daughters are, boys find a lot more time to listen to their I-pods, playing pool on Iphones blissfully unaware of the various chemical reactions could have occurred during what they probably thought was an uneventful day at school.

And I think the biggest damage has been done to women and girls, who now spend billions of dollars on (or steal from their aunts) beautifying gels, creams and doctors, sweat zillions of buckets at gyms to get the perfect body to get male attention when, as Dave Barry put it (in another day and age), just a stiff breeze would do.

RIP, The Great Indian Bra.