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| A display of dupattas at one of my favorite shops in Bombay. |
When I was a child, my mother and I wore
scarves on road trips to keep our hair from blowing in the wind. The scarves were square, and we would fold
them in half, into triangles, and knot the corners under our chins. My mother sometimes wore sunglasses and
looked glamorous. Our mini vacations
often took us to the hill stations outside Bombay, where the air was cooler, so
sometimes we wore the scarves to stay warm.
I was much more familiar with the long dupatta, the scarf worn with salwaar kameezes, North Indian baggy
pants and tunics. As a child, I would
ask to play with my aunts’ dupattas,
and they usually let me. I remember one,
belonging to a great aunt who lived in Poona.
A gauzy black fabric dotted with tiny red, green, and gold sequins, it
seemed magical to my eight-year-old self.
When we returned home, I was more sorry to leave behind that dupatta than I was to say good bye to my
aunt. Now I have many dupattas of my
own, and I love experimenting with draping them and like seeing how other women
wear them.
Scarves are in fashion these days, and
as I walk the halls of the college where I teach, I notice the many styles and
colors worn by our students. It brightens
even a long, tiring day when I catch a glimpse of a silk scarf twisted into a
cheeky knot or a knitted one draped in chunky rolls.
These pieces of fabric have been around
for centuries, serving to warm us or to adorn us, or both. When I wear one, I know I am part of a long
tradition. And each scarf is so simple—a
square, a rectangle—and offers so many opportunities to be creative.
The other morning, I was on YouTube
looking for videos to use in my poetry class when a title caught my eye: 25ways to wear a scarf in 4.5 minutes. I was
in a hurry with much to do before class, but I couldn’t resist this title. For 4.5 minutes, I sat there smiling.
