‘I don’t have anything to wear!

This would have been the fifty first piece of a series  for the JEANS section of 'The Nation'.  The paper was shut down after this section went to print.  Temporarily, they say.   The series is for children. Adults, consider yourselves warned...you might re-discover a child within you!  Scroll down for other articles in this series. 

That’s probably not true.  What one means when one says ‘I don’t have anything to wear’ is probably ‘I don’t have anything PROPER to wear’.  ‘Proper’ would mean ‘suitable for the occasion’.  Some would add that ‘proper’ also means ‘new’ and ‘stunning’. 

When someone says something that begins with ‘I don’t have anything to…..’ he or she is not being untruthful.  If you want to look stunning and you don’t have a stunning dress, shirt, shoes or jewelry then in your mind it is legitimate to say ‘I don’t have anything….’

About 900 years ago a Persian poet by the name of Muslih-ud-Din who used the pen name Sa’adi (1184-1291) wrote the following in ‘The Gulistan’ (‘Rose Garden’):

“I never complained of the vicissitudes of fortune, nor suffered my face to be overcast at the revolution of the heavens, except once, when my feet were bare, and I had not the means of obtaining shoes. I came to the chief of Kufah in a state of much dejection, and saw there a man who had no feet. I returned thanks to God and acknowledged his mercies, and endured my want of shoes with patience.” 

Now you’ve probably heard the part that refers to someone complaining he didn’t have shoes until he met a man who had no feet. 

It is easy to say of course.  Who, after all, would want to go out in rags, right? Who would want to dress up in something that might invite sneers, right?  And just because someone else doesn’t have feet one should not feel that one must go without shoes. 

And yet, it is good to think about what the poet Sa’adi said more than 900 years ago.  Here’s something that happened nine years ago.  It happened on Lester James Peries Road, Bambalapitiya.  At the time it was known as Dickman’s Road. 

There was a little girl called Ashwini.  She was just two and a half years old.  She was the daughter of a domestic worker.  August 8, 2006 was a happy day for her.  Her grandfather, Rasiah, an employee in a restaurant had bought her a pair of shoes. She wanted to try them out. She walked towards a bus halt on Dickman’s Road, Bambalapitiya, after kissing her grandpa by way of thanks.  That was it.  A car bomb ensured that Asvini would never walk, that she would never learn.  She died right there.

So, if you want to complain, therefore, there are enough things you can find to complain about.  But you think about things a little more and count your privileges, you might not sentences with the following words, ‘I don’t have anything….’

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