Scarves Make Me Happy

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.