What a shame! Our culture has gone down the drain. Look at the way she is dressed! Mr. Dutta was all over the case of “diluting Indian culture” again. Sipping a cup of Assam handpicked tea with ½ spoon sugar owning to the fact that he was diabetic and munching on his favorite Osman biscuits that I got him over my last visit to Hyderabad, looked troubled again over the exposure of oneself through the decreasing dress lengths which was rampant now among the colony girls.

                                  I sat with him in his balcony, a projected space on the third floor of the apartment, secured by the iron railing which were adeptly decorated by the creepers planted by Mrs. Dutta when they moved in five years ago.

                           Mr. Dutta was a bank employee, a man from old school and an orthodox to a large extent with a little flexibility to allow his daughter, Aakruti, to go to Hyderabad to pursue her engineering from a reputed college.

                 “Do you think our Indian culture has really lost its roots? With all the westernization and adulterating of morals, Nudity in the first place, I am more than worried about the course of our culture in the country”, he picked up the last biscuit from the plate and stared in the open space over his balcony, expecting an answer.

                   “Nudity is in the thinking”, I pitched my voice loud enough to smuggle these words clearly in his ears while placing back the cup of Assam tea. “It has always been a part of our culture since long but we seem to have adulterated our thinking over it”, I continued. “What are you talking about… been a part of our culture? What do you mean by that?” Mr. Dutta was demanding a justification of my words now.

         I pointed at the replica of a sculpture of nude pairs from Ajanta and Ellora caves that hung elegantly in his hall. “India is the mother of art that celebrates the beauty of nudity and freedom of expressions. Kaamasutra, the compilation of urging desires between two bodies and souls, the sculptures of Ajanta and Ellora, the elaborated depictions of nude divine figures at Khajuraho, few of the paintings of Raja Ravi Verma, have been the pride of our culture. People then did not adulterated their thinking but rather celebrated the creation of beauty and appreciated it. Doctors do not see the patient’s exposure as nudity and forsake treatment. Children are never ashamed to expose themselves infront of their mothers. Nudity is in the thinking Mr. Dutta and it has been a part of our culture but what was not is the fact that we adulterated our thinking over it”, I proclaimed clearly.