Wearing my heart on my sleeve

I have never tried to change my accent or cadence of speech, and I didn’t study for the SAT exams, so I didn’t acquire my vocabulary by working hard to ace the test. I did read books like Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1867), sitting with a dictionary and appreciating words and learning their pronunciation. By reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) at age 12, I learned to make peace with rigorous debates at our dining table where my Papa and his bestie, Ajay Uncle, would take every side of an argument, mostly to educate us children and, perhaps, as a cathartic release of their days’ frustrations. This is the education through reading and living that, perhaps, accounts for me having a different way of speaking a language I share with billions.

Dadi, my paternal grandmother, spoke a Hindi that was Purabiya in its dialect and that was used to carry on the functions of our household staff. To the rest of us, she spoke her impeccable Hindustani, a wonderful zabaan that was with Nazaakat, delicate refinement, that made even the toughest of conversations rich with elegance and grace. This is my Hindi, which I have been told numerous times is very “old world” and elegant. This description is never meant as a compliment. If speaking correctly makes me elitist and snooty, then I stand guilty of that charge, but it isn’t by choice that I speak as I do. It is the accident of my birth that gave me the speech, diction and cadence to absorb, and then put forth myself.

Fluent in English, Hindi and Urdu, I arrived in the United States at age 20 to find myself very different from the majority. It didn’t matter that I dressed the same way, spoke the same language, worked just as smart or better at times, that I was swift on my feet and self-effacing to not create more drama than I already had to endure; I was still a foreigner, immigrant, resident alien, other and one to be shunned. Western clothes are what I wore and English was the language I spoke so I could fit in as best as possible. This was not enough, however. My accent, my skin color, the quality and texture of my hair, its sheen, its weight, its thickness – these made me the object of curiosity, of awe and of disdain. I couldn’t change my skin colour or my hair quality and colour, and so I made my peace with it and learned to take the omnipresent stares coming my way in my stride.

Now home in India and living and working here, becoming one with the land of my birth after having left it for three decades, I see my people call their own native garb “ethnic clothing,” and for that reason, I have chosen to start wearing Indian outfits, even though a shirt and trouser remain my favourite attire. Always a trailblazer, even when there isn’t any compunction to do so, I find myself wanting to unshackle India, a land of 1.4 billion people, from the colonial mindset that the British left behind after tyrannous rule. My dressing like I am one of the mythical gods one finds in Hindu imagery is my way of normalising Indian fashion as being “fashion” that doesn’t need the prefix “ethnic” to it. Why do we Indians and just about every other people of the Global South allow a Western construct of terminology and ideology to rule over us even as we have gained independence?

Dressed in salwaars and harem pants, kurtas and angarkhas, chogas and gharaaras, with opulent jewels and shimmering and copious dupattas (shawls), I am working to bring Indian fashion back to its roots, a place that is totally in sync with the Gen Z desire to make fashion and couture free of gender limitations. Even though I was very comfortable in Western garb, the more I wear Indian cuts and silhouettes the more I appreciate their deep relationship with my country, its topography, climate, traditions, sensibilities and how they give employment to countless of my fellow citizens. Each garment connects me to my land in ways most rich and fascinating. Do you find me a challenge and the face of a world gone crazy? Think again — mine is fashion worn by the gods worshipped by a billion-plus people and is as Indian as Indian can be.

The acts of civil disobedience that I first studied when we learned about Mahatma Gandhi, our Bapu (father of the nation), and later realsed were his learnings from Thoreau, the man I struggled to keep up with as a pre-teen but who made me whole and complete at 21 in Manhattan, have taught me to be as my Papa suggested I be. When I was given a placement to cook my lamb and parmigiano burger on the Today Show in Manhattan, Papa suggested I speak about food and my passion, not about myself, as the anchors and the screen would be sharing my credentials. Papa said that when given a microphone and the pulpit from which to address crowds, one ought to think bigger than self, share lofty ideals, give thought and care to the afflictions of those who have been forgotten and ignored, and to use that opportunity for the betterment of all in our human compendium.

I was barely 30 years old when Papa gave me this advice. Advice that few elders would give their child — the tutelage to bare one’s soul, an act that could well bring them disapproval and disdain. Papa has now been gone over a dozen years, but his words make me defiant and a troublemaker, in the ilk of that which Thoreau also suggested and Gandhi too, and so I speak as I know, not as might be popular. I dress not as I wish, but to show the masses that their attire isn’t any more ethnic than Western attire and ought to be just as accepted in the land of its origin. I tease and please through naughty actions and reactions that come from a place of good intentions and a bigger vision than myself, in hopes that if even one person can see the hidden commentary in their intent, the world will surely go in a progressive direction where we celebrate the past, live harmoniously in our present, and keep the world a sustainable, happy and safe place for all in the future.