Sunday Styles, "On the Street" by Bill Cunningham ... Spotlight: Vellore Fashion

It is scorching hot down here, and we're not talking about the weather. These kids and grandmas mix it up right. Check out these threads -- they're going straight from the streetz of Vellore to the tents of Bryant Park. Ssssssssss-izzlin'!

Let's start with accessories, and the most important of all. That's right, the mustache! Skinny jeans may come and go, but this one's not going anywhere.

Three cheers for the mustache! Hip-hip! Hooray!

Speaking of jeans, acid-wash is going strong. Real strong. And real tight. That's the way to go in Vellore, and apparently all across India as far as we've seen so far.

Most acid-wash wearers pair it with a pompidour. This isn't just one guy on one day. We see this on many guys on most days.

Alex perusing stacks of underwear in an array of appealing colors.

The sari is the traditional outfit worn by most women. As we are located near Kanchipuram, the silk capital of India, there is no shortage here. Whether you are out for a night on the town with the girls or just forming dung into patties, it is the perfect choice.

At Home: Sari for the mom, casual top for the daughter.

At Work: A rugged sari for those down and dirty days.

In addition to saris, the salwar kameez is the traditional dress worn by adolescent girls and women. As seen below, it consists of a long tunic-like top, pants in a variety of different cuts but generally long and baggy, and a scarf thrown over both shoulders. Men's dress is more variable. The laborers and farmers almost always wear lungees, made of cotton fabric tied into a skirt. Often these are plaid, as shown below. Male professionals wear western dress, tailored trousers and collared button-down short sleeve shirts. Rarely if ever do men wear ties in Vellore, even doctors in the hospital. Security guards and police men always don the uniform. It's never complete, nor as menacing, without the moustache.

Salwar kameez

Lungee

On the move: lungee, bike, and bag.

"Give me your papers, son"

Okay, so enough of what everyone else is wearing. What are we wearing? Does it look like we are wearing the same clothes in every blog entry? That's because we are! In Vellore, our Western clothes makes us incredibly conspicuous, even at work. Knowing this, we brought very few clothes from home, and generally only high-tech, outdoorsy clothes. We wear these only when we travel on weekends, to better deal with the heat -- that's why we're wearing the same darn thing in every picture you've seen! In Vellore, we do as the locals do. When we arrived, we bought fabric and had salwar kameez made for myself, and shirts and trousers for Alex.

My first salwar kameez, near our apartment. They often have intricate embroidery, which is hard to see in this photograph. I choose not to wear the scarf, as it is so hot outside. Also, the baggy pajama-like pants were difficult for me to keep from falling down. Therefore, I had Western-style pants made, using pants from home as a template. The above is what I wear to work.

Alex in his Indian-made tailored pants and shirt.

In salwar kameez, waiting for the bus. I'm wearing a pair of pants that I had the tailor make for me. See below.

It is incredibly cheap to have a tailor make custom-made clothes. About two to four dollars to make a nice pair of men's trousers. Alex is so happy with his that we plan to have several pair made before we go back to the U.S. (If anyone would like them made, send us your measurements). Tailors can also copy your favorite clothes faithfully, in most cases. In the case of the white pants in the photograph above, it was an exact replica of the template I gave to him, but just too small.

Digression but relevant -- in middle school, I played flute in the marching band. Our uniforms were from the 1970s; thick polyester forest green pants with white piping, pseudo-military style top with shoulder fringe and braided gold cord. They had shrunken so much over the years that each band member was required to wear one size too small, making us the Skintight Marching Band. After performances, we each had to have a friend help to yank off the top, it being possible to do alone. One day, the bully who played drums couldn't get his top off, even with two, three, then four boys pulling at it. I thought it was funny. They had to cut the top to release him. He still had to wear the same top for performances, only his mother had to sew in an expansion panel where the uniform had been cut. My friends laffed and laffed.

With my too-tight pants, I had to ask the tailor to make adjustments. He said it was impossible, so I thought the bully and asked him to cut the back in half and sew in an expansion panel. I always think of marching band when I wear them. Look who's laughing now.

Alex demonstrating the "fat panel." Somehow he stuffed his be-hind into the pants, leaving no room for his boxers, seen spilling over the sides.

Alex is comfortable in his skin. That is the only thing that can explain the behavior below.

Alex's tailored pants. Due to the heat, he has adopted the 'beater'.

Double-take!

Hm! Nice buns!

Okay, getting creepy ...

Much as the dress of new immigrants to the U.S. may sometimes appear "different", awkward, or off-key in their reading and translation of American fashions, we fear the same may apply to us as new arrivals to India. After turning around one too many times to suddenly find Alex giggling and wearing my bathing suits, I sensed Alex may have felt emasculated being the "weird guy" without a mustache. So, after a haircut I saved his clippings and suggested he test-drive some more facial hair. Close, but not quite.

"Hey what's up guys!"

"Keep your tweezers! This brow gives me street cred."

Above and below also filed under "what we do when we're bored to tears." Sometimes I make myself wigs with my ponytail. How would I look if I chopped off my hair, I wondered.

High-tech fun.

If you have enjoyed this entry and would like to find out more about the new wave in Indian fashion please click here.

More Pictures from Our Rural Playground

After buying a bicycle, it’s now clear how the invention of the wheel revolutionized all matters of human civilization. I don’t know why we didn’t do it sooner. We used to trudge into the villages like snails. Now, Alex gets onto our new bicycle, I hop on sidesaddle on the back, and it’s “See you suckas!” and a mean cloud of dust.

We’re able to go further afield to buy fruits and vegetables, and best of all, we can explore more of the villages with the wind in our hair. Alex is making a routine of joining cricket on Sundays. We've been taking Tamil language lessons, and can now actually conjugate verbs; this helps when we're doing the usual -- trespassing into people's homes, then being asked to sit around with them in a circle and eat their food.

First, we roll into a village where people suddenly emerge from their homes to just look. Then the children approach and practice their English greetings. They charm us, leading to the camera being pulled out, then it's over. The sight of the camera gets them into a loud, excited frenzy. As many bodies as possible try to smush into range of the camera, jumping sideways through the crowd if necessary. When they realize that yes, we're actually going to take the time to take photograph each of them, they become suddenly sober and stand ramrod straight and look sedately at the camera to make for a better portrait. Below are some shots from the past few weeks.

Carrying harvested rice.

Villager in the typical uniform, button-down collared shirt over a lungee, or rectangular cotton fabric wrapped around like a skirt. They ride mopeds and bicycles like this, but don't ride sidesaddle. Many men wear clashing plaid shirts and lungees.

We were invited into this family's home and served some kind of porridge and a very salty and sour substance to go with it. We weren't sure what we were eating! We are able to conjugate "to eat" in past, present, and future tense. The sight of us eating their food, and saying "We are eating" was intensely amusing to them.

These ladies called us over to put a bindi on my forehead and flowers in my hair.

Chicken feet.

Alex playing cricket.

Village boys around our bike. If we're not weird looking enough, try drinking from a Camelback. People think we're martians.

Yesterday, I stayed home to rest while Alex rode out to the villages. When he walked in the door, I asked "What did you do today?" He said, "I harvested peanuts!"

The peanut ladies. They won his affections for the afternoon.

The fresh peanuts in our (nasty) sink. A note to all of you design buffs renovating your kitchens, when you're choosing fixtures and finishes, we recommend that you forego the "Black Painted Concrete" option.

Happy Tamil New Year! from Tiruvannamalai and Gingee

Among the ruins of a hilltop fortress at Gingee.

On Saturday, Tamil New Year’s Day, we took a day trip to the town of Tiruvannamalai, and then hiked among the hilltop forts in nearby Gingee. These destinations are a two hour’s drive from Vellore. For weekend trips like this, we are able to arrange a car and driver for about $20-25 a day. When we’re not thinking in rupees, this is an incredible deal. We even request cars with seat belts! Sometimes the seat belt strap is there, but we have to flip down the seat to fish for the buckle – to most Indians, seatbelts are a useless nuisance, and their buckles impediments that take up valuable seating space, so they are rightly shoved below the seat cushions. We were told that some major Indian cities are starting to enforce seatbelt laws; some taxi drivers install black sashes to hang diagonally across their chests to fake out police, instead of going through the trouble of using an actual seatbelt. Our drivers cannot figure out why we go through the trouble of fishing for the buckles. They’re probably right – they’re of no use if a bus hits us head on, which is how it would happen on these roads!

The town of Tiruvannamalai is a major Hindu pilgrimage center in our state of Tamil Nadu, where people come to worship at the Arunachala Temple. It is dedicated to Shiva as God incarnate of Fire. The walkways leading to the temple were lined with vendors selling coconuts adorned with flowers and displayed ceremoniously on plates; at the temple entrances we found large burning torches around which men and women were smashing coconuts and approaching the torches to brush the fire with their hands. Babies and young children were also brought up to the fire. Babies sure are lucky when it comes to religious rituals; they just hang out while various holy acts are performed upon them. Back home, they’re dunked in water. Here, they are dangled into fire or thrust out for an elephant to smack with its trunk (see picture below).

We took off our sandals and joined the crush of other barefoot people to enter the temple grounds. There were courtyards within courtyards and numerous shrines within the temple walls, many with large porches where people were lounging or sleeping. In the U.S., when we see someone lying on the ground outdoors, they are usually homeless. Here, it is quite common to stretch out anywhere in the shade, even on a busy walkway, which is then decorated with women in saris curled up on their sides. We liked this temple; its symmetrical plan and ornate structures and series of courtyards were coherent to our eyes. Also, it was very much alive with activity as we imagine it may have been for centuries. Cows lined the outer courtyard, and crowds of families came to spend the day sitting in clusters to talk, nap, or eat packed lunches.

The one difficult thing about visiting temples is the barefoot aspect. Not so much the schlepping in and around puddles of unidentified wet substances or the temple elephant’s manure, but the heat. The stone plazas become unbearably hot to walk on for those without the leathery soles developed from a barefoot existence. To my amazement, most Indians walk along the hot stone in a matter of fact way, and Alex is much better at it than I am, but I have to chart my course from one patch of shade another. This is the land of no shadows; it seems as if the sun is always directly overhead, so despite the tall phallic dimensions of the temple structures, astoundingly there is often only a selfish sliver of shadow hugging the edge of each building. The shadow is often so thin that to take advantage of the cool stone I must walk heel to toe along the edge of each building as if on a balance beam. If no such shadow exists, at the edge of one patch of cool stone, I zero in on the next small patch 100 meters away while I dance across the hot plaza on the smallest surface area of foot as possible, my hands waving in the air for balance and speed, while panting “Hot. Ow. Ow. Hot.” I know it hurts his feet just as much, but Alex just walks quickly but casually, bearing the pain rather than recreating the pathetic scene that his wife just made.

Smashing coconuts around the flames at Arunachala temple




Throngs entering the temple.




WWF Smackdown! We've encountered elephants at other temples. They are usually painted or adorned with colorful silks. If you give them a rupee, they will pick the coin up from your hand with their amazingly agile snouts, then bless you by touching you on the head. Latter action, not as agile. Usually a clumsy boink. Small child is getting boinked on the head by the elephant. The small infant is next.




WWF Smackdown -- Elephanto vs. Jermynator!




Everything we do is observed with intense interest. Children followed us the entire time we were there. Alex sat down to read aloud from the Lonely Planet guidebook for me ... they don't speak English, yet gathered 'round and listened intently to his wise words ... "To the south are pillars carved with vigorous horses, riders, and lion-like yalis."




Sitting in the shade, amongst cows in the outer perimeter of the temple.







Carved gopuram, or tower-like gateways, to the temple.




Sleeping in the shade in front of a shrine on the temple grounds.




"One of these things is not like the other!
One of these things is not the same..."

After our visit to the temple, we drove for about half an hour into the countryside to Gingee to explore the ruins of a 15th century fort set upon several adjacent hills. The landscape is striking -- either steep rock faces or hillsides that appear to be composed of large boulders that rest precariously despite the precipitous inclines. Atop each hill are the remains of a fortress, with a stone wall meandering through boulders from one ruin to another, up and down the hills. The other striking thing about the landscape is that there were virtually no people around. India is so populated that it is difficult to escape a crowd, even in the fairly removed area in which we reside. If we ask an Indian who has visited America how they found it, they invariably tell us how “empty” and devoid of people it seemed. To us, of course it is the opposite, and it was eerie and pleasant to walk amongst manmade structures with barely a soul in sight.

As we approached, one particular hike looked tempting, particularly because of the impossibly situated fortress at its peak, but the heat and scorching sun made the climb appear unfeasible and foolish. But that’s just me, and then there’s Alex – so we started our ascent. And then most miraculous thing occurred. A dark cloud approached, a cool breeze picked up, and it actually started raining! It’s hard to adequately express how unusual and glorious this was, as we have not seen rain since our arrival in January, and the relentless dry heat and intensity of the sun are turning us into raisins. A man tending a shrine waved us in as the rain picked up, but there was no way we would miss the rain. Enormous glob-like raindrops gunned down on us in a painful way, but we were only grateful for the cool that it brought. By the time we reached the peak, the rain stopped. A man and his daughter gestured vigorously for us to hurry, and when we reached the cliff and looked down, we saw a rainbow whose peak lay at the level of our feet and then arched down on either side. We were so close it was almost possible to see exactly where it started. Almost.

The view from the top.




We brought a picnic lunch to eat at Gingee. We were shoo-ing away monkies throughout much of our meal. During this photo op, I thought I'd lure the monkey closer for a buddy shot. Our loverly friend Melissa had sent a package from Seattle with lots of treats, including Odwalla bars. As I brought out a wrapper from my pocket, he lunged toward me at which point I screamed and he won. See below.




Not so cute anymore. Greedy monkey-face grabbed it like a ravenous madman and vigorously licked off any remnants, in the way hungry bandits are depicted eating stew in old Westerns. He then started rapping and beatboxing "Yo this here hungry monkey's gonna fight to the death, Gimme food, gimme foo-, Smell my Odwalla breath. Bow-wow. Ch-ch. Ch-ch-chick'n aiiight."




The fortress to which we climbed.




Goats grazing at the base of the ruined fort.