When a ‘paper decides the dress code
Every day, the newspaper announces the colour for the next day, and lo and behold, working women gather as they exit their workplaces and remind each other of the next day’s colour.
MAHESH VIJAPURKAR on an extraordinary, newspaper-prescribed Navratri ritual.
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Starting today, October 8, a large number of women in Maharashtra would follow a kind of dress code. On this first day of Navratri, the nine days preceding the Dasera and dedicated to Godess Durga, they wear green.
That is the hue to be seen anywhere in public places when women going to work drape themselves in not just nice silks but also other accessories – jewels. What is of note is that this colour-a-day does not stretch to salwar khameezs or skirts and tops.
It is not any socio-religious custom but a code prescribed by the Maharashtra Times, the Marathi morning daily of the Times of India stable. Every day, the newspaper will announce what the colour for the next day would be, and lo and behold, working women gather as they exit their workplaces and remind each other of the next day’s colour.
This has been happening for the past seven years, the idea having been introduced by the then editor, and now Shiv Sena’s MP in the Rajya Sabha, Bharatkumar Raut and which was apparently reluctantly accepted by the management; it is the brand managers who rule the content, not so much the editor in those newspapers. Here, the editor seems to have had his say.
Now it is a fixed feature with tremendous enthusiasm among the reader to an extent that those who do not buy or read that paper, ask those who do and follow the code.
And why do they follow the dress code? Because the newspaper says so. Also, because, the newspaper devotes an entire page to picture of women who get photographed in groups and send it to the newspaper hoping that their particular offering would find a place. Each picture has between 10 and 20 women. These pictures flood the newspaper via email.
Sometimes, the women want to get there first, send the pictures a day in advance which means there is a conscious effort to find a place in the pages. Insiders say that yesterday itself, that is, a day before the start of the nine-day series, somewhere around 1,500 photographs landed. And from the first day onwards, more of them would flow to the editorial offices, making the task of picking the day’s selection not so easy for all they have is a single page.
What the criteria for selection of the pictures is not indicated. But that means one thing – people buy the paper to see if they are in it or not; at least that is the assumption. Another is to retain a slice of the market the competitors are always jostling for.
This is one page that gets easily filled. And this is one page where no accusations of ‘paid news’ have emerged. Not even a hint that the space is otherwise marketed. Not so far.
In the first year, the newspaper had announced that the ‘advisor’ for the period as to which colour to wear on what day would be Jayant Salgaokar, a writer, astrologer and entrepreneur who brings out the annual Kalnirnay almanac. The next year, it was a temple priest though the fact is that there is nothing spiritual or time-honoured tradition. It is a nice marketing gimmick no one is complaining about.
Would a similar effort at getting men to dress alike on specific days, if all newspapers work together, work?