Charidas!

Just a few days into our stay and I’m definitely enjoying it here. We’ve made friends with a group of international students who are helping us feel very welcome. One tall Dutch guy, Tom, took us into town the other day to show us around a bit. A rickety bus picked us up at the campus gates and, for a mere two rupees (four cents!), took us in a gender-segregated, carnival-ride-like fashion into the heart of town, near the main hospital. We strolled down Ghandi Road (which was uncharacteristically quiet on account of the midday heat), where we wandered into a few of the gorgeous fabric boutiques. The store owners unfolded dozens and dozens of patterns for us to see and touch—it was a smorgasbord of the most beautiful cloth I’ve ever seen. Holly and I each chose a few sets to be made into the “charida,” which is the standard women’s day-to-day outfit here. Saris, I’m told, are considered more formal/cumbersome. Most women in the town still wear them, as well as most of the older female doctors and hospital workers, but all of the medical students wear the charidas. It consists of a long dress/shirt top, over billowy pants (for the best visual on the bottoms, kindly consult youtube for the timeless music video of ‘U Can’t Touch This’), with a matching long scarf worn across the collar bone and over both shoulders. We brought our fabrics to the tiny home shop of Tom’s favorite tailor, where we were measured quickly and chatted with the woman there. Three men sat at adjacent antique sewing tables, whizzing away the entire time we were there. Despite how it may look, they were actually very excited to have their picture taken:


We returned last night to pick up the outfits and pay the [inconceivably small] bill. I can’t say I’d rock the look for a night out in Boston, but the clothes are so, so beautifully made. And now we can at least pretend to fit in with our classmates.


I’m consistently taken aback by how inexpensive everything is here… A very few American dollars buying authentic, custom clothing just doesn’t compute with my home-based fiscal awareness. I realize, though, that it’s a part of the larger picture here… The poverty is everywhere. Overwhelmingly pervasive. Certainly, Boston panhandlers are plentiful and suffering, but I’ve never seen anything close to this. Poor people wander and sit everywhere in the narrow streets, and even those not asking for money are silently begging for something…

Other impressions… hopefully less somber… The smells in and around the town are incredible. The magnitude and variety is really something… delicious smells of simmering meats and curries, fresh cut fruits, flavored tobaccos, jasmine flowers… and the less pleasant odors of rotting garbage, livestock, diesel exhaust… I’m also struck by the rapidity with which they transition from one to another. Each smell is so strong, and then suddenly so different. Aromatic subtlety plays no role here.

Communication has been a bit of a struggle so far. Yes, English is one of the three official languages in this city (the others being Hindi, and the local dialect Tamil). However, by and large the locals seem to be what Jerry Seinfeld once dubbed “low-talkers,” in addition to seeming generally aloof. But the primary reason I’m struggling to understand them is this one particular affect I’ll call the Head Wobble. The name pretty much describes the gesture, though until you’re speaking to a local and actually see it in action, you cannot really grasp it. The Wobble, I’m told, can mean any number of things: “Yes,” “Maybe,” or “I don’t know” to name a few (though it looks an awful lot like a “no”). This would render it, by my calculations, one of the least effective forms of human body language, ever.

One thing that is communicated quite clearly is their cultural regard for skin color and sun exposure... While everyone I know in the states is zealously seeking a tanner appearance (be it through sun worship, fake-baking, or your favorite tinted lotion), the women here couldn't be different. There is a premium placed on fair skin, and the TV ads boast skin-lightening products at every commercial break (I was totally appalled). Many women carry parasols during the peak sun hours (though partly just for the heat). And they are very concerned about we Caucasian newcomers finding the shade.

Anyway, off to dinner now. I'll write more soon.