I have never been a
more curious spectator of the sartorial idiosyncrasies of the women living in
our community in Calcutta, the city where my parents now live. I do not live in
Calcutta anymore, not since the last six years, and this is perhaps why little
things that did not stand out earlier tend to do so. I am an outsider now. I see
things that I had never noticed before. Let us take the nightie, for example. I
have never seen something that has popularized itself more than the nightie has.
The women of the extended family still remember my dida (grandmother) for her
unconventional modernism. Dida has been gone for 13 years (maybe more), and is more
of a distant memory for me. She would be close to ninety if she was alive
today. Every female acquaintance of hers remembers her for, no, not her unconventional
outlook or her lack of prejudices as a sign of modernity, but the fact that she
owned and wore nighties. Yes, I have distant memories of that too, of the time
when I was five years old. Dida would take a shower late at night, after
finishing the chores, organizing food in the fridge and cleaning up the
kitchen, and emerge in her green and white nightie, smelling of Boroline and
Cuticura talcum powder. She would switch on the table lamp by the bedside, take
out her collection of books and magazines, and read for the next few hours
until I hugged her and fell asleep. Now when I talk about my dida, an epitome
of a modern woman in the family, I am talking of no flimsy sheer Victorian
secret. Victorian it was, covering her from head to toe, full sleeves and a
high neckline. There were no laces, frills, or buttons, but a pair of strong fasteners
securing the nightie, which was pure heavy cotton, the stuff you use to make
heavy curtains at home. You could not see a square inch of bare skin below the
throat, even if you tried to. The nightie was a companion for a few hours at
night, emerging from her wardrobe much after everyone fell asleep, and
vanishing much before anyone else woke up. Every morning when I woke up before
seven for school, she would be back in her sari, preparing for the morning
puja. Yet she was a modern woman, as the women of the extended family teased
her, perhaps with a mix of jealousy and hypocrisy in their voices. The nightie
was her id to modernism.
The
sight of the nightie is so common during my annual visits to Calcutta these
days, but sadly, nothing like the sight my dida made, reading by her night
lamp, her face glowing in the soft yellow, a nightly sight, almost a figment of
my imagination because I have never ever seen her in a nightie in broad
daylight. My parents live in a community interspersed with buildings five
stories high, and during summery evenings, it is a common sight watching women,
mostly elderly, prancing around in the terrace of other apartments wearing a
nightie. They are seen doing every possible activity- taking evening walks,
drying the chilies and mangoes for pickles, haggling with food vendors and salesmen,
socializing with other women from adjacent apartments, untangling knots of the nylon
rope with frayed edges tied to a dirty little piece of bag, also known as the “bajaarer
tholi” that holds the keys to the entrance door, or conversing with anyone who
has some information about the missing maid. I am yet to see an elderly Bengali
woman from Calcutta who does not own a few pairs of sleeveless nighties. She takes
a shower during summery evenings, dabs a generous amount of talcum powder on
her visible upper extremities, including the armpits, and takes a stroll on the
terrace. Hanging lards from the biceps or an endowed physique have never been
deterrents. The term nightie is a misnomer, for you can easily find women performing
a good portion of their morning chores in nighties. The milkman brings milk,
the maid arrives and leaves, the newspaper guy delivers newspapers, the
salesmen continue with their unwanted solicitation, the mailman delivers mails,
and random strangers ask for “dada” (usually the husband), to which they have
to crane their necks out of the windows and iron railings of the balcony or the
stairs from the fifth floor and scream, “dada barite nei” (Dada is not home). The
nightie remains a faithful accompaniment, never leaving your side.
When the hemline is too
low or the design perhaps a tad too modern, a dupatta, usually sheer and gauzy,
is used as an accompaniment. I have seen so many women who feel no hesitation stepping
out of the house, even as far as the “moodikhana’r dokan” or the “kirana” (a
small shop in the locality selling groceries) for some potatoes and lentils, or
venturing out to the nearby “mishtanno bhandar” (sweet shop) for some evening
snacks of “shingara- kochuri”. A dupatta
makes the nightie more official, almost as if it was never a nightie in the
first place, but something more formal like a business suit. Or a swim suit. For
I have seen nighties with dupatta in pictures all the way from the beaches of
Puri, Digha, Pondicherry, and the southern shores of the country. Honeymoons,
wedding anniversaries, birthdays and threading ceremonies, you name it. The nightie
wearers are no lesser mortals; they are entrepreneurs and social networkers. The
owner of Jasmine Beauty Parlor (“we have no branches”) in our community is
often seen threading, waxing, snipping, and giving orders to her subordinates wearing
her deadly nightie-dupatta combination.
I do not know if they
are women of the modern strata in Calcutta. I do not know if they frequent pubs
or shake a leg in clubs. These mashimas and boudis do not go around giving driving
directions to their chauffeurs, cocktail in hand. Yet this seems like a strange
form of liberation for the middle class Bengali women, liberation from the
bondage of wearing something strictly Indian, a compromise between the extreme
westernization of the miniskirts and jeans and the eastern sari. When the mailman
rang the bell one afternoon, I was about to get the door in my tee shirt and sweatpants
(that barely reached my knees) when my mother instructed me to don a nightie on
top of what I was wearing. Confused, I wondered how ridiculous that would look,
when I realized that it was the obvious choice over the somewhat contour
hugging fabric I was wearing. I never donned that ridiculous combination of a
nightie over sweatpants, much to her consternation.
Living outside Calcutta
for the last six years, I got used to seeing and wearing different kinds of
nightwear, those that were restricted to the sleeping quarters and were not
worn during conversations with the neighbor or the salesman. I was meeting my
newly married ex-colleague, Mr. Basu, during a certain business trip to the bay
area in California. I was a little lost in their parking lot, and Mrs. Basu,
who had recently moved from Calcutta, kindly volunteered to step outside and
show me the door. I was parking my car when I saw the silhouette of a newly
married lady in her mid-twenties emerging, an unmistakable silhouette of
someone wearing a nightie with a dupatta thrown in. I smiled to myself as I realized
that I might have left Calcutta years ago, but Calcutta hasn’t left me yet. I imagined
a dozen bandhni-printed nighties bought from Dakshinapan in south Calcutta making
their way across the Pacific Ocean as a part of Mrs. Basu’s wedding trousseau. That
was when I realized the power of the nightie, the almost all mighty.
