Kurti And The Pretty Floral Bag

Growing up as an Indian American in Queens, New York, with my conservative, Bengali father, slightly liberal, Punjabi mother, and younger brother in a nice three-bedroom apartment in Richmond Hill was never difficult. Richmond Hill was developing into a small Indian hub, providing opportunities for families who recently arrived from India. We had white neighbors, Spanish neighbors, and neighbors from Guyana, but for the most part our neighbors were Indian.

It wasn’t uncommon to see a group of nanijis walking down the street in their white salwar kameezes. Our local library had a large stock of Bollywood movies. Looking back at old school photographs, most of my classmates were all brown. We were all children of immigrant parents. There was no such thing as trying to fit in or becoming too modernized. We listened to what our parents told us, believed that our own cultural values were superior to “western” ones, and stayed with our “Indian” kind. White American people just lived in a place where houses were separated by vast forests and spent their weekends at elementary school soccer games. We never thought we were different from anyone else, simply because we were all the same.

At age 7, when my brother was born, my parents began giving a lot of thought to moving to Long Island. It was not the first time they thought about moving. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of getting into the family’s old car with my parents and driving out to Montauk on the Long Island Expressway for hours. We’d stop, every now and then, to attend an open house my parents saw advertised in Newsday or the New York Times. I remember these trips because they were the first time I would see life outside of Queens.

As a child, it never occurred to me that people who lived on Long Island were wealthier, or better educated than those who lived in Queens. All I remember thinking was how odd it was that nobody walked along the streets or played in front of their homes. We would visit house after house after house. Most of them were huge with great backyards and pools, but had been outgrown by families after their kids went off to college and moved on.

On those Long Island visits, I never thought that I was different from anyone else. After all, I was born in America, spoke English (I had only a faltering understanding of Hindi), watched American shows and movies, and listened to American music. So, at the age of 11, when my parents made the decision to finally move I was not nervous.

There was a small part of me, however, that knew that I would be different from everyone else. We were, after all, moving to a predominately white neighborhood. I had a darker skin and a different religion. In short, I would be Indian.

For the most part, this small unease remained silent, but popped out whenever I heard of hate crimes on the news. By 11, I knew what racism was and was terrified that I would have to experience it. I remember spending afternoons after school in my neighbor’s backyard, shooting foul shots into basketball hoops. I would set stupid little goals for myself. If I shot three baskets in a row I would not be made fun of at my new school. If I shot five baskets in a row I would make friends easily. Ten baskets meant that I would be popular.

I remember my first day at my new school. I was placed in a fifth grade class where the only other non white kid was another Indian boy. The kids were nice, like kids at my old school. One girl, in particular, stood out. She, like most other girls, had curly blond hair, wore Soffe cheerleader shorts and a summer camp tank top. I remember she had a very pretty, floral print bag.

“Thanks,” she said when I complimented it. “It is a Hervé Chapelier.”

It would not be until my seventh grade French class (I sat next to the same girl) that I learned that Hervé Chapelier was a French accessory designer. So just what exactly was a fifth grader doing with a backpack that today costs as much as a tank of gas? It was, I discovered, the subtle difference between Queens and Long Island.

In Queens, you had your clothes, your backpack, your shoes; all from nameless companies and bought after several markdowns. What you wore and bought mattered to nobody, because everyone was in the same boat. On Long Island, you are never on the same boat as your neighbor. Instead, you make sure that you are on a bigger, better, more expensive boat.

It was pretty obvious to me that one difference, between my classmates and me, was they would have better clothes than me. In hindsight, this observation seems shameful and embarrassing. Nevertheless, I knew I could not ask my parents to buy me clothes like the ones that girls in my school wore. I would be admonished for wearing shorts that were too short, or shirts with barely-there sleeves.
I asked only once, the night before my fifth grade graduation dance. My request to wear short shorts was met with a resounding “no.” I’ll admit that I was upset, but not the least bit surprised. Subconsciously I was relieved. I was afraid that if I began to dress like the girls in my school I would no longer be like my parents, or belong to my family. 

My years in middle school were uneventful. I befriended a group of kids who, like me, did not really fit in with the “popular” kids, but we were not exactly at the bottom of the totem pole either. We were smart, we joked, and hung out on weekends. Our parents bought our clothes for us and it never occurred to us to read the latest fashion magazines. During my freshman year in high school, I befriended a girl who, like me, was Indian. She went clothes shopping with an older sister who at the time was in college. After reminding them of my A+ average, I convinced my parents to let me go shopping with them. They went to the trendiest stores buying blouses, skirts, and dresses that I couldn’t imagine Indian girls wearing.

For an Indian girl trying to uphold her parents’ Indian values, shopping in American stores can be difficult. Clothes that everyone else wears become too tight, too revealing, too low-cut, too small, or too short. My two prerequisites for buying clothes were that they a) had to have sleeves and b) had to be reasonably priced.

I once complained to my dad about the problem. He offered me two solutions. The first was study (his solution to everything). The second was to wear a kurti to school. Kurtis were the last thing I would wear anywhere outside a puja or my masi’s home.

Naturally, I was surprised therefore the next time I went to the mall to see kurtis, churiyan, ghaghraas, behind almost every store window.  I never noticed the growing influence Indian styles were having on American and international fashion. Bangles I had worn to the annual Saraswati Puja adorned the hands of models on Parisian runways. The blouse an editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine wore during New York’s fashion week looked exactly like the top of a lehnga I owned. All of a sudden, I could wear a kurti to school and people would think I got it at Bloomingdales!

The realization that I could finally wear my own kind of clothes to school did not make me as happy as I thought. It made me wonder if I placed greater value on the opinion of my peers than of my family. All along my father had prodded me to wear a kurti to school, which I never did until it became the latest fashion trend. Was I okay with wearing Indian-style clothes to school only because American culture had finally accepted it?

My mom once told me, “No matter what you do or what you become people will always see you as an Indian. So be proud of being Indian.”

First generation Indians have to be proud of our Indian heritage. We need to be able to bring India to mainstream culture, and not wait for someone else to do it. We have the privilege of being Indian American. We should sift through both ideologies and create a lifestyle that adapts the best of both worlds. Only then will we have the satisfaction of knowing that we managed to live in a modern world without sacrificing our rich heritage. After all, a black Hervé Chapelier tote bag complements any salwar kameez wonderfully.