Go to any mall. Ogle as you always do. Malls not only offer a wide range of shopping and feeding experiences, but also ogle experiences. The oglers and oglees are critical contributors to the malls’ business model.

So while you are peacefully going about your natural business or ogling, you notice you are surrounded by enemy artillery. Like the British hiding among bushes trying to take back Delhi in 1857, they peep out from t-shirts and shoulders, slip out of spegetti straps, and boldy proclaim their arrival from the backs of racerback tees. The straps that pretend they are not there by camouflage, the ones that wink at you with attacked beads and glittering trinkets, the black ones that sing out “Jimmy, jimmy, aa jaa” from white tops and white ones from inside black tees – its a bravura performance out there!

Since when did bras cease being innerwear that proudly supports a girl’s self-image, and become the high-flying flag?

I have no idea, I was working my butt off during those days, and then one day I left my job and looked out and the straps had taken over, smiling at the boys and winking at each other. There I was, slogging at my PC while the world has been gently and smothly taken over in a quiet invasion of the ‘bra’ve.

The invasion of the brave was preceded by the chaddi plague. That one came much faster, so no one had the time to react.

Unsuspecting sad victim of Notorious B.R.A

One day you are walking by Marine Drive and there are those couples that sit there looking romantically into the piss-water there. You could see their backs and.. Bam! Three inches of brown coloured panties are splashed against your unsuspecting eyes.

Blink rapidly and walk ahead and Bim! – Red and white diagonal stripes, black elastic band, and soft little cloth.

Walk from one end of Marine Drive to the other, and you are infected by the panty-conjunctivitis. Many who did the walk left Mumbai and went back to their hometowns in the South. Later I found out that cheap colourful panties were imported in large quantities in Mumbai and distributed by Shiv Sena, trying to get rid of outsiders. It worked. I ran away to Delhi, where I am assaulted by Notorious B.R.A straps on a daily basis. Frying pan to the fire, so to speak.

I know I am just collateral damage in the cluster-bombing by bra straps. Grown men are like the street dog that walks the Baghdad street while the US army and militants shoot at each other. The bombs are not falling on my house, but I am in the firing line.

The battle of the sexes is raging now – the 14 year old girls boys and girls are trying to out-sex each other, and bra straps and chaddis are their ammunition.

The boys have their weapons too – mobile phones and motorcycles and cars. They too occasionally hit poor unsuspecting me, as the heat blast from their engines singe my butt as I stand idly by the pavement, thinking about grave and important things you people can’t even fathom. Sometimes even I can’t fathom them.

But these are the halcyon days of the Notorious B.R.A. If you don’t watch where you look, the resulting libido boost might fry your gulab jamuns if you are younger than 30. Above that, you get hit by mundane things like high BP and cholesterol. Stay clear, this is not your war.