Fashion refers to the manner of doing something. Fashion also denotes style, a dress and hair and dealings with others. Among students, the word primarily conveys the sense with regard to ‘dress and hair styles.’
These days, students devote more time to fashions than to studies. Educational institutions and, particularly colleges, present the picture of film studios. As soon as a boy or a girl joins a college, there occurs a marvelous change in him or her. Simplicity takes wings and there comes ostentation in its place. Their gait is changed; their way of conversation assumes a different modulation and their behaviour gets stricken with artificiality. They strut like peacocks and fly like butterflies.
Generally, it is the student-community alone leads the fast-changing fashions. Once a thing or style gets in vogue, it is blindly followed by the students, notwithstanding how much inconvenience it entails. These days, boys, who by birth, are expected to be hardy and rough, look pale, tender and delicate. They apply all sorts of cosmetics which were formerly used by the fair-sex alone. The way they dress their hair or the way they get their tight trousers or gaudy shirts stitched, or the way they walk with their necks craned forward appears ridiculous. But they are indifferent to all sense of decency. They must follow the fashions of film actors whether they can afford them or not.
In the race of fashions, girls have not lagged behind. Rather they have gone a step ahead of the boys. They wear ‘sack shirts’ and trousers. Their hair-styles give them an untidy and shabby look. Blindly they indulge in the foot-steps of the film actresses. Every fashion within limits is praise-worthy but when all limits are crossed, it results in many evils. Students should stop such recklessness in imitating fashions. Modesty and simplicity in their dress and habits should be the fashion trend.
Going to movie theater indiscriminately has also become a fashion among the students. The theme of a movie may be worthless but they must go to see it even if they have to play truant from college. English movies may be beyond their comprehension but these have become a craze with the student-community. Our society does not allow us to follow certain scenes which are exhibited in the movies. As a result, students, in the formative years of their lives, go astray. They while away their own precious time and squander away the money of their parents.
Another fashion rampant among students is to go on strike over trifles. They have forgotten that, as students, they should not clamor for ‘rights’ but try to acquire knowledge whole-heartedly and with single minded devotion. Their duty is to amass the wealth of learning and not to flatter themselves about false sense of self-respect.
It is a pity that modern students are caught deliberately in the whirl-pool of fashions. To make a noise in functions, to pass remarks on others, to discuss politics and to raise parties are, in a way, their fashionable pastimes. They forget everything else but always remember ‘misleading fashions.’ The sooner they extricate themselves out of these, the better for them and the nation it will be.