When the Necktie needs to make you look good.
I have always wondered if a necktie is of any help in life. My conclusion is that it is not of the slightest use to humankind.
This isn’t a loosely formed opinion. It is the result of years of watching this contraption make perfectly capable people look like they are being led to a meeting on a leash. The first hint that it was a vestigial accessory came early in my career.
I was about two years into my job, poring over some files at my table, when my boss, Mr Date, walked over and told me about a meeting in Mumbai the following week. It was a project review with one of our customers, a huge conglomerate setting up a massive power plant, of which our equipment was a part.
The following Monday morning, I was waiting outside my house when a white Ambassador drew up. Mr Date was in a fresh cream shirt, a silver pen clip peeping out of his pocket. In the back seat sat another colleague, older than me but younger than Mr Date, in a striped shirt and a necktie. I had never seen him dressed that way and wondered what had prompted it. I remember worrying that I would look like an urchin among these gentlemen.
A few hours later, we were in a meeting room with some senior members of the customer’s team. I was to update them on a few segments, and my colleague was to present his. Mr Date, one of the most likeable people I have ever met, with an air of quiet assurance, was there to keep an eye on things. My side of the work was on track. The other parts were lagging and threatened the project timeline.
The client’s side was led by an elderly General Manager, the kind of man who had clearly been through the rough and tumble of project work. Over the next half hour, things got heated several times, and my colleague with the tie took all of it. He was unlucky: some of his sub-vendors had let him down, and he had no option but to take it on the chin. Then the General Manager said something that permanently changed my view of the tie.
On being told that an electrical panel would be delayed by three weeks, he raised his eyebrows, creased his forehead and looked directly at my colleague.
“What is the use of the tie and all this if we can’t get work done?” he asked, rather sarcastically. There was a distinct nasal Tamil accent to the polite dig, and that made it more memorable.
I kept my eyes on my notes, relieved that my section was on track, and a little ashamed of how relieved I was. I became aware of my open collar, and for the first time that morning I stopped feeling like an urchin.
Mr Date looked at me, a cheeky smile broke out, and he winked.
A necktie is not for me
That remark has stayed with me for almost 32 years. I made it a point to stay away from ties at meetings. I would rather receive bouquets or brickbats for the work I had done than let a strip of cloth give me a false air of smartness and a hope of being treated with respect.
I still have no idea why anyone wears one. Look at the poor fellow on a Bengaluru commuter bus in May, collar damp, tie hanging limp like a wilted flag, looking like a man who has lost an argument with his own wardrobe. Smart fellows have invented dozens of knots and added a pin to keep the whole business from escaping, and still the corporate world insists. I admit that on some people a tie does look good. I have just never been one of them.
I groan every time I get gifted one, usually in outlandish colours, stripes or polka dots. Now I see school and college kids wearing them, which means we no longer wait for adulthood to push this punishment on people.
Not that I have stayed entirely clear of it. In the last thirty-two years, I have worn a tie exactly twice. The first time was at an exhibition in Delhi, where we manned a stall. I wore it reluctantly and took it off within the hour, right after I saw myself in the washroom mirror.
The second time went slightly better. It lasted three hours, one spent in a car and two in a room waiting for someone. By the time the gentleman arrived, the tie was safely stuffed in my pocket.
Out of sheer inferiority, which I realise contradicts everything I have just said, I did try to learn to tie one. I failed every single time. I cannot follow how that piece of cloth gets moved around and twisted before it becomes what it should. To tie or not to tie, I would ask myself, which is really to ask whether to be a gentleman at all, and the tie always answered for me.
In fact, the one that someone once knotted for me stayed knotted for six years. I would loosen it, slip it off over my head, hang it on a hook, and slip it back on when the occasion demanded. A noose, in other words, kept ready on a hook. That was how it served me the second time around.
My last attempt at tying one was about twelve years ago, and I haven’t tried since. I can assemble a diesel engine or dismantle an aircraft without much fuss. But I cannot tie a tie, not even with a manual, a mirror and an hour to spare.
To be fair, the necktie was never really the villain. It was only the costume. The trouble begins when the costume is expected to do the work of the actor.
And yes, I can’t forget the image of Mr Date winking.
