Tuesday 6^th November

Melbourne Cup Day…the race which stops the nation. 

I was very surprised to hear this morning on the radio that the number of Australian horses in the race is…can you guess?  Do you know?  Two!  All of the rest have flown across the world from various far-flung locations.

How can this be a good thing?  What a huge carbon footprint; how horrid for the poor horses!

India #11

Most women in India are gorgeously attired.  I mean that literally.  They wear the most beautiful colours – aqua and pink and orange and yellow and red and green and blue in the most impossible and fabulous combinations, with spots, stripes, flowers, birds.  I should estimate that 80% of the women we saw, even in Mumbai and New Delhi, were wearing traditional clothes, either saris or shalwar kamiz (this is a combination of loose trousers worn with a loose tunic and long scarf thrown backwards over the shoulders – so comfortable ,elegant, cool.) 

Mary and I had read in various of our guidebooks to India – we carried heavy amounts of books with us – that it is a good idea just to buy a few of these outfits – not saris, they are too complicated for Western women to manage.  Then you don’t have to worry at all about your clothes; they are modest and appropriate for the climate, and very beautiful and stylish as well.  I had visions of myself in tasteful mint green shalwar kamiz, with maybe a bright pink and blue number for evening wear.  But then we put this to Pete, who, after all, was our expert of matters Indian – this was his fourth trip.  “No,” he said baldly.  “You won’t look right.  You will look silly in Indian clothes; you are not Indian.”  We pouted and rolled our eyes a bit.  (Well I did; I think Mary was more restrained and well-behaved.)  But in fact, sigh sigh, he was right.  I spent a bit of time observing other Western women, and the ones in shalwar kamiz did look just a teensy bit silly, or pretentious.  (Actually come to think of it, I know a woman who goes to circle dancing, and who goes to Poona every year to an ashram for meditation and yoga and soul-cleansing.  She is about the same age, size and colouring as me.  Last time she came back with a whole wardrobe of tunics and trousers, which she wore to work – she too is a public servant – and to circle dancing, and I remember feeling very embarrassed for her – just what did she think she was DOING, prancing about in Indian clothing??)  So Mary and I were not clad in bright and glorious plumage, we plodded around in our age-appropriate Tasmanian clothes and were sometimes too hot, but never mind, at least we didn’t look like total noodles!

Quite a large proportion of the women in India do not wear colourful clothing at all, as I am sure you are aware.  They wear BLACK from head to foot.  These are the Muslim women, although I did notice some of the more style-conscious young Hindu women in Mumbai wore black too, but just to look beautiful, not to cover their heads and hair.  The ones in full Muslim regalia looked SO hot, with just a tiny slit for their eyes.  Some of them even had netting over their eyes so they could hardly see at all.  I have no idea how they negotiate the streets.  The traffic is so dense and so dangerous, and the footpaths are full of dangers – big smelly poos, deep drains, big bumpy piles of rubble, deep potholes, cows, dogs, streetsleepers, pigs, goats, a sleepy camel or two.

I noticed that the younger Muslim women were every bit as interested in clothes as their non-Muslim contemporaries.  In the Muslim quarter there were whole streets selling nothing but black material, and they would gather there, fingering all the different types of blackness in which they could shroud themselves.  Some had embroidery, or little mirrors sewn in, or appliquéd flowers.  I saw a couple of giggly young things, totally wreathed in black, with, peeping out from below their long long robes BRIGHT trousers – one girl was wearing purple ones with big silver dots, the other had hot pink.  They also were wearing quite sparkly little shoes.  Another little giggly gaggle of girls I saw in an underwear shop.  They were peering through their eyeslits, with great interest, examining lurid half-cup lime green and red and black bras.  So funny; I don’t think it is possible to dampen women’s interest in finery and plumage….