Yesterday, I happened to go to a restaurant with a friend. But strangely, I just had a dejavu kind feeling creeping on me. Even though I was sure that I have never been there before. I finished my meal and thought about it on my way home. White shirts, a huge paper fan as a prop, banners with writings in Chinese or some such language, laughing Buddhas, chopsuey noodles and sweet and sour vegetables. Now where have I seen them? Then it hit me, the answer was every Chinese restaurant. I giggled thinking to myself that unintentionally, Chinese restaurants were cloned all over the city. I started making a list and soon I was listing cloned cool drinks (why do all soft drink bottles look the same), cloned food, cloned toys, cloned vehicles, cloned super markets (forget the name board alone), cloned rubber bands, cloned books.....
Then I turned around and saw a girl wearing a salwar just like mine and I stopped laughing. I always try to avoid designs that everyone wears. Call it vanity but I hate to see someone else dressed just like me. In fact, I go hunting for unique designs to some very dingy corners of the city. While cloning of Chinese restaurants is a bit funny, cloning cloths I wear was not, at least from my snotty point of view. I told myself that next time, I am designing my own salwar, or at the least buy something from a shop not too well known.
I had sufficiently sobered up by then and was watching out of the window of the bus, when i passed by a school. Like a sudden whiplash when I least expected, I realized with horrifying clarity that we not only clone restaurants and salwar kameezes but also humans. I find the sight of two rows of neatly dressed children with exactly the same uniform and hair style very disturbing. Don't you?
