Indian Princesses

Men in Kerala wear skirts. There may be a handful that don’t – Pradeep, for instance – but most men in Kerala wear something akin to a wrap skirt. I’m sure there’s a name. I’ll look it up on Wikipedia as soon as I have Internet access*.

So the skirt is worn long. But it can also folded up to half its length (knee-length) and worn as a short skirt . And the skirt is constantly in flux between the two. I can be long – brushing the ground or held by the ends as they walk – or folded up and tucked in.

Now this – I am sure – is not the least bit exciting to anyone in Kerala. Or India – for that matter. But to me – men wearing skirts is quite different. And different is interesting.

There’s nothing immodest about the skirt. But still – I had the feeling that there is a sea of men walking around in their bath towels.

In the Western world, when you’re around a man in a bath towel, you usually know him pretty well. So, it feels a little awkward at first. The bath towel also has a habit of falling off. Because tucking clothes isn’t really the most reliable way of keeping them on. Zippers. Buttons. Velcro. Those are pretty reliable. Tucking – not so much.

So it takes some getting used to.

The other thing is – when they fold the skirts up to wrap them into half-skirts, it can get a little revealing. Or at least it feels like it could get a little revealing. Nothing shows – mind you – but the possibility is there. Especially because I’m sure there’s nothing on underneath. (This may be every man’s dream, in fact. Being able to wear a skirt without repudiation – free as a bird. Unbridled by an in-seam.)

Now wrapping and tucking clothes in India is not unique to this skirt. Indeed, the sari is worn in a similar way. I found that out in Hyderabad.

My colleagues at Google – the girls, as I call them – were hosting us for a 2-day conference for our regional Learning and Development team. Most of our team resides in Hyderabad – an office with numbers second only to our head office in Mountain View. So Kelly and I from Australia and Shawn from Singapore flew all the way out to India.

The girls wanted to show us a good time. So they had planned some fun events. Bollywood dancing was one. That was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. And a tough workout – which probably says something ugly about my cardiovascular health.

The other fun thing we did as a team was sari shopping. And sari wearing. So after our first day of conferencing, we headed out to buy a sari. It can’t be that hard, right?

Wrong.

We could have never bought our saris without Smriti. And we could have never – ever – put them on without Rekha.

Smriti took us to the Kalanikethan Wedding Mall. Do you know how much we loved the wedding mall?

No, you don’t.

We like – loved – the wedding mall.

When we walked in it was apparent that they didn’t get many (any) Westerners here. This was the Kalanikethan wedding mall. And it certainly didn’t have any white dresses. Lord have mercy, they did not. Indian weddings are the most joyous, colorful celebrations imaginable. And white – is not colorful or joyous.

(I mean really – it’s not. It's just plain boring.)

We had a throng of men waiting to show us color after color after color. Sequins. Beading. Pattern. And color, color, color.

My eyes were lit up. There was so much to see. So much to do.

But I found one almost immediately.

This is the one.

This is typical for me. When I shop for a birthday card, I always end up buying the first one I pick up. But I spend an hour looking through them all to determine it is indeed the best one.

Because I’m a time waster apparently.

Soon after me, Kelly found one. A really pretty green with awesome patterns – perfect for draping. Mine was perfect for hanging – a different way of wearing your sari because it was light on pattern and heavy on sequins and beading.

Shawn had a tougher time. She’s not a girly girl and so she kept drifting towards the plain saris. No sequins. No pattern. Maybe a bead.

It may have had one bead.

She’d try one on and look at us in anticipation. And I’d just shake my head. I’m sorry, but no. I’m going to be dead honest here. It’s a sari. It has to be more colorful than that. We won’t have you buying a drab sari.

In the end she channeled her inner Goldilocks. Not too crazy. Not too drab. But juuuust right.

We all approved. We were wearing saris!

I couldn’t stop snapping. I loved that the Vanna White’s of sari shopping were all men. And they loved the camera.

After selecting our saris, we went upstairs to get our blouses fitted. Smriti had arranged for them to fit us and then make our blouses for delivery the next day. Now that was service.

Picking out our blouses.

We waited upstairs, selecting our blouse pattern – excited by all the choices. There were men in the shop, sewing away. Men are the tailors in India.

I learned this from one of my favorite books – A Fine Balance. I’ve been obsessed with reading about India since my International Relations class in college. My professor was Indian and he had us reading all sorts of literature and information on India. And I had a bit of a crush on him. J But he was too worldly and married for me, so I concentrated on my studies.

I had selected A Fine Balance for a book club I tried to organize with my close girlfriends in San Francisco. One that they immediately dropped out of when they learned that A Fine Balance consisted of 600 pages of words. Girls – you missed out! You really missed out.

So we got fitted for our blouses. This entailed a discrete male tailor wrapping measuring tape around our bosoms. When that was over we got to select our bangles.

BANGLES.

I was so excited about the bangles. There were oodles and oodles and oodles of bangles. Talk about color! Talk about sparkle! Talk about color combinations!

The man behind the counter asked me the color of my sari. I couldn’t remember. I just wanted color. Any color. I wanted to have the bangles covering my arms. Up to my elbows. It was so exciting.

He pulled some out and I grabbed a few – putting my hand inside the bangle – making an effort to push it over my hand and up my arm.

Pushing.

Pushing.

Painfully.

I couldn’t get my hand through the bangle. And I was bruising myself trying.

I looked at him. I was in distress. I had to buy bangles.

He wobbled his head.

No, no. No wobble. We have to fix this.

The Indian head wobble is a bit confusing. It looks – exactly – like a bobble head. Exactly. They don’t shake or nod – they wobble. Side to side. Comme ci, comme ca.

To me it means yes, no, I don’t know and oh, well all at once. I couldn’t have him saying anything akin to “Oh, well” in this situation.

I looked at Rekha. She was there to help me pick out the bangles. I was looking into the glass case – teeming with bangles – just like that little four-eyed kid in A Christmas Story. Pining for that air rifle. That was me.

There I was – sitting on Santa’s lap – asking for the "Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle" for Christmas and he’d given me something freakishly close to “Nah, kid. You’ll shoot your eye out.”

Oh, no. I will not shoot my eye out. I will put those bangles on my wrist if it’s the last. thing. I. do. Bruises or no bruises.

You could use soap, Rekha suggested. Some people use oil.

I’ll do that, I said. I’ll totally do that. But I’m not sure that will actually get it over the finish line. It hurt. And it wasn’t budging past the joint in my thumb.

Then she had a different solution. One I would have thought the bangle man would have thought of himself.

“Are you sure you don’t have anything bigger,” Rekha asked.

He thought. And then he reached under the showcase and pulled out a few boxes of bangles.

They were bigger. And they were fewer. Like 1/1,000,000^th of the amount - slim pickins’. But at least it was something. At least it was a bangle.

In the end, we figured out that the bangle man is a genius. You tell him the colors of your sari and he makes you THE BEST series of bangles. Different colors, sizes, textures, illuminations. We loved the bangle man. And he was genuinely humbled by our vociferous compliments.

And was that it?

No.

I got a few more bangles for good measure. Pink and brown. And I had to have a purse. Oh, and some earrings.

It nearly broke my heart not to buy a 20 lb. bejeweled Indian wedding dress. My heart was palpitating just looking at them. This time the dressers were women, not men. Women being the only ones who could understand the excitement of a wedding dress. I’m not sure they understood the excitement of a not-engaged-girl-from-North-Carolina salivating over Indian wedding dresses, but no matter.

After hours of shopping, we all loaded ourselves back in the cab and headed back to work for another day of conferencing before closing out our get together with a dinner in our saris.

But before we could go out in our saris we had to actually figure out how to put them on. Rekha was there to help. She lovingly dressed us in our saris. Folding the fabric one pleat over the other. We felt so special. Like princesses. Indian princesses.

We went to the fanciest restaurant in Hyderabad – and it *was*indeed fancy. Colonial even.

Darshini wore a designer sari that everyone cooed at.

Rashika wore a silk sari that everyone teased was for her wedding (coming up in January).

Rekha wore a beaded tunic, saying her sari blouses no longer fit her. She's tiny, so I don't believe it.

Shilpa also wore a pretty sari but her best accoutrement was her son. Such a cutie.

Shilpa, Smriti + cutie

And Smriti. Well, Smriti just looked damn awesome.

Smriti's dress.

Smriti said if she were to choose another profession apart from training advertising agencies on AdWords, she’d be a professional shopper. And judging by our three hour tour of the wedding mall which resulted in three perfectly selected, fitted, adorned, and negotiated saris – she’d do very well for herself.

We had the most amazing meal. I don’t even remember what I ate. I just remember it kept coming. The thing about Indian food is that you can easily fill up on rice and chapatti. You have to pace yourself. And I didn’t do a good job of pacing myself. Plus, I had a glass of wine.

And wine + work + rice + chapatti + sari shopping + Bollywood dancing + jetlag = one tired, happy Indian princess.

* It's called a dhoti, you stupid foreigner.