Get in the autorickshaw, negotiate the fare, and hit the road. Pull up to the apartment complex, find the right address, and call the residents. Chat it up, view the empty room, crack some jokes. Learn about the potential housemates, trade stories, get Delhi advice.
Join one housemate and their friend for dinner? Walk through South Delhi’s dark streets in search of salsa music? Dance to techno at a club?
Not my typical itinerary for a housing visit, but why not? Meet Divya, the ex-NGO employee turned UN filmmaker. Meet Sachin, the Indo-Brit working for a celebrity-backed NGO.
Shop talk is long since over. Divya, Leon the architecture prof, and I bounce around the empty techno dance floor. I guess it is Tuesday night after all. We got there too late for salsa, and now we are left to the tsssst - tsssst - tsssst pulse of a dj and his toys.
Somewhere along the line, I can’t help but notice the “diversity” of styles in the lounge/club. From an American perspective, it is a tossed salad of dead and living fashion. Old 80s looks collide with urban casual. Colors a bit too bold for an American dance floor find fabrics to flirt with.
But is it really that Indian fashion is “out of style”? Is it just an act of extreme Western arrogance to think that Indian clubbers are “catching up” on old American looks?
The marketing cycle — especially in America — is growing increasingly short. First there were looks that lasted for a generation. Then came the decades — 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. And now? Maybe something even faster — a 5 year turnover. A quarterly change. A new look for the season.
And along the way, uniformity sets in. If everyone has to keep up with the new look, everyone has to look the same. Which means that an American on an Indian dance floor is going to see things that seem “old” or jarring. Even though Indians might not be on the same fashion stopwatch.
Then another thought crosses my mind: colors. In the context of traditional clothes — saris, salwar kamises, etc — Indian women have a freedom to choose from a startling variety of colors, patterns, and combinations. There are combinations just not possible in a U.S. context that look absolutely gorgeous in a traditional Indian one.
So if your wardrobe draws from both “modern” and “traditional” wear, why limit yourself? Why play with such variety in the traditional context, while putting yourself in a box when it comes to the frenetic marketing cycle of modern wear? Suddenly the clash of styles worn by Indian clubbers doesn’t seem so clashing after all.
