Road to Damascus (or could be Stockholm Syndrome)!

Here’s my moment of conversion in the matter of Indian clothes. I was coming home after spending Diwali, the height of the Kartik (lunar month from mid October to mid-November) holiday season, with the family of a lovely student who lives way at the other end of Banaras. To get me home, my rickshaw wallah had to take me through some of the densest traffic I’ve ever been in in my life, and it was virtually all male, guys walking, guys motorbiking, guys driving, and me sitting all by myself in my rickshaw. I wasn’t uneasy (though the atmosphere was as loud as any I’ve ever been in and as crowded), but still pulled up my dupatta to cover my hair and shoulders, and this feeling came over me of being safe and regal. It was a gesture of differentiation and even respect for me and for the men that felt exactly right in the situation. It wasn’t a constricting feeling, it wasn’t a puritanical feeling. It acknowledged the men while making me safe, decent, and of the place in the nicest way. As close as I’ll come, perhaps, to understanding the veil.

But I can’t entirely leave it there since the deeper point of covering the hair is to signal sexual unavailability (I’m talking about how gestures work, not me in particular). It’s both a display and denial of sexuality, differentiating the one whose head is covered from the bareheaded men and acknowledging that in public women have a responsibility to behave respectably that somehow ennobles the men. What’s non-western, or at least a different feel than at home, is respect for the men. Of course there are other ways to read it, but in the spirit of multiple readings and the place itself as I experience it, this is the one I choose to emphasize.

I’ve done that since, sometimes because the air is thick with petrol fumes in a traffic jam (common) or, lately, in clouds of whatever anti-dengue fever insecticide they put out to control mosquitoes (thankfully, not much malaria here). With a dupatta over my light hair, I get stared at less and it just fits in somehow.

My conversion to Indian dress was actually more gradual, requiring the discovery of a good tailor (it takes persistence, like finding a good shrink). My friend Megan brought me a lovely hand-printed dupatta from the Himalayas where she took a break from high-stimulus Varanasi . I wore it every day with my Western shirts and pants, because it made me look and feel more like somebody who lives here. And that’s been the motivation. It goes along with learning Hindi. No one forgets I’m videshi. The answer to the most frequent query I get is, “Mai(n) America se hoo(ng).” I’m from America.

But I can look more like western tourists in their Adidas, socks, cameras, travel pouches, North Face jackets and Patagonia pants (for younger folks there’s a grunge hippie version with dreds), or I can wear sandals, loose fitting ankle-length pants, ankle bracelets, wrist bangles, a kurta (shirt) or salwar kameez and a dupatta and feel right at home around Banaras. There’s no question I’m treated differently. I didn’t believe it would happen but it’s true.

So now I don’t care to wear western clothes and feel funny if I start to go out without a dupatta. A good fitting salwar kameez is the most comfortable thing in the world, it turns out. Funny how that carapace of resistance clings and then it’s gone.