I normally shy away from bright colours. Left to my own devices and without the mater yelling about me channeling Morticia Addams and looking like something the cat dragged in, I’d happily dress in head to toe black every single day. It is only when the spouse accompanies me on shopping trips that I pick up colour under duress, and that too, the kind that could inflict retinal damage on the unwary eye. This was one of those picks.

I wore this back in March on a very special day. It was March 8th, International Women’s Day in Delhi. The Indian Council of UN Relations (ICUNR) supported by the Ministry for Women and Child Development, Government of India, was awarding me the International Women’s Day Award 2018 for excellence in the field of writing. For a change, I decided to go Indo-ethnic, and picked this colour blocked fluorescent yellow long fusion outfit, wearing it over golden tights, which weren’t seen given the length of the tunic, and purple satin and Swarovski cluster embellished ankle strapped stilettoes, which also weren’t visible much. A pink and white Murcia clutch echoed the embellishments on the cuffs of the sleeves, and the royal pink of the bottom patch of the tunic. And yes, I paired this with my all time favourite neckpiece that I seem to be wearing every single time I want to look absolutely kick ass — a stone embedded golden collar picked from a Lokhandwala rasta stall. I realise in retrospect I mashed up two trends at the same time here, flourescent and colour blocking.

I love this photograph because it is fuzzy and unclear enough to hide my wrinkles, and also because my hair seems to be behaving in this one. I take no credit for that, it is all the complete lack of humidity in Delhi that is a lifesaver for my frizzy hair.