Snapshots of the Garden City: Becoming Indianized
Lorre Weidlich - your Hyde Park correspondant
About three months after arriving in Bangalore, I tried out my first Indian clothing, a salwar suit (the “w” is pronounced like “v”).

Clothing in Bangalore is a mixture of Indian and Western. Men wear Western clothing almost exclusively; I've only seen a few examples of male Indian clothing. For women, it's a mixture. The saree is the garment of South India (where I am), while the salwar suit is from northern India. On the streets, I see a mixture of the two; at work, it's almost exclusively salwar suits.

The salwar suit consists of a pair of drawstring pants (the salwar), a tunic top (the kurta), and a long scarf (the dupatta). Many of them have elaborate hand embroidery that is taken for granted because, as my friend Lavina told me, "Everything here is hand done."

I had been wearing exclusively American clothes. Then one day, in the ladies' room, I ran into Hema, the receptionist on my floor. I admired her outfit and she said, "I had a dream last night and you were in it, wearing a saree." Then she gave me a lecture about how I was a professional working for a professional company and should dress like a professional Indian woman (instead of, I gathered, an American slob). She offered to take me shopping and to her seamstress. I decided it was time to take action.

It was time to take action for other reasons as well. Since I had arrived, I had lost about 15 pounds and many of the slacks I brought were practically falling off me. So, I bought my first salwar suit, burgundy with elaborate stitching (machine, not hand) up and down the front. After modeling it privately for friends to make sure it looked appropriate, I wore it to work. The result was dramatic. People who had never spoken to me smiled and complimented me. All my (primarily male) friends fell all over themselves complimenting me. The best compliment came from my friend Mehdi, who said, "I've seen Western women in Indian clothes before and it didn't suit them. But it suits you." Lavina was in blue jeans and T-shirt that day. If I had had a camera, I would have arranged a picture of the two of us: "Lorre and her Indian friend Lavina. Which one is which?"         ...cont'd next page

Page 8 -- September, 2002 -- Pecan Press