PC posed for a cover. Twitter found a job.

Priyanka Chopra, who is on a rather successful mission of conquering North American entertainment TV, wore a flattering white top on the cover of Condé Nast Traveller India. Looking great as she is these days. And Social media lost its shit. Again.

Twitter and Facebook collectively leave no stone unturned to remind us of the appalling lack of nuanced thought in about two generations of keyboard warriors.

Enough rant. I would request you to kindly take a look at the images attached.

One, carries four more designs in the same line as that on priyanka’s top. And the other, to compare, the original shot. Now I want you to think for a moment, breathe and then explain which one of the four designs are being insensitive to the categories that are struck off.

May I suggest a controversial idea here that artists might be slightly smarter than the lowest common denominator.. be it the designer of the T-shirt, the stylist who picked it, the woman who wore it, or the editor who decided to put it on the cover. In fact I am introducing a revolutionary concept here that they may happen to be highly sensitive people. Sensitive to tone, and tenor of the concepts that they choose to work on.

So then? how was this “mistake” made? I assume that it was not the choice of styling, or the text on the garment, but the sheer inability to dumb themselves down to the level of social media intelligence, that continues spiral down into an infinite descent.

Now for the uninitiated, being a traveler, is a condition, a condition that pulls you out from the depths of your existence and puts you out there in the universe as one with the world. A. traveler is someone who discovers the world to discover oneself. It is a higher state of being, a state that is empowering even in the deepest chasms of despair. A state that puts you in raw contact with the world around. One that opens you up. And if one could stop for a moment and breathe before hitting the keyboard, one could maybe see, that the now “controversial” top shrugs off labels, that attach themselves to someone who is displaced. It simply declares in bold letters that one is NOT a refugee, NOT an immigrant, NOT an outsider, but a traveler.

It is extremely empowering to imagine a displaced human telling himself, I AM A TRAVELER. It is cheesy. It is basic. It is made of oversimplified optimism. But what it is not made of, is bad taste.

This could’ve been worse. The top could’ve said “tourist”. Now that, would have been the insult which no refugee can take.