Just heard that Mary Quant, the British designer who revolutionized fashion with her mini-skirt, is dead. Rest in peace Mary, because it’s not about what you did in uncovering those feminine legs I’m going to write about, but why you did it.

Quant brought in her concept of the mini-skirt when women in England were feeling suffocated, dressed in the corseted clothes of their mothers, with their nipped waists, and ship-prow chests, corsets, bonnets, top hats, bustles and petticoats. And with women corseted, bonneted, and top-hatted, nobody ever really knew what the actual woman was inside.

He had worked abroad all his life, and today as he stood with the rest of the family at the wedding of his daughter, he realized he didn’t know her at all. He looked at his wife, she looked old and care worn. She wore the best dress money could buy, his daughter’s wedding dress also was the best, but as he stared at both of them, he found they were strangers and he realized sadly that they also hardly knew him!

There I was in the bathroom, sometime back with a screwdriver in my hand and a pair of pliers getting the soap tray fixed. I worked hard and as I did, I wondered how my wife had managed to get me to do it. Most often, after she left for the hospital where she worked I generally forgot the little chores I was supposed to do around the house: “Bob,” she had said that morning, “Looks like our guests will know what they ate at our house even after they’ve returned to theirs, by just sniffing their hands!”

This morning I spent the better part of an hour with a friend of mine discussing whether I should take upon myself certain responsibilities: He was quite insistent that I serve on a particular board and I, knowing that my hands were full, was very reluctant. “It means more than just sitting on the board!” I said, “It means shouldering the plough or taking responsibility!”

I pondered over it and a little while later read these interesting thoughts on 'responsibility':

“Start with his right hand!” the Roman officer must have jeered to the soldier carrying nails to be driven through the hands and feet of Jesus, on a Good Friday two thousand years ago.

And as the horrible sound of the nail, tearing flesh, rent the air, as the anguished moan of a man already half-dead was heard, there must have been heartbreaking cries, as loved ones held each other in horror.