The small dry-cleaning shop opposite our apartments says it also does "darning and dying". I have always wanted to tell the owner that his sign has a missing "e". Now I find that while dyeing is thriving, darning is dying.

I recently noticed a tiny hole in one of my relatively new tops. The dry-cleaning shop owner shook his head. He had no employee who knew darning. Opposite his shop was a hole-in-the-corner tailor who took in orders for stitching and alteration. He too shook his head. Don't know how to darn, he said. It must have been about 10 years ago that I last got something darned. A shawl, I think it was. I had noticed then that the labour charge was really steep. And now, darners seem to be a dying breed. Supply and demand, I guess. Few people want clothes mended and fewer still know how to do it. It is an art, like piano-tuning or tea-tasting. When an expert repairs a tear in your garment you'll have to search hard to find the spot. Fine needle, microscopic stitches. Do it for too many years and your eyes will pay the price.

The use-and-throw generation may not even know what I'm talking about. No one wants to repair any kind of object. I belong to the generation that used to squeeze toothpaste tubes till they begged for mercy. That replaced the rubber straps on hawai-chappals. Toothpaste today comes in tubes made of plastic and not tin. Rubber straps simply can't be found. But we still believe in using the hell out of our clothes and our mod cons. About that top of mine, I must take it to