Little India: The Textile Shops…

As my parents stroll around in India making the scene, I’ve entrusted them with finding me a dazzling sari for my sister’s wedding.

As for me, I’ve commited to visiting the gym so I can work on my “stomach rolls”, in the sense of complete annihilation.  Because you know, the wedding will be packed with men, and as the only  “available” daughter, I’m expected to look my best.

So the wedding outfit for July is taken care of  (though I won’t reveal the colours to you yet), but there’s a tiny little problem in between.

It’s one of my favourite friends, who’s getting married in the end of March.  Her wedding will span a weekend since she’s marrying a white boy (yay for mixing, let’s all get along!), and on the first exciting night, the theme will be decidedly “Bollywood”.

Well I don’t have a thing to wear (and my parents won’t be back with all the “goods” until the start of April). 

Correction, I have four or five Indian party suits, but they were tailored a couple of years ago, when I was in my fatter phase.  Yeah that’s right, I wasn’t always hot-to-trot, but I’ve given up on cake (and sitting on my rump all day), so now the suits look a bit like maternity wear.  I hope that doesn’t confuse you, because I didn’t lose a hundred pounds or anything (I wish!…no wait, that math wouldn’t work), but the suits were never tailored to be “sexy” from the start.  They tend to ”billow” you know? Hiding any semblance of a girly figure. 

Even with a handy tailor I’m convinced they’d look unsexy, so I need to hit up a textile shop (or I could wear the exact same dress from my sister’s engagement, but come on, a “repeat”? I don’t think so).

And that’s where I get frightened.  Frightened because I don’t have a lot of money right now, and I know how it goes at the Indian textile shops…

***

…It was a Sunday afternoon in Little India.  I was eleven now, and slowly approaching my womanhood…well not officially, since I hadn’t yet been stained with the “monthly red”, but I was getting more in tune with my gender.

My sister was already there, as a stick-legged tween with voluptous dreams, so for the first time ever, we accompanied my mom to the textile shop.

It was a cozy corner shop, and colourful enough to make your eyes explode (with a sign at the door absolving the place of any guilt should such a thing occur).  Roll after roll of dazzling coloured fabrics along the wall, and racks pushed together in the aisles, full of magnificent suits.

But we walked past all of that.

It was in the back, with the piles of pre-packaged folded suits, where my mom found her textile haven.  These suits were pretty enough for me, and they were actually affordable!

So there wasn’t any problem…except for one. The owner of the shop was rude, and baffled that we’d buy these cheap-o suits.  What about all the embroidered silk? Freshly imported from India, and covered in a thousand little crystals…weren’t those the ones we wanted?

But my mom, with a twenty-dollar bill and a couple of dimes, wanted only the pre-packaged suit.  It was the one with the muted crystals and the orange hue.

This happened everytime we went into a store; it was “buy the fancy party suits, or get a narrow glare”.  Hmm…I agree with the capitalist motives, but is that all it really was?

No, it was so much more.

I would learn the “so much more” with each new wedding or party I’d attend.

Basically it goes like this: the world of Indian party wear is its very own system of rigid castes.  The more ruffly silk, the more complex designs, and the more blindy jewels (both on the suit and on yourself), the more you are accepted in the world of banquet halls and crowded dance floors.

And if you’re not so lucky, get ready for the jug of water that’s direct from the sewer, not to mention all the mushed-up ”reject appetizers”.

It’s harsh, but the rules are clear: you need to dazzle.  This also sucks for the men who have dowdy wives that are lacking in the “glam”.

As for me, I really don’t have the money for some dazzling attire, but I will not be reduced to the dull-suited girls who are missing all the glory in the banquet hall.  Nor will I visit a textile store; just too many years of dirty glares…I am weak and broken.

So instead I will search for an Indian suit online.  If if ends up risking my desired ”caste” at the banquet hall, I’ll just fix it up with one of those “Bedazzler” guns.

And some chandelier earrings of course (well the fake ones anyway…)

Little India: The Video Store…

[...This is the second in a series of posts on my experiences in "Little India" (view the first one here)]

It’s the size of a narrow aisle, and there’s room for six or seven at the most.

A curious aroma of incense (mixed with samosas?) fills the air.

And there, in the cramped corner, an Indian man-boy busily stocks the shelves.

It’s an Indian video store, and a pretty common hang-out from my childhood years…

….On our trips to Little India, my dad would drag us kids to the video store, while my mother addressed her all-important textile needs.  My teenage brother was experiencing the height of angst, so he and his thick-framed glasses mostly kept to themselves.  And my older sister (who was finally free of her “childhood chub”), basically thought she was “the shit”.  It was a lot of self-esteem for an eleven-year-old to have, and it only bubbled over in the next few years (the time in which she called me “pig nose”).  My younger brother was almost old enough to be annoying (age five), but still young enough to push to the ground when needed.

The only other kid was me; nine years old, and curiously scanning the Bollywood VHS’s.  The women on the covers were beautiful, with impossibly long lashes, and waist-length manes of hair.   The men on the covers were another story.  Looking angry or intense almost all of the time, they seemed to give off an ”uncle” vibe.  It wasn’t right, so I avoided their chocolate eyes, turning my gaze to a dust-covered candy machine.

The candy dispenser was full of fruit-shaped fun, so I begged my dad for a quarter.  The pleading worked, and pretty soon I had a handful of hard little candies shaped like tropical fruit.  I was forced to share the “booty” with my siblings, and by the time they took their cut, all I was left with was a couple of hard bananas.  Oh well, I’m sure there are worse things than hard bananas, I thought (smart girl).

…By the time I was through with the sugar high, I wanted out.  I was suffocating, and the man-boy who was stocking shelves had a missing tooth and a sweaty forehead pretty much all of the time (a recipe for evil).  I appealed for an escape through a series of whines, but my dad wasn’t ready.  So he tossed a magazine in my direction.

It was “Stardust”, an Indian publication on the Bollywood world of films.

I didn’t care about the world of films, but I loved the title ”Stardust”.  It sounded like “fairydust”, which I associated with fairytale stories, which I happened to love.

So I cracked open “Stardust” to page 78.

Uhh…it was not a fairytale book.  It was an Indian woman in a mini-skirt, with the wind blowing hair and clothing in every possible direction (or mostly up).  I noticed some words around her body (creating the semblance of an article), but mostly it was her in a mini-skirt.  Then there was a picture of a Bollywood man drenched in water.  Had he fallen into a lake? And again he looked so angry, but muscular all the same.  And maybe I liked that?  No wait: he remsembled an uncle too, just like the men on the movie cover boxes.  It was all so wrong.

I put the magazine away, and we finally left the video store.  I would return there again and again, but always a little bit removed from the movie cover boxes and the pseudo-porno “movie magazines”.  And how could I not be a little unnerved?  The women were way too hot for my pig-nose and I to measure against, and the men were imaginary angry uncles.  The only comfort I found was in the hard banana candies I enjoyed during every visit.

And that…that is exactly how I fell off the path to Bollywood, landing instead on the rocky road to Hollywood obsessions (like Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise (before he got weird), and that guy from Sixteen Candles who resembled Matt Dillon…)

Just Dance

Is it a common belief that chicks should know how to dance?

I’m not sure if that’s a standard part of the “girly” repetoire (like wearing supportive undergarments to deny the force of gravity), but it seems like a standard skill.  And for all those girls who come up short in the art of dance (whether classical style or the “grinding” stuff)…well you won’t hear a lot about them.  I imagine they’re usually pulled off the stage by a guy holding of those giant canes…

…My own dancing skills aren’t all that easy to classify.  Like there’s the “Bollwood” style that I’m required to perform (both at parties, and at the request of wealthy Indian industrialists), and then there’s the dance club “night-out drunk moves”. 

In either area of dance, I can’t seem to find my footing, and meanwhile there are chicks who can groove to the music like they’re made out of ribbons…so why not me?

It might have to do with the conflicting style of dances growing up, and my general lack of focus…

…I first picked up on dance in the Bollywood style of things.  This happened from the ages of six to ten, an era that was rich in basement-Bollywood dancing parties.  It was a time when my aunt, my uncle and a couple of  friends would join my parents in the basement, with the Hindi mix tapes blaring from the silver boom box.

I observed the ladies moving their hands a lot, in the direction of the ceiling mostly.  It was like they were reaching for something…always reaching.  The men were reaching too, but theirs was a dance not as heavy in the hips, whereas the ladies swirled around in ecstasy. 

I was generally entranced by the style of dance, and even moreso because of the feminine outfits; every colour of the rainbow and embroidery up the wazoo (nobody does it better than you, my beloved Indians)…

…The kids got the chance to join in too, and that was my favourite part.  We weren’t exactly dressed for the part (unless you count my teddy-bear pajamas as “party appropriate”), but we were certainly ready to groove. 

Since I was a kid and therefore extremely inventive, my Bollywood dance was a hand reaching up in the air, with the other one rubbing my butt cheek (the left one to be exact).  Like I said, inventive.  It was glorious and epic.

I wanted to dance forever, but before I could refine my Bollywood dancing skills, distraction hit me hard.  It was mostly Paula Abdul’s fault.  Her and her damn “Opposites Attract” video, not to mention the highly popular “Straight Up”.  Then there was Alanis (before she became Alanis with a last name), and let’s not forget Madonna and all that “Vogue”. 

Pretty soon I was learning how to do the ”Running Man” and “Roger Rabbit”, whilst spending my daydreams imagining myself with a rigid pair of “cone boobs” (thank you Madonna and your “Blonde Ambition” tour).

Now before I could ever excel in the dances of the “West”,  I ended up distracted again.  This time the cause was grunge, and more grunge, and wearing lots of flannel.  There would be no twirly hips for me, but instead big flowing shirts, greasy hair, and rocking out.  In short they were my angst-ridden teenage years, which were as close as I would get to resembling a dude.

My final distraction has been carrying on for a while.  It’s the one where there’s a lot of vodka involved.  The beats play hard, the girls take the floor, and we get a little freaky you know?  I have never been adventurous enough to get all super-sexy (like the chicks who “dance-bang” their partners in public…you know who are), but instead it’s a lot of free-flowing movement (including the drink that I inevitably spill on my shirt).

All in all, I am not a good dancer in any sense, and it’s a fact that is starting to concern me…particularly in the Bollywood arena.  It’s my sister’s wedding that’s the issue, a wedding that is less than five months away.  I am already stressed out enough by the idea of wearing a tight (and revealing) saree, but the dancing part is a big deal too.  So important the dancing is, that once the first “bride and groom” dance concludes, the floor will open for immediate family only (for the first five minutes at least). “Dance!”, they’ll say, “Dance!”…and I’ll have to.

Which brings me to the all-important question:

Is it time to resurrect the  ”rubbing my butt-cheek” move?

The Scariest Bollywood Movie…

Do you remember the first time you shat yourself, spit up your heart, and screamed your face off from a movie?

Chances are it happened when you were a kid, and I’m guessing the culprit was a scary movie.  Same goes for me and I was nine years old, but it wasn’t  Freddy Krueger who stole my childhood …it was actually a Bollywood movie…

…I had never even thought of Bollywood films in a “horror” sense, but on one particular Saturday night, during hour number two of a three-hour fiick (seriously Bollywood, cut down the average length), something appalling happened:

-There along the sandy road, a cobra appeared from behind a deadened tree, positioning itself to attack the leading lady

Before I could even cover my eyes, the snake plunged its deadly fangs into the woman’s ankle.

She cried. She writhed. She was going to die.  Meanwhile I was frozen with terror, too still to even manage a shudder.

And then, like Sir Lancelot on his steed, the Indian hero arrived.  He jumped from his horse to get a closer look, and that’s when he saw the damage.  Our heroine lay there, glazed in a layer of sweat, her ample bosom heaving in apparent pain.

She was moments away from death, and the hero knew it too.  So he did a surprising thing, which I didn’t understand in the least.   He dove towards her ankle, mouth open wide and ready for action.

As he lay there suckling her ankle like an infant child on a ripened teat, I finally figured it out:

-He was sucking out the venom

Once he felt secure in his venom-extracting ways, he spit out the liquid death.

As the heroine began to realize what had happened, her eyes welled up into pools of love.  The next thing I knew the two were playing “peek-a-boo”, from behind the exact same tree that the cobra had emerged from.

So the movie ended well, but it was no less a terrifying film for me.  For years thereafter I would have a recurring nightmare, where a snake kept popping in and out of trees, taunting me until the bite.  The only difference from the movie though, was the absence of an Indian hero.

And that’s the biggest nightmare of all…knowing that my life is devoid of  an actual hero.  In fact for all my years of life, no one has ever promised to save me from a cobra, not even once.  I mean sure there is always some talk of my “cool personality”, blah, blah, blah…but has any guy ever told me he will suck out the venom?

It might seem a lot to ask, but what if  I’m having a stroll with the future-hubby, and a cobra enters the scene?  What if he doesn’t suckle me to safety?

Well I’ll be dead and he’ll be a coward, and that’s no good for anyone.

Maybe this is why I haven’t gotten married yet. 

So yeah, scary movies…they can totally mess a kid up.

Cover Up Those Doll-Boobs!

On my seventh birthday, it happened:

-I finally got the doll of my dreams.

She wasn’t any kind of Barbie, but her name was Steffi and she rocked my world.  Standing tall at approximately eighteen inches, she had the token mane of horse hair, but a not-so-standard body.  It was a cuddly body, made out of plush material.  You may be imagining a Cabbage Patch doll, but let me assure you, Steffi was a standard anorexic (and that’s how I like ‘em!).

Though I loved my Steffi Doll to death, I didn’t like her outfit.  She was wearing a short jean skirt (which was fine), but her top was made out of denim too.  Even at the age of seven, I knew to stay away from “denim on denim” (though I’d forget that rule in the 90′s); so why didn’t Steffi know? 

As I was tugging away at her ugly jacket, I noticed that it was removable.  And so, with all the excitement of a teenage boy who’s finally about to “score”, I ripped off her little jacket with my pointed teeth (or maybe with my hands).

Underneath it was a dazzling sight:

-A sparkly purple bra-top, sewn right on to her plush and squeezy melons.

She looked like a grown-up woman!

I was thrilled, and from there she began to headline my living room fashion show.  I would walk her along the bottom of the fireplace: three steps forward, stop and turn, three steps more, stop and turn (and back again).

One afternoon my mother walked in while I was doing the fashion show…and she basically had a fit.  She grabbed the doll and demanded to know wear I’d put her shirt.

Like most mothers do, she didn’t even pause for an answer, but instead continued on with her booming rant.

I wasn’t really able to process everything she said (half because of tears, have because of trembling “mom-fear”).

Even so, I managed to absorb some overall themes:  dolls should never take their clothes off…it’s wrong to show your body like that…girls who show their skin are “very bad”.

I never took off Steffi’s ugly jacket again, but still I was confused by the hardcore rule.  Confused because, whenever my dad was watching a Bollywood movie, the starring girl would be dressed in a sparkly “half shirt”, with giant boobs just waiting to escape.  It was during these very movies, that I first saw a man kiss an Indian girl on the boobs.  They had both been dancing in the rain, and after all the hops and skips, he buried his face in her chest (but only for a second, ’cause anything else would be classified as Indian porn).   

It was a scene I’d never forget, because my dad was trying hard not to flinch, while my mom was letting out a grunt (it was not a happy grunt).  All along I’d been standing in the darkened hallway (hiding from my older brother and his ”wrestling moves”).

So as you can imagine, boobs were an intriguing thing for me, and I was so excited that I’d get to grow some big ones too (whatever happened to that plan?)…which is why it really hurt that I had to cover Steffi’s melons. 

Over time I was raised to feel more and more indecent on the topic of “skin”.  By the time I was in high school, I was way too reserved to even try on a “baby tee” (while every other girl was playing fat-roll “Show and Tell”).

It was not even until my early 20′s, that I first showed my cleavage in public.  All those years of hiding my supple flesh; years that I will never get back.  Hmm…maybe that’s why I’m so enthralled by the topic of boobs (and their role in society).

And the irony of it all?  I now wear trampy shirts all the time, and nobody even cares!  Even my “indian dresses” are tailored to be “tight on top” (as per the direction of my very own mother!)

What can I say,  I guess things change when you’re hawking a depreciating daughter (and no I’m not married yet…tick-tock)