So it was, that after 8 months of abuse, the elastic thread (its called - नाड़ा - in my geography) on my tracksuit came undone. It was an army tracksuit bought from the Indian Army store in Leh in January during the Chadar Trek. I had my days of wearing the tracksuit as it was meant to be, then wearing it with a slack thread that was slightly embarrassing and had the phrase "wardrobe malfunction" linger in my head, then wearing it with a thread so close to being undone (and well beyond embarrassing) that I had to dangle it down the insides of my tracksuit, where it'd be tickling my ankles. From that last stage it only took a careless tug to have it come out completely.
Being kids, we could always run to our respective moms, holding our slack pajamas with one hand (lessons in keeping modesty) and the elastic thread in other, and go (to the effect of) "मम्मी! नाड़ा लगा दो". They'd be prepared for it. Furnishing out their tools - a hair clip, and a coupla' knitting needles, or sometimes a thin ruler - our moms would fix it in no time. Indian pajamas come in two varieties - the regular ones with a vanilla thread hole, and a special one where the thread hole is a sadistic crumpled affair. It was a general expectation for our Moms to be educated for either.
Living a bachelor, I could only stare at the undone thread of my tracksuit, and miss Ma. That I had a thread hole of the sadistic variety made it all the more daunting. I had neither the skill not the toolset to get this done. Then I thought to improvise. Scissors failed, so did a pencil and a very thin-bodied Staedtler roller ball pen. So what was the closest equivalent of a knitting needle I could think of - porcupine quills (collected over the past few years in traversing through Indian jungles). So far, they only served for novelty; now was a time for application. After a dodgy start, I got a hang of doing it right, and in a single neat stroke had the thread all the way to my right waistpocket. Having no hair clip was a clear disadvantage beyond this point. But determination wins over a lotta handicaps, and soon I had it all the way to my left backpocket. After that, a dirty stitch line couldn't let me go any further with the quill. So I got to using hands - a slow, laborious, hit-or-miss effort. But I had my string out the other side, finally. HIGH FIVE!
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