Peas in a Pod

I stopped short in my tracks as I headed into my workspot the other day. There she was - shopping around again in the same stores as I have! And, she has to buy the same colour too! So, there we were looking like 2 peas in a pod, while folks gleefully took note and asked us whether we had been planning this event. You see the same thing had happened twice in the same week!

* What's the big deal? *

Just this, I have spent a good part of my non-uniform clad childhood days wearing the same clothes as my sister and mark this: the girl next door! So, I react pretty much like a scalded cat when I see people dressed in same clothes. My father belonged to an elite clan of shareholders of a textile mill: so much so that when we walked into the showroom, all salesfolk came to personally attend to us, and served us with coffee and tea! (My theory was that, all salesfolk need to attend to the sole customers in the store, don't they?!)

The cloth purchased there was fantastic - there are no doubts about that. Some of the clothes have neither faded nor sport a tear after all these years! To top this, they had better rates for wholesale goods i.e. LOTS of cloth. My father - the economist who, would consume 3 cups of tea if they were offered for Rs.10 as opposed to Rs 5 per cup, bought into this scheme, and realms of cloth used to make their way home.

So, it was arranged for the rest of our childhood days that my sister's salwar kameez, my frock and my neigbour's frock would all be tailored from the same cloth. In fact, I even remember one instance when a cotton skirt for me, a salwar kameez for my sister and a curtain in our home were from the same cloth. Everytime I wore that skirt, I would pray that guests were not observant enough to match up the curtains and my skirt.

I wonder if my next-door friend remembers the clothes as vividly as I do! For me, I remember every tiny pattern on the clothes - how can one forget if we all looked like peas in a pod?!