As if a fitting reply to the usual foot-in-mouth critics was not enough, Goyal’s announcement on Indian feet fitting shoes more comfortably and without confusion is also part of GoI’s greater decolonisation mission. For those not in the know, it’s not that India is withdrawing from its colonies. Defence and Amar Colonies are ours forever!
It’s more about changing the British colonial mindset that 1) keeps calling West Asia ‘Middle East’ even though the Arabian Sea lies to our west, and Vietnam to our middle-east; 2) believes it to be improper to run out a batter after a delivery has been bowled if he or she is standing outside the crease; 3) titters when the local theka has a sign in English, ‘Chilled Bear Available’ but finds it perfectly agreeable to find Bhetki Meuniere to be on menus in India as ‘Beckty Meuniere’.
The forthcoming IndiaSize, which will help distinguish Indian footwear products from the rest of the world, will, in Goyal’s words, ‘get [us] freedom from dependence on foreign sizes’. Truth be told, I was never comfortable with what goes as my footwear size of 8. This is because I have, what I have been told by people with a footwear fetish, the trotters of an ‘Indian farmer’ – apparently a charming way to describe a foot that is size 8 by length, but 9 by width. Yes, more Yeti Foot than Big Foot.
But in defence of the current metrics in India that use ‘UK’ size, all online stores provide ‘converted’ options from US or EU sizes. So, when I was toying with the idea of picking up a Dolce & Gabbana Black Cotton Low Top Logo Sneakers for a discount price of ₹58,990 (down from ₹85,500), I was obviously keen that I get the right size. And it was easy – 42 Italian size was clearly written as 8 UK size, which is also 8 India size. So, frankly, we don’t really need another chart that makes the current size 8 be, say, India size 59. Which, to be fair, makes Indian feet sound pedigeopolitically more formidable.
Much more of concern is the complete non-standardisation of T-shirt sizes. Never mind foreign T-shirt sizes, even Indian companies seem to do an eeny, meeny, miny, moe with XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL… One man’s terrorist-tight is another man’s alkhalla despite both being tagged as L. This torso turmoil needs immediate attention, Union textile minister – which, along with commerce and industry, is also Goyal-ji. But if we are indeed going on a ‘decol’ spree, why stop at the feet of the people? Union surface transport minister Nitin Gadkari surely knows that having the steering wheel on the right side of cars in India, and driving on the left side of the road, is a slavish practice handed down to us from British India/Morris Oxford times. But swapping it pronto to left-sided steering wheels and driving on the right of the road may, indeed, be construed as suddenly imitating the Yanks, especially when India is doing a great job of balancing on the geopolitical front. So, to keep Mission Decol flag flying as well as India driving home the point that we drive on neutral gear on the world’s highway, it makes perfect sense to have cars in India have the steering wheel in the middle, where the gear box currently sits. This would certainly be suited to ‘local needs’ and free us from foreign lanes. In any case, the road reality is that, even with all that zigging and zagging, we plough our own middle-of-the-road furrow with great pride.