week 1 in India: a few of my favorite things so far

I love riding in autos (full name = auto rickshaws). I love the way they allow me to see this place, be outdoors, and feel like I'm really in the middle of the culture. I'm also oddly enamored with the flow of traffic here. It doesn't feel quite as chaotic as other places I've been where road rules aren't quite as orderly as in the States, and beyond that there's an odd, beautiful choreography to it all -- a choreography via which somehow everyone mostly successfully and in one piece gets where they need to go.

As we drive around, I'm realizing that I really like a lot of the architecture in this city. It's a refreshing change from the cookie cutter neighborhoods that seem so popular among U.S. developers these days. Facades of homes and businesses here are often interesting and beautiful, with a whole lot of attention paid to artistic details and with interesting angles (instead of plain box shapes) and colors, all of which are right up my architecture alley.  



Endless fabrics to select from, and salesmen eager to show
them. I'm a naturally a slow decision-maker, and all the
options sure didn't help!

Fashion is big business here, for good reason. I had not intended to add many Indian pieces to my wardrobe and, so, borrowed some Indian kurtas from Nashville friends to wear while here, but it's challenging to resist all the beautiful fabrics and embellishments now that I've arrived. My one planned purchase of a salwar kameez turned into two salwar kameez suits and two kurtas while my friend and I shopped yesterday. Shops and shops of beautiful clothes abound in the commercial district. I am humored by the fashion contradictions here, though: modest clothing for women (mostly kurtas, salwar kameez suits, and sarees) is intended hide their curves (to keep men from stumbling or something, I guess), yet it's a male tailor who measures you for your hand-made salwar kameez and men who sell women's lingerie. And sarees can leave quite a lot of midriff flesh visible, but that's apparently perfectly acceptable, even though you're supposed to wear your dupatta (scarf) with kurtas and salwar kameez to add another layer to hide bosoms that are already fully covered by material. 

 

Decisions, decisions. I purchased the shirt hanging on the door on the far left. I didn't purchase the orange shirt I'm wearing. So hard to decide!

Striking a pose in our salwar kameez. My green one plus another for me and one for my friend were sewn by the tailor's stitchers within two hours of our dropping off the material.



     While they're still definitely in the minority here, I have seen more Muslim women wearing full black burqas than I have other places I've been. The tailor shop that made my salwar kameez (the green one above and another) also had several burqa-wearing customers. When one of them passed by me to leave the shop, we exchanged smiles, which was just a nice moment of human connection and interaction, especially since I've been generally avoiding much eye contact with people until I learn a little better what's appropriate and allowable here. When I later happened to recount this moment to the friends hosting me, I suddenly realized how odd it was to say we exchanged smiles when all I could see of her face was her eyes. But unless her eyes were lying, her mouth was smiling too. And the moment of connection over the bridge of our smiles is now one of my favorite experiences so far, because for a moment I shared life with someone whose life is really different from mine.