Skip to main content

Setting Free

 As a desi woman I can't wait for Harris to make a power statement with the sari as this article suggests:

Imagine what else she could bring to her look when the election is behind her. When she stops worrying about winning over voters, she could turn her attention to helping Americans rethink what power looks like. Perhaps she could pay homage to the cultures of her parents. Imagine if Harris showed up one day in a suit made of sari fabric, or a scarf made of Caribbean textiles? This would be more than just a form of self-expression. It would be a testament to America’s boundless opportunity that a child of immigrants could ascend into the highest office of the land.

It would make it possible for me and my sisters to show up in the Western world in the colors, fabrics and patterns that we love and identify with. I can spend hours browsing beautiful garments from India - they define perfection to my eyes and I know for a fact that I look my best dressed like an Indian woman. That is me being in my own skin, fitting into what was made and designed for me. I have never had the chance to present myself in the way that I feel the best about in America. In western attire something always feels a bit off.

Lately I see younger desi women in my workplace try to be bold with an embroidered phulkari kurti or a Fabindia dress from time to time. I am very proud of them for trying and root for them to go even further - wear a sari to work that was hand-woven by artisans from their home state in India. I wish I had the courage to wear a tant sari to work on a summer day - be myself.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
111 comments
Read more

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha
5 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques
6 comments
Read more