A friend from childhood who has followed my career throughout my life sent me this image on Whatsapp and asked me “Do you remember?”
These were called sutar buttons, Sutar being Gujarathi for yarn. On researching for these for writing this post, I came across and interesting post about how to crochet these buttons. Difficult now to imagine, how much effort must have gone into making these buttons in large volumes.
That one question and that image took me down memory lane to the proverbial three score and ten years ago when as a student in Class IV wearing an all white uniform daily to school. The top and bottom both had buttons like these and we had to ensure that we had all the buttons intact as we were subject to inspections by the class teacher.
I was living with my Uncle and Aunt for that one year and every time one button came off, it was a chore reattaching it and often one had to find a new one which would be slightly of a different colour than the other buttons. My Aunt would patiently teach me to sew the button on and would closely supervise the effort.
Then came plastic buttons and the game changed for ever. Much easier to sew on and also longer lasting.
I spent almost a quarter century in the Tailor Trimmer trade and during all those years, never came across these buttons anywhere but, a quarter century later, I come across these. Simply mind blowing what?
