I feel as though I'm in an Indian novel -- perhaps even speaking to Dinah from A Fine Balance in her living room, talking about her tailors -- fabric and color swatches all around us. It's a whole new world, and I'm reminded of being in Bombay with Susan and Lisa my first year here, sitting on the floor of a sari shop, and pointing at floor-to-ceiling piles of fabric, which are shown one-by-one to us while being served tea.
It's not quite like that, but there's something overwhelming about designing each and every aspect of a piece of clothing I can barely visualize. After each sari I try on, I say "that's the one I want!" -- until I try on the next.
But trying on various styles of saris is only half the reason I'm there. The other is that in the few times we've seen each other, Shilu has become somewhat of my Indian grandmother. She tells me I'm too skinny, and has me over for lunch so I can eat home-cooked food -- and lots of it. (In a sort-of awkward way, she doesn't eat herself, though she sits next to me and keeps filling my plate with more). She is happy that I found "a nice American boy" in India and thinks we should settle down here. I say that Delhi is too loud and not good for our health, and she recommends Kerela or Shimla instead. When I suggest a style of sari that I've seen in a magazine, she tsks and says, "That's not for a good girl to wear" through her two remaining teeth.
Through it all, Shilu tells me all sorts of stories... stories of her youth, where her house near Lodhi Gardens was considered "rural" and her siblings used to count the cars that passed (as she talks, she covers her ears every time a car honks too loud, which is to say, every two minutes or so). Stories of how she started her tailor shop, and how she found young men and women living in the nearby slums, trained them, and made them her tailors. She's so close to them that even before her son is to be married, she wants to marry off the young tailor who has worked with her since the beginning ("We're hoping for a wedding in May. There is no girl yet but we are ready with the wedding as soon as a good one comes!"... she says the same about her son, and his "ready" wedding this November).
I sit in rapture, as she tells me family stories that are intertwined with all the India history books I've been reading... how her family moved from Bengal to Delhi when partition made their home Bangladesh, how much Delhi has changed since the assassination of Indira Gandhi (for the far worst, in her opinion), how she misses the mango trees of her youth.
She offers me chai, but it's time to go. I leave and head to Khan Market, imagining her mango trees lining the way.
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